July – hot summer (or so it should be) – and vacations. But the need to publish posts on my Exchange Unwashed blog on WindowsITPro.com continues, so here’s what appeared in July.
Interesting approach to public folder support in Outlook Web App 2013 (July 2): The month began with some ramblings about how the Exchange product group decided to integrate modern (new, improved, sparkling) public folders into Outlook Web App (OWA) 2013. Instead of the previous approach of revealing the public folder hierarchy and inviting users to navigate to a particular folder each time they want to access it, users add their preferred public folders to their favorites so they are available all the time. It works and I like the approach. Others might not.
Rapid evolution in Exchange compliance features causes some problems (July 8): We all know that Exchange 2013 uses the Search Foundation to build its content indexes. SharePoint 2013 does the same, all of which means that you can have searches that extend across both Exchange and SharePoint. But the problem is that you might still have mailboxes that need to be searched on Exchange 2010 servers, in which case you’ll have to conduct separate searches and merge the results. Not too difficult and understandable when you look at the benefit of operating a common search infrastructure, but something to keep in mind for a deployment.
Exchange ActiveSync to be replaced by Outlook Web App on mobile devices? (July 9): Gazing into my crystal ball, I wondered if Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) has aged to a point where OWA would take over, now that OWA 2013 supports features such as offline access. I did not know then that Microsoft was soon to announce the OWA for Devices app on iOS, so I felt pretty pleased when that happened.
Exchange 2013 RTM CU2 makes its appearance (July 11): Just a week later than anticipated, Microsoft shipped the second cumulative update for Exchange 2013 RTM. At this point there wasn’t too much to report, except of course the appearance of a new DAG Management Service to take over some of the non-critical reporting work previously done by the Replication service. But build 712.22 was to be short-lived…
New servicing model hiccups as Exchange 2013 RTM CU2 public folder permissions bug appears (July 16): Just when we thought it was safe to install an update for Exchange, the nice guys in Redmond told us that they’d found a bug with public folder permissions. Not old, ancient, not-so-good public folders, but with the nice new modern all-singing type. So plans to apply CU2 went on ice.
OWA iOS app makes its debut (July 16): Not being fond of work I don’t usually publish two posts on the one day. But the appearance of Microsoft’s first OWA-based app for mobile devices deserved immediate publication. We now have apps for iPad and iPhone and Android is on the way. The apps aren’t bad, by the way, not bad at all…
Will the PRISM revelations affect customer plans to move to Office 365? (July 18): Proving that I can offer topical coverage, this post discusses the potential impact of knowledge of the PRISM program will have on the plans companies have for using U.S.-based or U.S.-owned cloud services such as Office 365. The consensus seems to be that the revelations have caused some companies to pause. Whether this pause is permanent remains to be seen.
First thoughts on using the OWA apps for iOS (July 23): After the excitement around the release of the OWA for Devices apps had faded a tad, it was time to figure out whether the apps were any good. And my testing on an iPhone and an iPad revealed that the functionality is pretty good. There are some rough edges but knowing Microsoft they will persist and eliminate the glitches over time.
Using Outlook Web App 2013 on a hotel TV (July 25): Time for some travel tales as I fume against hotels that want to rip you off for Wi-Fi fees and found out that the “reach” version of Outlook Web App works very nicely on TVs, thus proving the usefulness of having two versions of OWA.
Exchange 2013 RTM CU2 (improved version) and the new Office 365 FastTrack methodology (July 30): Two for one in this post. First, news that build 712.24 of Exchange 2013 RTM CU2 is available for download to fix that pesky public folder permissions bug. Second, Microsoft has a nice new deployment methodology called FastTrack that they hope will help companies get onto Office 365 even faster than before. The key apparently is to stop planning and start deploying. Or something like that.
August started with an appeal for people to sign the petition to ask Microsoft to keep reasonably priced TechNet subscriptions. I hope that you can will sign too – some 8,500 have already done so and the target is 10,000 or more.
Onto the rest of August!
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