Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Exchange Server 2010 OWA - Missing Feature (adding notes) and Clarifcation of Multi-Browser Support

Ehlo All,

During last night's NY Exchange Server User Group meeting after Angi Livermore's excellent Exchange Server 2010 HA technical presentation and demo, I gave a demo comparing Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access to Exchange 2010 Outlook Web App and found a missing feature. I initially called it a bug, but I bet you Microsoft omitted the feature to release the product sooner. So, while 2010 OWA add some new features (below), the loss of adding notes is a major pain point. Also, a clarification of the multi-browser support.

Some New Features for OWA 2010
  • Premium mode for non-IE browsers. Firefox on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Safari on the Mac. Safari does NOT work on Windows. I tested this with Safari 4.0.3 (531.9.1) on XP SP3. Safari on Windows is OWA Light only.
  • Favorite Folders. Ability to add a Favorite folder. These are shown in the top left. Favorite Folders from Outlook to OWA are not shared.
  • Ability for end user's to view email delivery reports. No more end users saying "did my email arrive yet?". The delivery report shows date and time the email left the Exchange Server organization and was delivered to an outside email server.
  • Threaded email message conversations. All related emails are saved under one message (thread) in your Inbox. This is similar to how gmail's email conversation work or will exist in Outlook 2010 when it's released.
  • Multiple Calendars. You can view multiple calendars in OWA and send a calendar share request from within OWA.
  • Ability for the end user to change AD attributes [phone #, address, etc]. As per Angi, admins can disable this functionality.

Missing Feature for OWA 2010
  • Unable to post a note. This existed in OWA 2003 and 2007. Below are screen shots showing this. This was tested using Microsoft's Exchange Server 2010 UC Trial Service. I debated replicated this with the RTM, but haven't had a chance. I mentioned this to a Microsoft rep to confirm this issue. If you notice, the only 2 drop-down options when in the Notes folder is to create an email message or meeting request.

Exchange 2010 OWA Premium Mode - attempting to add a Note. Click to view full image.



















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Exchange 2007 OWA Premium Mode - adding a Note is possible. Click to view full image.























I'm a big fan of OWA and the new support for Firefox, but the lack of adding notes is a pain since I heavily use notes. Hopefully Microsoft fixes this as soon as possible.

-Ben

3 comments:

exchange hosting said...

too bad about the safari thing on XP, but heck, am ok with FF, if only for the compatibility. FF does crash often though!

Anonymous said...

Safari 5.0.4 on Windows will run the Premium Version of OWA 2010.

If you enable the developer tools in Safari you can set the User Agent Mode to Safari 5.0.4 for Mac and then voila the Premium OWA 2010 client runs flawlessly on Safari in Windows 7.

So currently IE 6,7,8,9 Firefox version 4, and Safari Version 5.0.4 all run the OWA 2010 Premium client.

Safari does have some Certificate issues with Self issued Certs. This is strange because it uses the Windows Certificate Store and if IE has the cert Safari should have the cert.

Firefox uses it's own store for Certs but is able to get the cert from the /certsrv of the Trusted Root Certificate Server.

Spread the word as the Premium client is a great app and much more valuable if consistency can be maintained across multiple browsers.

NYLA18 said...

Yes it was missing and can't create new note from main folder list.
But you can keep use a note by simple step.
first move your notes (all or some) to public folder to root or under the new notes folder if you want to create.
that's it now you can access your notes from OWA and create, modify, delete whatever you want like before or outlook.