Thanks for reading this weekend! Just posting up heaps of Outlook in SBS 2003 from my Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best PRactices book. Lots of stuff today:

Public folder procedures, sending Outlok e-mails to yourmobile telephone, using theJunk Mail and attachment blocking features inside Outlook, deleted item recovery - whew!

Enjoy the read...I am posting up a few pages per day until SBS 2008 ships (SBS 2008 is part of the new Essential Business Solutions family from Microsoft)

cheers...harrybbb

Harry Brelsford, CEO at SMB NAtion www.smbnation.com and your fellow  Microsoft Small Business Specialist (SBSC),MBA, MCSE, MCT, CNE and smb consultant!

PS - our SMB Nation fall confernece is right around the corner - we are looking to host a community-basedSBS 2008 and EBS launch party on the Saturday night!

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Public Folder Procedure

Before we go too much further, I need you to create a public folder called “fax” so that we can direct the faxes to this public folder a few chapters down the road. Because your screen should show the public folders at this point (from the completion of the procedure above), please right-click All Public Folders and select New Folder. Make the folder configured for Mail and Post Items. Click OK to complete the setup. You’ve just created something we both need in the faxing chapter to complete an example.

By the way, that “fax” public folder object you just created is SMTP mail enabled as fax@springersltd.com automatically. Very cool.

Attachment Blocking

Something folks love and curse is the native attachment blocking in Outlook 2003. They love it because it protects them from harmful e-mail attachments. They curse it because, in the heat of business battle, you can’t get to your darn tootin’ attachment that is mission-critical. But let’s fight fire with facts here.

There are two levels of attachment blocking in Outlook 2003. Level 1 is fixed, can’t be changed, and includes the following attachments (these are the file extensions): ade, adp, app, bas, bat, chm, cmd, com, cpl, crt, csh, exe, fxp, hlp, hta, inf, ins, isp, js, jse, ksh, lnk, mda, mdb, mde, mdt, mdw, mdz, msc, msi, msp, mst, ops, pcd, pif, prf, prg, reg, scf, scr, sct, shb, shs, url, vb, vbe, vbs, wsc, wsf, wsh, xsl.

BEST PRACTICE: These file types are defined when you type

“attachment blocking” in the Outlook 2003 help system and select

the Attachment file types blocked by Outlook link.

Level 2 is more liberal and prompts the user to save the file type to a hard disk. An Exchange administrator can allow a file type to be moved from Level 1 to Level 2 to allow this saving (the Exchange administrator can also modify the above list of Level 1 files). Note that the native SBS 2003 attachment blocking capability discussed earlier in this chapter will come into play interacting with Outlook on the network and the most conservative attachment blocking list will win between Outlook and SBS 2003.

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BEST PRACTICE: You can get an offending attachment around the blockade by simply renaming it to an acceptable file format, such as *.doc (for a Word document). Then rename the file type back to its original name once you’ve saved it to your C: drive. This is commonly done with file attachments ending in *.exe because this attachment type might be a legitimate business program that need to be received.

Junk E-mail

Microsoft has one of the largest research and development (R&D) budgets in the corporate world. Sometimes, shareholders get a little fussy with billions being spent on R&D because they want to see things that immediately contribute to current earnings. One positive R&D payoff is the sophisticated junk e-mail management approach built in to Outlook 2003 (this was actually spelled out as one of the points in the Outlook 2003 welcome e-mail you were asked to read earlier). Since I won’t sit here and retype the online help system in Outlook 2003, if you’d like to learn more about the Junk E-mail capability at a deep level, simply search on the term “Junk e-mail” in Outlook 2003 Help and select the About the Junk E-mail Filer link.

Back to the real world. You’re probably interested in knowing how to configure the Junk E-mail capabilities in Outlook 2003. It’s simple. Just select Tools, Options, Junk E-mail in Outlook 2003. The Junk E-mail Options dialog box will appear, as seen in Figure 6-23. You can then change the default setting (Low) to a different level.

Notes:

Figure 6-23

This figure shows all of the settings on Junk E-mail Options. But, equally important, look over to the left and observe the Junk E-mail folder under the Folder List. This is where e-mails are moved.

So if you’re a Microsoft shareholder, now you know how your R&D dollars are being spent!

BEST PRACTICE: You simply must read this white paper/analysis on the internals of Outlook spam blocking. I first learned of this from the W2KNews newsletter (www.w2knews.com) that goes out to about a half-million readers (as an author, I can tell you that is a very large number of readers!). So click over to http://www.mapilab.com/articles/ outlook_spam_filter.html and see the report from MAPI Lab. Excellent!

Junk Users

Maybe you can relate to the following situation. I’m on an e-mail list that has some annoying and verbose members. For business purposes, I can’t leave the list, but I often become frustrated with the quantity of e-mails (often of a soap

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opera nature) that clog my Inbox. Because I’m committed to staying focused on core business operations, and I’d rather review these distracting e-mails at a future decade (I mean date), I use a rule to move them to a folder titled “Much Later, Dude.”

If you’d like to implement a similar approach in the management of your e-mails (or perhaps your SBS users would like to do this), then select Rules and Actions from the Tools menu in Outlook 2003. Then select New Rule and click Move messages from someone to a folder under Stay Organized (Figure 6-24).

Figure 6-24

This is the first step to bringing better management to many of the e-mails you receive from known babblers!

You would then click Next and complete the Rules Wizard where you’ll configure e-mails from certain people to be moved to a folder and out of your Inbox (for example, you’ll enter the e-mail address of folks whose e-mail you want moved).

BEST PRACTICE: Perhaps you’re just discovering this cool capability later in life and you’ve got an Inbox full of distracting e-mails you want to move. On the final page of the Rules Wizard, you have an option called Run this rule now on messages already in “Inbox” so that, post-hoc, you can improve the quality of your Inbox life.

Recovery Movement

No, this isn’t about a battle with the bottle. Rather, this is how to recover deleted e-mail and move it back into the Inbox or the folder of your choice. To learn this capability using Exchange’s delete item recovery capability (set to retain e-mails for 30-days by default in SBS 2003), complete the following procedure:

1         &nbs p;          If necessary, have NormH log on to PRESIDENT with the pass­word Purple3300.

2         &nbs p;          In Outlook 2003, delete the e-mail from Norm Hasborn by dragging it to the Deleted Items folder.

3         &nbs p;          Right-click the Deleted Items folder and select Empty “Deleted Items” Folder. Select Yes when asked in the Microsoft Office Out­look dialog box if you really want to delete the item. Observe the Deleted Items folder is now empty and would appear you’ve lost this e-mail forever.

4         &nbs p;          Now you will recover the deleted e-mail by selecting the Deleted Items folder and then selecting the Recover Deleted Items menu option under the Tools menu.

5         &nbs p;          NormH’s e-mail appears in the Recover Deleted Items from Deleted Items dialog box that appears (Figure 6-25). Make sure this e-mail is highlighted and click the Recover Selected Items button. The e-mail will be returned to the Deleted Items folder.

6         &nbs p;          Move the e-mail from Deleted Items back to Inbox.

 

Notes:

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Figure 6-25

E-mails that have been deleted within the retention period (30-days by default in SBS 2003) will appear here.

Forwarding E-mail to Your Mobile Telephone

Something that is increasingly popular is the ability to forward e-mails to your telephone. That’s because numerous technologies are converging and breaking down functional and feature barriers. Heck - many brands of mobile telephone now include cameras, so why not e-mail too?

The key would be to forward the e-mails to your telephone. Of course, you’d want to keep a copy of it in your server-based mailbox, because telephones aren’t a good permanent repository and reading a large attachment on a telephone is darn near impossible! So here are the steps you’d take to forward e-mails to your mobile telephone (using the SPRINGERS methodology of course).

1. If necessary, have NormH log on to PRESIDENT with the pass­

word Purple3300.

2. In Outlook 2003, select Rules and Alerts from the Tools menu.

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1         &nbs p;          Select Send an alert to my mobile device when I get a message from someone and click Next.

2         &nbs p;          Under the Step 1: Select conditions list, deselect the default selec­tion of “from people or distribution list” and select “where my name is in the To or Cc box” and then click Next. This will effec­tively forward all e-mail sent to you.

3         &nbs p;          On the following Select actions page, keep the default selection of “forward it to people or distribution list” and click Next. On the lower part of this page, click the people or distribution list hyperlink

4         &nbs p;          The Rule Address dialog box appears. Type the e-mail address of your mobile telephone in the To -> field. For example, you might type something like 2065551212@tmobile.com. Click OK.

5         &nbs p;          Click Finish followed by OK to close Rules and Alerts.

 

BEST PRACTICE: Related to the forwarding concept, note that I’ve used the Active Directory contact object forwarding capability when a customer has a remote office that uses (and will continue to use) POP3 e-mail. The good folks at the home office, seeking to create a uniform e-mail organization/image, will create an Active Directory user for the employee at the remote site. That allows the internal employees to e-mail the remote employee directly from the GAL in Exchange and so on. But this remote employee also has an associated Active Directory contact object that is really the e-mail address for their POP3 account. And voila, the forwarding occurs from the Active Directory user to the Active Directory contact object. How? On the property sheet for an Active Directory user (let’s say Norm), click the Exchange General tab, click the Delivery Options button, and complete the Forwarding address box. Be sure to leave a copy on the server!

Cached Exchange Mode

Something you’ll readily appreciate in Outlook 2003 will be Cached Exchange Mode that is set by default for all SBS 2003 users. This allows you to work offline with Outlook 2003 when Exchange is down for maintenance, you are traveling, or you have a slow link (56K modem) connection back to the server. What’s cool is that this is implemented by default and removes a task that you

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and I performed manually at each user machine in the past: configuring offline storage (OST files). Bottom line: You can work with Outlook 2003 very effectively while on a plane, train, automobile, or “no-tell” motel room full of swimsuit models!

Microsoft does a dandy job of explaining Cached Exchange Mode at http:// office.microsoft.com/assistance/preview.aspx?AssetID=HP0525165210 33 &CTT=98 (this can also be found by drilling down into Outlook from www.microsoft.com/office and then clicking the Assistance link). I encourage you to read more about this.

It’s Client, Not Server!

If you completed the initial online SBS 2003 hands-on lab offered at www.microsoft.granitepillar.com/partners in the early fall of 2003, you would recall that the Part #3 of that courseware had you run Outlook 2003 on the SBS 2003 server machine and click past an important warning message. The point I want to make is that you should not run Outlook 2003 on the SBS 2003 server machine, and that warning message you receive, seen in Figure 6-26, is to be honored. Bottom line: Run Outlook 2003 on the client computer, not the SBS 2003 server machine.

Notes:

Figure 6-26

This message discusses why Outlook 2003 should not be run on the SBS 2003 server machine. There are TechNet KBase articles that also discuss this issue you might want to read.

BEST PRACTICE: Some of you will recall that, in my Small Business Server 2000 Best Practices book, I had you run Outlook 2000 on the SBS 2000 server machine to save time. I was wrong, and I didn’t do it again!