Say hello to Exchange Web Services; The future of Entourage!
I'm excited to tell you about the future for Entourage connectivity to
Exchange Server! We've transitioned away from WebDAV, and today we are
announcing the public beta of the Entourage for Exchange Web Services
client. With this new client, not only are we taking advantage of the
Exchange Web Services connectivity, but we are also delivering some new
user features such as:
- Tasks, Notes, and Categories now sync with the Exchange Server
- Resolving
names against the Global Address List now works via EWS/HTTP. This
means you no longer need to be connected to your corporate network via
VPN to resolve names when addressing an e-mail or meeting invitation
- Improved
Autodiscover. In Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta, the
Autodiscover service keeps user account settings up-to-date after the
account setup.
• It runs in the background every time that you start Entourage.
• It also runs at a server-defined interval, typically every hour,
to make sure that the Exchange Server settings are always kept
up-to-date
Since Entourage began connecting to Exchange Server over 5 years
ago, we have used the WebDAV protocol to connect to mailbox data. What
you may or may not know is that with this implementation, the bulk of
the work being done resides with the Entourage client. Obviously, we'd
rather let Exchange Server do what it does best and shoulder more of
the load. Well, when the Exchange Server team began working on Exchange
Server 2007, they developed a new piece of technology called the
"Business Logic Layer" that does just this; A server-side component
that allows different clients to connect to the Exchange Server in a
consistent way, letting the server to do the bulk of the workload.
>From the beginning, the Exchange Server team partnered with the MacBU
to develop a way for Entourage to utilize the Business Logic Layer.
Over the last couple of years, our Entourage team has been working
closely with the Exchange Server team to develop "Exchange Web
Services" which is an Application Programming Interface (API) that
developers can use to communicate with Exchange Server 2007. This
allows end-user clients, such as Entourage, to interact with Exchange
mailboxes in a compatible way with other clients such as Outlook Web
Access. In fact, Exchange Web Services clients, Outlook Web Access,
and Active Sync (how your iPhone or Windows Mobile device syncs with
Exchange Server over the air) all use the same Business Logic Layer for
accessing mailbox data.
While the Exchange Web Services component was being developed, our
Entourage team was busy rebuilding the core of the Entourage client to
utilize the Exchange Web Services. In fact, they were able to get a
couple of features into the current Entourage 2008 for Mac release. If
you are currently connecting your Entourage 2008 for Mac client to an
Exchange Server 2007, the "Out of Office Assistant" and "Delegation"
features are utilizing Exchange Web Services.
This brings us back to Entourage for Exchange Web Services. Since
November 2008, we have been in private beta with more than 20 companies
participating from a variety of industries. Our existing participants
have been extremely positive and excited about our direction for
Entourage and the way we interact with Exchange Server.
The minimum requirements to install the Entourage for Exchange Web Services beta are:
- You must be connecting to Exchange Server 2007 with
Service Pack 1 with Update Rollup 4 or later. (Caution: If you are
using earlier versions of Exchange Server with Entourage, we recommend
that you do not install this beta edition of Entourage for Exchange Web
Services.)
- Office 2008 for Mac Standard or Special
Media Edition must be installed, with all of the latest updates, prior
to installing Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta. Note: Office
2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition users should not install the
Entourage for Exchange Web Services beta.
- Processor: Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (500 MHz or faster) processor.
- Memory: 512 MB of RAM or more.
- Operating system: Mac OS X v10.4.9 or a later version.
- Hard
disk: 1.5 GB of available hard disk space; Hierarchical File System
(HFS)+ hard disk format (also known as Mac OS Extended or HFS Plus)
For more information on the Entourage for Exchange Web Services beta, click here. We look forward to your participation and feedback!