Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Microsoft Office 2007 on Monday. General availability (GA) will follow in early 2007.
This, of course, includes Outlook 2007, which gains several interesting new features when used with Exchange 2007, including:
- Autodiscover service, which enables automatic account setup from anywhere on the Internet or within the corporate network.
- Exchange 2007 availability service, which provides a substantially enhanced free/busy calendaring experience over older versions of Outlook.
- Free/busy will support real-time status, cross-forest free/busy, and other enhancements.
- Exchange 2007 managed folders.
- Improved Out of Office: scheduling and different internal/external messages.
- Improved search.
- A new meeting Scheduling Assistant.
- Exchange 2007 unified messaging functionality.
Organizations considering Exchange 2007 will need to also consider deploying Outlook 2007 concurrent with or soon after their Exchange 2007 migration if they wish to take advantage of the rich user experience. Microsoft is offering a free downloadable product trial, effective December 1, 2006.
... David Sengupta
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Office+Vista+Exchange=PARTY! (and sore horse)
Get out and vote! Only then can you read IT Blogwatch, in which Office 2007 goes gold, ready for its coming out party, shared with Vista and Exchange. Not to mention the datacenter building contractors who forgot one of their saw horses…