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GERTES (Global Email Response-Time Expectation System) is a new worldwide system that allows you to set an expected response-time on any email that you send. Works with Outlook and other email clients.

When designing Outlook 2010, we worked hard to ensure that the colors, shapes, and text used within the product provide a pleasant experience and make it easy for you to get work done. We have done this by redesigning parts of the user interface to give Outlook a clean, crisp, high-quality look that is free from distracting visual elements. By simplifying many parts of the user interface, we’ve allowed your e-mail messages and meetings to shine in the foreground better than ever before! Let’s take a look at some examples of how the new visuals improve Outlook.

For instance, in the screenshots below, notice how the new look of the Navigation Pane buttons is simpler. We have removed the glassy blue gradients and bright orange selection color so that the buttons are less distracting and more refined. For more about the changes in the Navigation Pane, see Melissa’s earlier post.

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007	Outlook 2010

The To-Do Bar and Navigation Pane have been darkened in Outlook 2010 – this makes your message list and reading pane pop out from the surface of Outlook so that it is easier to focus on the content that matters – your messages!

We also flattened and simplified the Calendar to achieve the same goals as in the Inbox – to make your content easier to focus on.

The ribbon has been simplified as well – notice how buttons and groups of buttons no longer have borders.

We have also removed unnecessary visual elements (like the Inbox header below) to provide more room on screen to show your messages.

The default theme for Outlook 2010 is the Silver theme, as shown in the screenshots above. In addition to the Silver theme, Outlook 2010 includes two more great color themes — Blue and Black.

Outlook 2010 Blue Theme	Outlook 2010 Black Theme

Outlook 2010 Silver Theme

To change an Office theme, click the File tab, click Options, and then on the General tab, choose a different color scheme.

I hope you will agree that Outlook 2010 is the best-looking Outlook, ever! Let me know what you think in the comments!

For more about the goals behind the Office 2010 refresh, see Keri’s post on the Office 2010 Blog.

Tom O’Neill
Outlook Program Manager

Today I am pleased to announce the release of the Exchange Server Pre-Deployment Analyzer (ExPDA).

You can use the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer to perform an overall topology readiness scan of your environment. When you run the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer, it provides a detailed report that will alert you if there are any issues within your organization, which could prevent you from deploying Exchange 2010. For example, the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer will notify you if you haven't deployed the minimum required Exchange service pack on all your existing Exchange servers.

The checks performed by ExPDA are similar to the pre-requisite checks implemented (via Exchange Best Practices Analyzer) in the Exchange 2010 Setup program; in fact ExPDA is based off the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA) engine. However, unlike Exchange 2010 setup, this tool focuses only on overall topology readiness and not the ability to run Exchange 2010 on the local computer. The scan also performs a deep analysis of each existing Exchange 2003/2007 server to verify that it has the necessary updates and configuration in-place to support Exchange 2010. The end report is structured as follows:

• Critical - A configuration problem that will prevent Exchange 2010 from being deployed in the organization. For example, the Active Directory Forest is not operating in Windows Server 2003 Forest Functional Mode or higher.
• Warning - A configuration item that may prevent customers having the best possible experience with Exchange 2010. A warning may also reflect some functionality that is not available in Exchange 2010.

ExPDA is another component in our vision to provide a seamless upgrade experience that reduces the complexities in deploying Exchange 2010. To start planning your upgrade, please utilize the Exchange Deployment Assistant. The Deployment Assistant allows a customer to create Exchange 2010 on-premises deployment instructions that are customized to their environment. The Assistant asks a small set of questions, and based on the answers, it provides a finite set of instructions that are designed to get a customer up and running on Exchange 2010.  Running the Exchange Server Pre-Deployment Analyzer is now a recommended step within the pre-requisites section of the Deployment Assistant.

You can download ExPDA at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=88b304e7-9912-4cb0-8ead-7479dab1abf2&displaylang=en.  ExPDA is supported on Windows 7, Windows Vista with Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2.

Q&A

1. Does this tool replace the Exchange Deployment Assistant?

   No, ExPDA is merely an additional tool that can be as a step within the upgrade experience. The Exchange Deployment Assistant will walk you through all aspects of the upgrade, namely how to coexist properly with Exchange 2010 and legacy versions of Exchange, whereas, ExPDA is one step within that process and ensures that the environment is ready to have the first Exchange 2010 server deployed.

2. I ran the scan and have questions about the results. What should I do?

   If you'd like to read more about the requirements of Exchange 2010, please see the Planning for Exchange 2010 section on TechNet.

3. I ran the scan and received unexpected results. If I think there's a bug, who can I contact?

   If you need assistance, please visit the Exchange Server Deployment Forum or you can send mail to exbpafb AT Microsoft DOT com.

4. Is this new functionality available in all languages?

   No. ExPDA is only available as a U.S. English version.

5. I'd like to know if my organization is capable of running Exchange 2007. Can I use ExPDA to check this?

   No, ExPDA only verifies if an organization is ready to have first Exchange 2010 server installed. If you need to determine whether your organization is ready to have Exchange 2007 deployed, you can utilize ExBPA v2.8 and the latest Exchange 2007 ExBPA.Readiness.xml:

   1. Install ExBPA 2.8 and the last ExBPA 2.8 Update.
   2. Download the latest Exchange 2007 service pack rollup. At the time of this writing this is SP2 RU2.
   3. Extract the rollup binaries using this command: msiexec /a filepath to MSI file /qb TARGETDIR=filepath to target folder
   4. Copy the ExBPA.Readiness.xml to the <ExBPA install location>\en folder.
   5. Launch ExBPA.

6. Where can I look at the list of checks made in this new scan?

   If you're familiar with the BPA XML files, the new check is wholly contained within the ExBPA.Readiness.xml file located within %Program Files%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\ExPDA\en folder.

   • Reporting the number of Active Directory trees, domains, sites, admin groups, routing groups, Exchange 5.5 servers, Exchange 2000 servers, Exchange 2003 servers, total mailboxes, Windows 2000 Active Directory servers, Windows Server Active Directory servers, Windows Server Active Directory servers. Report how many Active Directory domain/sites have Exchange servers installed.
   • Verifying that the Schema Master is Windows 2003 SP1 or later.
   • Identifying Active Directory domains that are not in native mode.
   • Identifying Active Directory sites that do not have a global catalog server running Windows 2003 SP1 or later.
   • Verifying that there are zero Active Directory Connector servers in existence.
   • Identifying any SMTP site links in existence.
   • Verifying that the Exchange organization is in native mode.
   • Identifying any non-standard proxy address generators.
   • Identifying whether you have any ambiguously defined email addresses in your recipient policies.
   • Identifying any non-MAPI public folder hierarchies (a.k.a. AppTLH's) in use.
   • Identifying Routing Groups that span Active Directory sites.
   • Identifying any Active Directory sites that span Routing Groups.
   • Identifying any Routing Group Connectors that have specialized settings (activation, max size, accept/reject lists, restrict message type/priority).
   • Identifying any SMTP Connectors that support non-SMTP address spaces.
   • Identifying any SMTP Connectors that use inline domain-wildcarding for address spaces (e.g. *foo.com instead of *.foo.com).
   • Identifying any X.400 Connectors in the topology.
   • Identifying any EDK-based Connectors in the topology (excluding Notes).
   • Verifying that any servers running Exchange 2003 have SP2 or later.
   • Verifying that any servers running Exchange 2007 have SP2 or later.
   • Identifying any SMTP virtual servers that are not using port 25 for incoming/outgoing.
   • Verifying that all Exchange 2003 servers have SuppressStateChanges set.
   • Identifying any Exchange 2003 servers that have active NNTP newsfeeds.
   • Identifying any Exchange 2003 servers that use the Event Scripting service.
   • Identifying any Exchange 2003 servers that have the ExIFS (a.k.a. M:) drive enabled.
   • Identifying any parts of Active Directory that have Access Control Entry inheritance disabled.

Thanks for your continued support. Feel free to post feedback in comments of this blog post, or visit the Exchange Server Deployment Forum.

- Ross Smith IV

Modify contacts in both ACT! and Outlook and the synchronization routine keeps your changes in sync. Create a contact in Outlook it will be exported to ACT! and new ACT! contacts will be imported back to Outlook. Custom fields you have defined in ACT! will be transferred to Outlook as well as contact notes. In order to synchronize specific contacts to Outlook, you can specify ACT! group(s) and sync exports only contacts from these groups. It is designed to skip private contacts as well. One way or two way merge is supported. Sync ACT! data with Exchange Public Folders, choosing any public contact folder for Contacts and a Task folder for Opportunities and Activities. All ACT! versions starting from 2007(9.0),2008(10.0),2009(11.0),2010(12.0) are supported.

In Exchange Server 2010, there is no more single instance storage (SIS). To help understand why SIS is gone, let's review a brief history of Exchange.

During the development of Exchange 4.0, we had two primary goals in mind, and SIS was borne out of these goals:

1. Ensure that messages were delivered as fast and as efficient as possible.
2. Reduce the amount of disk space required to store messages, as disk capacity was premium.

Exchange 4.0 (and, to a certain extent, Exchange 5.0 and Exchange 5.5) was really designed as a departmental solution. Back then, users were typically placed on an Exchange server based on their organization structure (often, the entire company was on the same server).  Since there was only one mailbox database, we maximized our use of SIS for both message delivery (only store the body and attachments once) and space efficiency. The only time we created another copy within the store was when the user modified their individual instance.

For almost 19 years, the internal Exchange database table structure has remained relatively the same:

Then came Exchange 2000.  In Exchange 2000, we evolved considerably - we moved to SMTP for server-to-server connectivity, we added storage groups, and we increased the maximum number of databases per server.  The result was a shift away from a departmental usage of Exchange to enterprise usage of Exchange.  Moreover, the move to 20 databases reduced SIS effects on space efficiency, as the likelihood that multiple recipients were on the same database decreased.  Similarly, message delivery was improved by our optimizations in transport, so transport no longer benefited as much from SIS either.

With Exchange 2003, consolidation of servers took off in earnest due to features like Cached Exchange Mode.  Again the move away from departmental usage continued.  Many customers moved away from distributing mailboxes based on their organization structure to randomization of the user population across all databases in the organization.  Once again, the space efficiency effects of SIS were further reduced.

In Exchange 2007, we increased the number of databases you could deploy, which again reduced the space efficiency of SIS. We further optimized transport delivery and completely removed the need for SIS from a transport perspective.  Finally, we made changes to the information store that removed the ability to single instance attachments. The result was that SIS no longer provided any real space savings - typically only about 0-20%.

One of our main goals for Exchange 2010 was to provide very large mailboxes at a low cost. Disk capacity is no longer a premium; disk space is very inexpensive and IT shops can take advantage of larger, cheaper disks to reduce their overall cost. In order to leverage those larger capacity disks, you also need to increase mailbox sizes (and remove PSTs and leverage the personal archive and records management capabilities) so that you can ensure that you are designing your storage to be both IO efficient and capacity efficient.

During the development of Exchange 2010, we realized that having a table structure optimized for SIS was holding us back from making the storage innovations that were necessary to achieve our goals. In order to improve the store and ESE, to change our IO profile (from many, small, random IOs to larger, fewer, more sequential IOs), and to resolve our inefficiencies around item count, we had to change the store schema. Specifically, we moved away from a per-database table structure to a per-mailbox table structure:

This architecture, along with other changes to the ESE and store engines (lazy view updates, space hints, page size increase, b+ tree defrag, etc.), netted us not only a 70% reduction in IO over Exchange 2007, but also substantially increased our ability to store more items in critical path folders.

As a result of the new architecture and the other changes to the store and ESE, we had to deal with an unintended side effect.  While these changes greatly improved our IO efficiency, they made our space efficiency worse.  In fact, on average they increased the size of the Exchange database by about 20% over Exchange 2007. To overcome this bloating effect, we implemented a targeted compression mechanism (using either 7-bit or XPRESS, which is the Microsoft implementation of the LZ77 algorithm) that specifically compresses message headers and bodies that are either text or HTML-based (attachments are not compressed as typically they exist in their most compressed state already).  The result of this work is that we see database sizes on par with Exchange 2007.

The below graph shows a comparison of database sizes for Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 with different types of message data:

As you can see, Exchange 2007 databases that contained 100% Rich Text Format (RTF) content was our baseline goal when implementing database compression in Exchange 2010. What we found is that with a mix of messaging data (77% HTML, 15% RTF, 8% Text, with an average message size of 50KB) that our compression algorithms are on par with Exchange 2007 database sizes. In other words, we mitigated most of the bloat caused by the lack of SIS.

Is compression the answer to replacing single instancing all together? The answer to that question is that it really does depend. There are certain scenarios where SIS may be viable:

• Environments that only send Rich-Text Format messages. The compression algorithms in Exchange 2010 do not compress RTF message blobs because they already exist in their most compressible form.
• Sending large attachments to many users. For example, sending a large (30 MB+) attachment to 20 users.  Even if there were only 5 recipients out of the 20 on the same database, in Exchange 2003 that meant the 30MB attachment was stored once instead of 5 times on that database. In Exchange 2010, that attachment is stored 5 times (150 MB for that database) and isn't compressed. But depending on your storage architecture, the capacity to handle this should be there. Also, your retention requirements will help here, by forcing the removal of the data after a certain period of time.
• Business or organizational archives that are used to maintain immutable copies of messaging data benefit from single instancing because the system only has to keep one copy of the data, which is useful when you need to maintain that data indefinitely for compliance purposes.

If you go back through our guidance over the past 10 years, you will never find a single reference to using SIS around capacity planning.  We might mention it has an impact in terms of the database size, but that's it.  All of our guidance has always dictated designing the storage without SIS in mind.  And for those that are thinking about thin provisioning, SIS isn't a reason to do thin provisioning, nor is SIS a means to calculate your space requirements.  Thin provisioning requires an operational maturity that can react quickly to changes in the messaging environment, as well as, a deep understanding of the how the user population behaves and grows over time to sufficiently allocate the right amount of storage upfront.

In summary, Exchange 2010 changes the messaging landscape.  The architectural changes we have implemented enable the commoditization of email - providing very large mailboxes at a low cost.  Disk capacity is no longer a premium.   Disk space is cheap and IT shops can take advantage of larger, cheaper disks to reduce their overall cost.  With Exchange 2010 you can deploy a highly available system with a degree of storage efficiency without SIS at a fraction of the cost that was required with previous versions of Exchange.

So, there you have it. SIS is gone.

- Ross Smith IV

Weight Diet for Outlook helps users to shrink their mailbox size and better organize emails by finding & eliminating obsolete emails, such as duplicate, autoresponder or mail failure messages. Users can specify which mail folders to scan and how to filter messages so only certain emails will be found. For those users dealing with a many email attachments, Weight Diet for Outlook can significantly reduce the mailbox size by offering the ability to move email attachments out of the user's mailbox file while keeping a shortcut to the original attachments in the email message. In order to avoid the frustrations of sending large files by email, Weight Diet for Outlook uses the familiar Microsoft Outlook interface to let users quickly upload file attachments to file sharing servers - such as RapidShare - and automatically replace the attached file with its download link in the outgoing email message.

TechNet article containing information about the Outlook Social Connector provider model, which provides an abstraction layer between the OSC and the APIs offered by social networks, and the interfaces that an Outlook Social Connector provider must implement. (40 printed pages)

Please go to our Mailbox Server Role Storage Requirements Calculator updates tracking page to see what is in this new version!

A blog post explaining the calculator (updated for this new version) is here.

Comments welcome!

- Ross Smith IV

In November 2009, we announced both the beta of Microsoft Office 2010 as well as the Outlook Social Connector. The Outlook Social Connector brings together communications history, contact information, and professional and social networking information into the Outlook experience.

We are continuing to deliver on that vision today with two new announcements. First, we’re proud to announce the public beta of LinkedIn for Outlook, which will enable our millions of Office 2010 Beta users to connect the OSC to a public network for the first time. Second, we're excited to announce partnerships with Facebook — the most popular social Web site in the world, and MySpace — a leading social platform connecting people through expression, content, and culture.

LinkedIn for Outlook brings together the most popular professional network with the world’s leading professional Inbox. Here are some of the things you can do today by downloading the beta:

• Connect to your LinkedIn account to view your colleagues’ status updates and photos next to an e-mail message they sent you.
• Your colleagues’ latest contact information from LinkedIn automatically updates his or her Outlook contact. Whenever someone changes a phone number, e-mail address, or other contact details, it’s automatically updated in Outlook — you are always up to date.
• Synchronize your mobile phone with Outlook to stay up-to-date — you don’t have to worry about keeping track of new phone numbers and contact info — contacts’ information from the Web is synchronized to your mobile phone.
• Grow your professional network directly from within your Inbox — add colleagues with one click.

We are proud to continue partnering with LinkedIn and we want to congratulate them on a job well done. With this beta, our customers are able to stay connected to their network without leaving the Outlook Inbox.

Our vision for Outlook (and the OSC) is to provide a communications hub that is vital to both professional and personal communications; by integrating with both Facebook and MySpace, Outlook 2010 enables you to connect not only to co-workers and colleagues, but with all of your friends and family within your Outlook Inbox.

Facebook for Outlook

You can view friends’ activities, photos, and status updates within Outlook — as well as grow your network by adding friends from the same view. Both Facebook for Outlook and MySpace for Outlook will be available later this year as our official release of Office 2010 approaches.

Finally, its important to mention that with multiple professional and social networks available for the Outlook Social Connector, the design of the OSC is such that your privacy and permissions settings on each of the networks you use are represented and respected within this experience. For example, if your profile photo and job title are publicly listed on a given network, then OSC users will see your photo and job title when receiving an e-mail from you (if they use that same network). Similarly, if you choose to restrict profile access on a given network, the OSC will respect that privacy. The goal of the OSC is not to create another social network or set of privacy settings for you to manage, but rather to bring the networks you already value and use to the Outlook experience.

To recap, here is what you can do today to get started with the Outlook Social Connector.

1. Download the Office 2010 Beta at www.Office.com/beta
2. Download the latest beta version of the Outlook Social Connector from the Microsoft Download Center.
3. Get the LinkedIn download for the Outlook Social Connector at www.LinkedIn.com/outlook.
4. Keep watching the Outlook team blog for availability of the Facebook and MySpace download for the Outlook Social Connector at http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/.

Note To use LinkedIn for Outlook requires the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector, which supports the 32-bit English version of the official Microsoft Office 2010 Beta. The beta of the Outlook Social Connector is provided as-is, is subject to change without notice, and does not include formal product support from Microsoft.

We are thrilled to reach this significant milestone with LinkedIn and to welcome both Facebook and MySpace to the Outlook Social Connector ecosystem. Stay tuned to this blog for more information from the Outlook team as we get closer to the launch of Office 2010!

Dev Balasubramanian – Outlook Product Manager

Michael Affronti – Outlook Program Manager