I feel I owe an apology to my blog readers for the long period between blog posts. I've thought about my blog each time I read about a mail related topic. It's time to share my insight into Exchange and life as a ehlo tech. I've committed myself to post shorter if necessary postings, just to insure folks are kept up to date.
So, 3 things that I've wanted to share for a few months (actually a few years for one tool).
1) I personally use and recommend to all clients the best Outlook searching tool I've found for performance, ease of use, stability, and cost for Outlook 2003 (it's been around for years, and is still rock solid). The tool is called Lookout. A bit of background on the tool. The creators of this amazing tool were hired (software company was bought by Microsoft) and now this functionality has been incorporated into MSN Desktop Search. When I reviewed MDS, I still thought Lookout was better based on my 4 criteria above. It might have changed, but Lookout is pretty close to perfect. For clients, the easiest way to explain Lookout, is to refer to Lookout as Google for Outlook. Very fast and easy to use. You can download the latest version 1.30 before they closed shop to work for Microsoft via this URL. If you have any issues, drop me an email or add a comment and I'll post it since I still have a copy of both latest versions (1.30 & 1.28).
2) There has been a lot of talk about Xobni for it's built-in searching, stats functionality for Outlook usage, and handy access to recent attachment. I love the idea of stats (reporting how much email sent/received, etc), unfortunately, I don't need searching and can't afford to give up so much real estate in Outlook (it adds a side panel similar to the 3 paneled look) for very cool usage "stats" and UI change for attachments. But, let me know in the comments area any feedback on it. I'm curious. I'll probably need to fire up a virtual machine (VM) to take a look at this.
Joys of Lookout and Xobni by Windows IT Pro. (Site was done when I posted this, so I wanted to confirm no login was required for it. Not sure.)
http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99326/new-add-on-changes-the-way-you-work-with-outlook.html
Xobni's Outlook 2003/2007 Tool for Improving UI, Searching, and Stats. Company's website of their FAQ URL .
3) My background in economics and accounting has always played a major role in insuring technology upgrades and improvements are cost effective. So, having said this, I was a bit surprised when I heard the UI had been changed dramatically in Exchange 2007. One feature that increased TCO was the requirement of using 2 UIs to create new users. The single ADUC (AD Users and Computers) is not adequate anymore. So, a vendor realizing the concern for companies created a single UI for AD and Exchange user creation and modifications. They also plan to add a # of very useful features. I think this is a great idea even though it's 3rd party software, especially considering they'll probably add a lot more functionality than MS would.
Product is called Exchange Tasks 2007 and is from U-BSmart. http://www.u-bsmart.com/WWW/ExchangeTasks/ExchangeTasks.html
Demo of Exchange Tasks 2007 by 3rd party (improving TCO for Exchange 2007)
http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/managing-exchange-2007-recipients-active-directory-users-computers-mmc-snap-in.html
Quote from MS Exchange.org about U-BSmart's Exchange 2007 Tasks
Besides what we covered here, the guys behind the Exchange 2007 Tasks utility have plans on adding features such as Export to PST, Export to Mailbox, a fully integrated Active Directory property page for valid recipient objects, the ability to handle and manage Dynamic Distribution Groups, a Hide Group Members task, the ability to handle and manage Resource Mailboxes, improved management of Unified Messaging and more to future versions of the product.
If you use any of the products above, post some comments and let me know your results.
-Ben
3 comments:
Xombi is a really cool plugin but not that all useful. I'm a fan of GTD's plugin and OutlookTrackit for improved follow-up with Microsoft Outlook.
Hello gtd guru,
I took a look at both products, and GTD's add-in (http://www.netcentrics.com/index3.php?/content/view/41/55/ ) seems more feature rich than the TrackIt application. But, not sure who these products are geared towards. Do you use either product?
Also, both products seem to focus on reminders for emails, but this exists already using the follow-up flag in Outlook 2003. Also, the TrackIt seems a bit basic and it looks to be a basic Search Folder with a follow-up flag search. How is this different than Outlook?
-Ben
Every organization has different messaging needs, and when researching a solution for your organization you may want to compare different features and capabilities of messaging products. The following resources, including customer feedback and reviews, will help you evaluate Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 against other messaging solutions to see how Exchange Server delivers advanced security, true messaging and collaboration functionality, and meets the needs of your workforce.
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