Out of Office : Meet my new assistant
I recently created a demo machine with Microsoft Outlook 2007 Beta 2 TR (Technical Refresh) on a server with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and was impressed with the improvements made in the new 'Out of Office' assistant. I had heard that we were making improvements and I'm pleased to see that our 'Better Together' message really delivers value to customers updating to Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007.
There are some new options to baffle and amaze your business colleagues. Let's take a closer look.
As you can see you have much greater control on how being out-of-office is handled by Exchange.
I can now specify start and end times for when my out-of-office replies will be sent. This is great for planning ahead and not having out-of-office messages sent when you are in the office but have not got round to switching the out-of-office assistant off. Ahhh! That's much better.
Contextual out-of-office responses for internal and external emails. I can now set my out-of-office response for everyone inside my organisation to use internal phone extensions for alternative contacts, web sites and emails without disclosing this to the outside world. I can also be more descriptive as to my whereabouts without exposing company information to external contacts. For responses to non organisational colleagues I have even more control over the how these are handled. We have had rules for some time, but a simple option is now available to only send out-of-office information to my contacts so that they can be aware of possible delays in my response to email. Alternatively I could just select the option to provide this information to anyone that sends me an email. I think this is a great step forward in allowing the user greater control over the information supplied while out of the office with a greater focus on providing the right information to the right people.
If you want to see this in action then click here for a quick video and if you like what you see there are more here : Exchange Server 2007 Demos
But wait, there's more…..
You also get access to these options in the updated Outlook Web Access (OWA) on Exchange Server 2007. Click on Screen Image below for a more detailed view.
James Akrigg
