Announcing some cool new features coming soon to a server near you
Published Apr 01 2011 05:00 AM 3,597 Views

Today seemed like a perfect day for us to share a few very special announcements with our customers. We are always looking for ways to make Exchange better. Here are some of the new features we've planned for Exchange 2010 SP2.

  • OWA Automobile Edition: Exchange team and a major US automaker will soon announce OWA integration into new line of cars to maximize end-user productivity. Car windshields are to be replaced with LCDs (who needs windshields anyway?) Additionally, when it's time for oil change, you will get a reminder popup.
  • Twitter-Ready Mail: Exchange 2010 SP2 will enforce a maximum email length of 140 characters to ensure all email is Twitter-ready. If you have more than 140 characters of things to say, you are clearly egotistical and self-centered. To help you save the characters, we will also enforce all email to be in clear text format. An 80-page whitepaper with business-ready abbreviations to use will be published at release time.

  • Boss OOFs: Out of Office Assistant (Automatic Replies) now has a “boss” feature, which will send a different message to your upward reporting chain in the GAL than everyone else. Now, you can be “out sick with the flu” to your boss while “kicking ass and taking names” in Vegas to your buddies.

  • Email Etiquette Enforcement (EEE) Agent: We are finalizing the steps to implement a new Email Etiquette Enforcement Agent. The EEE Agent will enforce a uniform email etiquette within your organization by allowing you to create Email Etiquette Rules, similar in concept to Transport Rules. Exchange will ship with a few pre-canned Email Etiquette Rules, such as the "Exceeded Max Recipients You Should Be Replying To Per Good Email Etiquette" rule. If the offending user replies to "all" on a very large distribution group with something totally meaningless, the system will send a custom DSN to that user every 10 minutes for a week, as a reminder of what he has done. Currently, two DSN wordings that we're looking at are:

    5.7.11.1 Srsly? You did that? Will you do it again?

    and

    5.7.11.1 How do YOU like to have your mailbox filled up with useless replies?

    Another EEE rule will detect the number of messages a user sends with a Read Receipt requested, and if it exceeds 10% of all email sent by the user, the EEE agent will respond by automatically modifying all messages received by that user to require a read receipt'.

  • Automatic Randomized MRM (ARM) Assistant: Based on the success of the MRM feature in Exchange, we are taking MRM a step further by creating an Automatic Randomized MRM (ARM) Assistant. This takes all of the work out of configuring MRM policies; the Assistant will simply pick messages from your mailbox randomly and archive them for you – at random intervals; to random places. No user or administrator configuration is necessary (or possible).

  • Active Inbox Rules (AIR) Agent: The Exchange engineering team is especially proud of its extensibility features. The AIR Agent is a step in this direction, allowing you to manage users' email based on their past behavior, and reduce TCO. The AIR agent interfaces with your helpdesk system and reads the number of "I can't find my email" tickets created by a user. If the message is found to have been automatically moved by an Inbox rule that the user created, the AIR agent automatically creates a server-side rule to move such items back to the Inbox. This should greatly reduce the number of helpdesk tickets created by the user.

    If the user creates any additional rules to move messages, the agent responds by creating server-side rules to move messages from all folders back to the Inbox. This action is completely transparent to the user.

  • Mobile Read Receipts: Given so many of you now consume email on your mobile devices, we are positive you'll find this new mobile feature quite useful. When you receive a message with a read receipt requested on your mobile device, the mobile email client will activate the camera on your mobile device and transmit a video to the sender, really proving you've actually read the message. Mobile Read Receipts are sent with important metadata information such as your expressions (visual and verbal), and your GPS coordinates.

  • Exchange Configuration: Due to long-lasting popularity of public folders, we are making required engineering changes to store Exchange configuration data in public folders, rather than Active Directory. We are now working through seemingly paradox fact that in order to read that configuration, public folder database needs to be mounted; which requires configuration to be read in the first place. From public folders... which are not mounted... because configuration is not accessible, as the folders are not up at the time. Anyway, we are sure we'll figure it out by SP2 RU1.

46 Comments
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"Anyway, we are sure we'll figure it out by SP2 RU1." - LMAO!

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I love the Mobile Read Receipts feature.  I'll be sure to read my mobile emails through my 3rd eye!

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> Anyway, we are sure we'll figure it out by SP2 RU1.

Are you sure you didn't mean SP2 RU1 V2? ;)

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Will public folders remain for the long term?   Since exchange configuration will be stored in public folders has the exchange team changed it's mind about phasing out public folders???

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Hmm, I wonder day it is today?

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Happy April Fools Day ... ! :)

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Is this real life?  You are going to store Exchange configuration data in public folders???

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Oh I get it...haha April Fool's Day.  Very funny guys.  :D

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Random Photo Sender, which picks any photos made between 8pm-4am the night before and forwards to All Users to encourage closer working relationships, didn't make it, then? Perhaps extending AIR to incorporate this would be a way forward.

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yay for april fool's day blog posts

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Almost got me!

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Um, can we have AIR for real?

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Awesome, the EEE feature was hilarious.

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Haha...Love them

Some long overdue features :)

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Nice April Fool :D although I would like to have some of the features, like AIR and EEE... Maybe one day they are realy available ... go for it!

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Oh my God :) I am definitely rolling on the floor......ahahhaha

I love the Exchange Configuration on PF :D

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Awesome! can't wait for SP2. Seriously though can you create the following they would come in Soo.. handy.

Email Etiquette Enforcement (EEE) Agent

Active Inbox Rules (AIR) Agent

Public Folders will never die! :)

M@

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LOL

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OMG, what just happened :).....

Bring it ON, I am loving it. Can't wait anymore...

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April Fools Day ... :p

What can I say. Still waiting on some mailing list feature. :(

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LCDs on windshields, MRM (ARM), funny stuff. But would def be a great upgrade if possible. DEAD @ PF jokes; are not funny for those of us who have to deal with them.

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And when SP2 RU1 is released, it will be pulled within 3 days. Oh wait, that wasn't funny.

:)

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Wonderful new features - can't wait for 'em! :)

Seriously, after the two recent update issues, it's great to see you still have a sense of humor on Fool's Day. Great job handling the RU issues btw!

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I vote for AIR...  that would be sooo awesome, plus I love the DSN's, how about 5.7.12 RU Fn kidding, your 3rd attempt at sending a 700MB VCD of Jackass2 is not going out our 20 MB limit system.

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You should see my MRM for this post...

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You forgot recalling updates after they are released

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April fools day joke right?

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The Boss OOF thing may actually be worth considering seriously (I guess you could already do it with rules)

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A good one would be update rollups that do not require update rollups for them to work!

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Another new feature will be SQL-Based Exchange databases....

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storing Configdata in PF Database,

Did we forget the PF complexity and support issues ??

sohuldn't PG be focusing on maknig a better PF Engine ??

sound's insane idea...

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I love the MRM and EEE agent.  Well done!

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Love it!

I think you need a General Out Of Office feature too (GOOF), that automatically issues an apology for inadvertent Reply-All messages.

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Is this article an April fool edition?

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Sorry MS.  Even your April Fools jokes are lame.  Google's Motion kicks the crap out of this post.

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Nice 1st April Joke

+1

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lol.. good one :)

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Nice new features. Anyway, I'm still waiting for the 'Phone Management Shell (PMS)' anounced last year:

Get-Contacts | Get-PhoneNumbers | Select-String -Pattern "Home" | Dial-Number -RetryOnBusy $true

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All with a Jet Database!!!!!

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Really good as always guys!!  :)

Just a small issue, I now want "OWA Automobile Edition"!!...   :(

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hahahahaha Email Etiquette Enforcement

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I love the OWA Automobile Edition, Active Inbox Rules (AIR) Agent, Mobile Read Receipts feature

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Classic, was a good read.  I would have went even more stream in stupidity :p

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This actually sounds like the list of useless crap that was included in SP1 but not documented ( I mean undocumented features). Also reminds me of the days back in 5.0 and 5.5 when MS would change and update the product without telling anyone, looks like they are back at it with SP1 for sure (ahem, SP1 RU3). I though their stance was not to do that in service packs anymore.... Funny though...

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good to know all such features..

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OK. I'm late reading my posts ... but this one is worth a post .....  GREAT post !

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