Leveraging the Exchange 2003 As a Web Access Solution

A significant improvement in the Exchange 2003 Outlook Web Access (OWA) interface, shown in Figure 1.2, now provides organizations the ability to use OWA as their primary mail client for users. With previous versions of Exchange, organizations used the full Outlook client as the primary messaging client for their users. Outlook Web Access was limited in features and functions, leaving OWA as a secondary client for use when the primary client was unavailable or harder to access.

OWA 2003 adds spell-checking, forms, rules, pull-down menus, preview mode, and the ability to view other calendars and folders. These additions in OWA 2003 provide organizations the ability to make OWA 2003 the primary message client for their users, eliminating the need for a full desktop configuration, lowering the cost and effort of deploying desktop application software, and improving an organization's ability to provide access to mail from user's homes, from Internet kiosks, or from other remote locations.

The OWA 2003 client is covered in Chapter 26, “Everything You Need to Know about the OWA Client”; back-end server configuration of OWA is explored in Chapter 10, “Outlook Web Access 2003.”