When Office 2007 arrives in late 2006 or early 2007, it will come complete with a brand new, refined interface and a whole slew of new features designed to make it easier for you and your users to get jobs done.
While Outlook 2007 doesn't bring the same jaw-dropping interface changes that accompany other products in the Office 2007 suite, Outlook 2007 does provide a number of new and very useful features. And, the interface does change a bit to accommodate some of this new stuff. I'll explain in this article some of the new things you'll find in Outlook 2007.
The visible stuff
Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003 do look very similar, but there are a few
things that jump out, including the to-do bar and the new RSS feeds feature. Other
features, such as integrated search and attachment previewing, are more subtle,
but good additions to the product.
The to-do bar
When you get your first look at Outlook 2007 (Figure A), one thing jumps out at you right away: The addition of the "to-do bar" down the right side of the screen.
Figure A
The to-do bar invades the right side of the screen.
Personally, I love the new to-do bar. You'll notice that it contains a calendar with bold text for days on which you have scheduled appointments. Further, upcoming appointments are now visible front and centre and, since they are appointments in Outlook, are colour coded to your preference. Before Outlook 2007, in order to see calendar items like this, you needed to change Outlook views. But, since most people spend a vast majority of their Outlook time in the mail view, the addition of the mini-calendar view comes as a time-saving convenience.
Below the calendar is a look at the current tasks you have on your task list -- again, this addition negates the necessity for you to change views just to look at different information. This task area also doubles as place in which messages you have flagged for follow up appear for easy reference. In Outlook 2003, Microsoft provided you with a search folder that gave you quick access to messages that you had flagged. But, to use this feature, you still needed to change your view. If you don't use some method to track your flagged messages, they eventually scroll off the screen and are more easily overlooked. By keeping them at the forefront, Microsoft has made it less likely that you'll fail to follow up on something you considered important enough to flag in the first place.
RSS feeds
If you take a look back at Figure A, you'll
notice that, in the Mail Folders section of the screen, there is a new option
called RSS feeds. As you would expect, this is Outlook 2007's default storage
space for handling news feeds. This is also a most welcome addition to the
product!
Upon installation of Internet Explorer 7 and Outlook 2007, once you start one of the applications, it asks you if you would like to synchronise your RSS feeds so that the same feeds are available in both programs. However, be aware that if you're using an Exchange account, any feeds to which you subscribe will automatically save news headlines into your Exchange mailbox. If your company has low mailbox size limits, this may not be an ideal situation.
Outlook 2007 allows you to add feeds individually or in bulk by importing an Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) file. Once a feed is added, either through Outlook or through Internet Explorer 7, the feed contents become immediately available in both applications.
Integrated search
With the explosion in the amount of e-mail, number of document, and just about every
kind of data, a number of desktop search tools have been created. These tools
help users and administrators manage and locate data on very short notice. Microsoft
has provided their own desktop search tool -- Windows Desktop Search -- that
hooks into Outlook 2007 and indexes your mail and other Outlook items. Personally,
I still prefer the third party (and also free) Copernic
Desktop Search, but the Microsoft tool isn't bad either. And, it's also a
welcome addition to the suite and to Windows in general.
If you want to add desktop search capabilities to Windows and to Outlook, when you first start Outlook 2007 you are prompted to download the search tool, if you like. If you choose to wait to install Windows desktop search, you can click the "Click here to enable Instant Search" option above the mail list. The option stays visible until you install the tool.
Attachment preview
Outlook 2007 also includes an attachment preview feature that, once you use it, will
make you wonder why it took so long to include. Attachment preview supports
most common file types and shows you a file's contents from within Outlook
without the need to launch a separate program in a separate window. This makes
for a much more seamless experience. Figure B gives you a look at this feature. Notice that pertinent document details, including the file name, size, author and last date of modification are
included at the top of the window.
Figure B
Attachment preview makes it much easier to view document attachments in Outlook.
For the record, Outlook Express has provided attachment previewing for a long time. It's about time this feature came to Outlook.
Improved collaboration and security
Besides deeper integration with SharePoint, Outlook 2007 gives you some other
collaboration improvements, including the ability to create and subscribe to
calendars stored on Internet sites, including on Office Online. Second, if you
need to share calendar information with other people, you can send them a "calendar
snapshot", a HTML version of your calendar.
When used in conjunction with Exchange 2007, Outlook 2007 provides a lot of security improvements, such as managed e-mail folders -- normal mail folders that have retention and expiration policies defined by the administrator. You can also restrict what users can do with received e-mail messages through the use of information rights management (IRM) and Windows Rights Management Services (RMS). When implemented, IRM and RMS allow you to set policies that can prevent messages from being printed, forwarded, etc.
Mileage may vary
So far, I haven't found anything to dislike about Outlook 2007, except general
minor grumbling about things like a Rules Wizard that needs to be more
intuitive, but that's been true for a long time. Further, I wish Microsoft had
taken the time to provide a right-click context menu for the main items (Mail,
Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, etc.) in the navigation pane.
I've been using Outlook 2007 in beta for a few months now and have found that I really like the new features, particularly the to-do bar and the RSS feeds. Your mileage may vary, but these are good additions to a good product.
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