To initiate the integration between SharePoint lists and libraries and Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010, you need to connect the list or library. You can connect most SharePoint lists, as well as all SharePoint library types, to Outlook. The following list and gallery types are not supported for connection to Outlook:

Once a list is connected to Outlook, you can modify that list within Outlook at any time whether you are online or offline. You can also share the connection with others: right-click the library name in Outlook, and then click Share This Folder.

SharePoint permissions carry over when using SharePoint resources in Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010. For example, if you have permission to edit a document or list item on the SharePoint site, you can also edit the document or list item within Outlook.

When you modify a document from a library that you have connected to Outlook, you will be modifying an offline copy of that document, known as a cached copy, by default. You can choose to send to the SharePoint library when you have completed your modification. During your offline editing, another user could modify the same document, so it is recommended that you always check out your document before you edit it. You can turn off offline editing using Options in Microsoft Word 2010 backstage view.

In the following exercise, you will connect to Outlook from a Contacts list on a SharePoint site. You can use the same technique to connect to other SharePoint lists or libraries.

By connecting a SharePoint Contacts list to Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010, you are creating an Outlook Contacts folder. You can then copy the contact information in your Outlook Contacts folder back into the SharePoint Contacts list. The new contacts within the Contacts folder are added to the SharePoint Contacts list the next time Outlook synchronizes with SharePoint, and you can then share the contact information with users who visit your SharePoint site. Any other users who also have connected the SharePoint Contacts list to their copy of Outlook will observe the new contacts within their Outlook Contacts folder, when they next synchronize with SharePoint.

In this exercise, you will move contact information from your Outlook Address Book to a Contacts list on a SharePoint site. You can use the same technique to move calendar items from a SharePoint Calendar list to your Calendar folder, as well as to move task and event items into their respective Outlook folders.

You can copy any single contact or event item from a SharePoint list to Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010. Once the contact item is copied into the Contacts folder, the contact item in the Contacts folder and the contact item on the SharePoint Contacts list are independent of each other—that is, there is no link between them. Therefore, amendments made to the contact in the Outlook Contacts folder are not done to the version in the SharePoint Contacts list. To ensure that your contact information does not become out of date, you should assign a definitive location for a specific contact by maintaining it as a contact item on either a SharePoint Contacts list or in your Outlook Contacts folder. If contact information is to be shared among a team, then a SharePoint Contacts list is the preferred location.

In the following exercise, you will copy contacts from a Contacts list in a SharePoint site into Outlook. You can also copy calendar, event, or task items by using the same technique.

You might occasionally move and copy contacts to a SharePoint Contacts list. You may also frequently use a Contacts list to look up specific contact details, such as a telephone number, or send the contact an email.

In this exercise, you will send an email by using a SharePoint Contacts list.

You can work with multiple calendars when using Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010, thereby enabling you to create calendars for specific purposes, such as having one for work and one for your personal life. By using Outlook, you can view several calendars at the same time. When you view and scroll multiple calendars, they all display the same date or time period. This feature is particularly useful if you have connected a SharePoint Calendar list to Outlook. By doing so, you are creating an Outlook Calendar folder in which a copy of the data from the SharePoint list is stored locally. In this way, you can keep track of any calendar items in a SharePoint list from the Outlook Calendar folder, even if you are not connected to the network.

In the following exercise, you will connect to a SharePoint Calendar list and view your personal Outlook calendar and a connected SharePoint Calendar list side by side.

Connecting lists to Outlook enables you to aggregate all your list items in one place. For example, you can view all the calendar events in the Calendar window or all your tasks in the Tasks window, or you can view tasks assigned only to you on the To-Do Bar. When you connect a SharePoint list or library, including external lists, to Outlook, a local copy of the SharePoint content is stored locally on your computer. Connected SharePoint content can be used online or offline; however, it is important to understand the synchronization process for each.

In this exercise, you will make Calendar list content available offline, and then edit an appointment offline.

When you create an alert for an item, such as a document, list item, document library, list, survey, or search result, you immediately receive a confirmation email message notifying you that the alert was created successfully. This message indicates that the alert process is working. The confirmation message also contains information about the alert and provides links to the SharePoint site where the item is located. When someone makes a change to the item, you receive an email message alert that indicates what was changed, who made the change, and when the change was made. You should create an alert when content has changed and you need (or want) to take notice of it.

To avoid alerts swamping your inbox, you should choose carefully the SharePoint content about which you wish to be alerted. Ideally, you should select only important content that you want to monitor. Consider subscribing to RSS feeds to monitor other SharePoint content that is not as important and does not need your close supervision.

By default, Windows SharePoint Services does not provide an alert aggregation capability for all your alerts across every SharePoint site. To manage your alerts by using the browser, you would have to visit each site that has an alert set. To help you manage your alerts, you could save the message notifying you that an alert was created successfully because it provides a link to the SharePoint site. You could then use the email message alert to navigate to those sites on which the alerts are set.

In an environment where many SharePoint sites exist, managing your alerts could be a daunting task if they were monitored and organized merely by the links in your email alert messages and by memory. When using Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010, you can manage the email alerts received from all SharePoint intranet sites and trusted websites from one dialog box.

In the following exercise, you will use Outlook 2010 to create a new alert.

Every company holds meetings. These meetings often have a specific agenda; participants may need to prepare for meetings by completing a task or two prior to the meeting. The task may be simply reviewing a document, assembling a list of questions, or perhaps creating a prototype of something to bring to the meeting. A meeting can become inefficient, or even completely ineffective, because the preparation tasks that participants are expected to complete are not communicated effectively. In addition, after the meeting is over, meeting notes or follow-up steps may need to be provided to the participants and tracked.

SharePoint Foundation provides a site template called Meeting Workspace that helps improve communications before and after a meeting. Meeting Workspaces enable you to share your meeting agenda and objectives, publish documents and files, track tasks, and complete other collaborative activities through one central location. By centralizing this information, your meeting attendees have access to the latest information, and you avoid sending files through your email system. Three of the methods that can be used to create a Meeting Workspace are as follows:

Once you have created a Meeting Workspace, you should familiarize yourself with the site because it is slightly different from a Team site. It has no Quick Launch, and the pages are Web Part pages and not wiki pages. And if you create a Meeting Workspace from a recurring event, additional information is provided on the home page of the site.

In this exercise, you will create a Meeting Workspace using Outlook.

After creating the Meeting Workspace, you can add or remove attendees using the meeting request in Outlook. When you send the meeting request, Outlook updates the Meeting Workspace.

You can also add and remove attendees through the Meeting Workspace site by clicking Manage Attendees in the Attendees Web Part; however, this does not update the meeting request in Outlook, which you will need to do manually. For this reason, many users prefer to create and manage Meeting Workspaces from within Outlook.

When you delete a Meeting Workspace, the meeting request in your calendar contains a broken link pointing to the recently deleted site. Similarly, when you cancel the meeting or delete the meeting request in your Outlook calendar, the Meeting Workspace still exists and displays a message that this has occurred.

This is sometimes called an orphan site. Of course, you can still delete the site from the Site Settings page accessed through the Site Actions menu. However, you may not remember where you created the Meeting Workspace. Consequently, you should save a link to your Meeting Workspace, such as on a SharePoint link list, or delete the Meeting Workspace after saving any important information that the site contained. Therefore, do not cancel a meeting and send a new meeting request if you just want to change some details about a meeting. Instead, send an updated meeting request to attendees because this maintains the link between the meeting request and the Meeting Workspace.

In the previous section, you learned how to manage alerts, which are notifications received via email that notify you when content has changed in a SharePoint list or library. Alerts are a “push” method of notification. SharePoint pushes content to you based on specific criteria at predefined intervals.

Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 support RSS—the acronym previously meant Rich Site Summary—which is another method of notifying you when something has changed or new content is published within a SharePoint site. Outlook allows you to syndicate this information, and such programs are called RSS readers.

RSS is a “pull” method of notification. You decide when to use an RSS reader to read content exposed as RSS feeds; therefore, most people will use RSS for tracking content that is regularly updated. It is commonly used to stay up to date with the latest news on websites and blogs, but it can also be used to distribute pictures or audio or video content. Sites that expose their content via RSS are said to have an RSS feed. You can create an RSS feed on content stored in a SharePoint list. Therefore, very simple business processes can be handled by alerts. RSS suits ad-hoc queries or processes. More complex business processes can be managed using the built-in workflows or built using Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 or Visual Studio 2010.

In this exercise, you will add an RSS feed to Outlook 2010.