|
Outlook was once primarily a tool for managing personal
information such as contacts and email, scheduling, and tasks. Today,
Outlook 2010 provides all these features but adds the benefits of
enhanced collaboration. This collaboration comes in the form of group
scheduling, data sharing, shared calendars, Microsoft InfoPath forms
integration, and Microsoft SharePoint integration. While the
capability to manage your email, contacts, calendar, and tasks is
still important, the ability to collaborate with your coworkers and
business partners can be even more important.
Outlook 2010 provides a broad range of capabilities to help you
manage your entire workday. In fact, a majority of Office system users
work in Outlook more than 60 percent of the time. An understanding of
the Outlook 2010 capabilities and features is important not only for
using the Office system effectively but also for
managing your time and projects. The following sections will help you
learn to use the features in Outlook 2010 to simplify your workday and
enhance your productivity.
One of the key features that Outlook 2010 offers is messaging.
You can use Outlook 2010 as a client to send and receive email
through a variety of services (see Figure 1). Outlook 2010
offers integrated support for the email services covered in the
sections that follow. Note
A client application is one that uses a service provided by
another computer, typically a server.
Outlook 2010 integrates tightly with Microsoft Exchange
Server, which means that you can take advantage of workgroup
scheduling, collaboration, and other features offered through Exchange Server that aren't available with
other clients. For example, you can use any POP3 email client (such as Microsoft Outlook Express, Windows Mail, or
Windows Live Mail), to connect to a computer running Exchange
Server (assuming that the Exchange Server administrator has
configured the server to allow POP3), but you're limited to email
only. Advanced workgroup and other special features—being able to
recall a message before it is read, use public folders, view group
schedules, and use managed folders for archiving and retention,
for example—require Outlook.
Outlook 2010 provides full support for Internet email
servers, which means that you can use Outlook 2010 to send and
receive email through mail servers that support the Internet-based
POP3 and IMAP standards. What's more, you can integrate Internet
mail accounts with other accounts, such as an Exchange Server
account, to send and receive messages through multiple servers.
For example, you might maintain an account on Exchange Server for
interoffice correspondence and use a local Internet service
provider (ISP) or other Internet-based email service for messages
outside your network; or perhaps you want to monitor your personal
email along with your work-related email. In that situation, you
would simply add your personal email account to your Outlook 2010
profile and work with both simultaneously. You can then use rules
and custom folders to help separate your messages. .
Previous versions of Outlook supported email accounts based
on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and while Outlook still
technically supports HTTP-based email, it only does so for Hotmail
with the Outlook Hotmail Connector, a separate downloadable add-on
for Outlook 2010. In addition, Outlook 2010 also supports
access through HTTP/HTTPS for Exchange Server
accounts through Outlook Anywhere (formerly called RPC-over-HTTP)
in Exchange Server. If you have a different HTTP-based email
service, contact your mail provider to determine if it offers an
add-on to support Outlook 2010.
Text Messaging and Notifications
Outlook 2010 includes built-in support for text messaging,
enabling you to send text messages from Outlook just as you send emails. To
use this feature, you must have a text messaging service provider
configured in Outlook that supports your mobile operator. Then, to
send a text message, you simply choose Text Message from the New
Items button in the ribbon, compose the text message in the
resulting window, choose a recipient or type a mobile number, and
click Send (see Figure 2).
In addition to sending text messages through a Short Message
Service (SMS) service provider, Outlook 2010 can integrate with
messaging and notification features in Exchange Server to send
notifications to your mobile phone. For example, Exchange Server
can send you notifications when your calendar is updated, send
meeting reminders, or send a daily calendar agenda that summarizes
your schedule. You can also configure email notifications so that
you receive notifications on your mobile device when messages
arrive in your Inbox that meet rule criteria that you specify (see
Figure 3). For
example, you might want to receive a mobile notification when an
email arrives with a priority setting of High.
Outlook 2010 includes a Fax Mail Transport provider, which allows you to
send faxes from Outlook 2010 using a fax modem. In
addition, third-party developers can provide Messaging Application
Programming Interface (MAPI) integration with their fax
applications, allowing you to use Outlook 2010 as the front end
for those applications to send and receive faxes. Microsoft
Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 include built-in fax
services that support sending and receiving faxes. These fax
services can print incoming faxes and deliver a copy to a file
folder, but neither will deliver faxes to your Outlook
mailbox.
If you need to be able to deliver incoming faxes to your
mailbox, you must use a third-party, MAPI-capable fax application.
Alternatively, if you use Exchange Server, you can choose a
server-side fax application to provide fax support and
delivery.
Scheduling is another important feature in Outlook 2010. You
can use Outlook 2010 to track both personal and work-related
meetings and appointments, as shown in Figure 4, whether you are
at home or in the office—a useful feature even on a stand-alone
computer.
Where the Outlook 2010 scheduling capabilities really shine,
however, is in group scheduling. When you use Outlook 2010 to set up
meetings and appointments with others, you can view the schedules of
your invitees, which makes it easy to find a time when everyone can
attend. You can schedule both one-time and recurring appointments.
All appointments and meetings can include a reminder with a lead
time that you specify, and Outlook 2010 will notify you of the event
at the specified time. You can process multiple reminders at one
time, a useful feature if you've been out of the office for a
while.
Outlook 2010 also provides integration with SharePoint
calendars, enabling you to view and manage SharePoint
calendars in Outlook and synchronize changes between Outlook and
SharePoint (for example, create a calendar event in a SharePoint
calendar using Outlook). This is a very useful feature that enables
you to view group, project, and other types of schedules from
multiple sources in a single place—Outlook. Figure 5 shows a
SharePoint vacation calendar displayed in Outlook next to my work
calendar.
Organizing your schedule is also one of the strong suits of
Outlook 2010. You can use categories to categorize appointments,
events, and meetings; to control the way they appear in Outlook
2010; and to perform automatic processing. Colored labels allow you
to identify quickly and visually different types of events on your
calendar.
In addition to managing your own schedule, you can delegate
control of the schedule to someone else, such as your assistant. The
assistant can modify your schedule, request meetings, respond to
meeting invitations, and otherwise act on your behalf regarding your
calendar. Not only can others view your schedule to plan meetings
and appointments (with the exception of items marked personal), but
also you can publish your schedule to the web to allow others to
view it over an intranet or the Internet, as shown in Figure 6.
|
