Developing Business Solutions with Exchange Server 5.5

Since its release in 1997, Microsoft® Exchange Server 5.5 and its Outlook® client have helped millions of users share information and work together on projects. Exchange Server has not only delivered e-mail, but has also served as a platform for collaborative and knowledge management solutions.

Here is a summary of four Exchange-based solutions developed and installed by Value Added Providers (VAPs) and Microsoft Certified Solution Providers (MCSPs). In each solution, technology providers have addressed and solved a business problem using Exchange-based technology. Some of the scenarios demonstrate how Exchange features work right out of the box, and others show how Exchange integrates easily with other products.

An Enterprise Calendar

Additional Exchange-based solutions: Here are some ways companies use Exchange Server: The Royal Australian Air Force schedules meetings and facilities, uses electronic forms and has access to shared documents and public folders. Intergraph Corporation uses public folders to share information, distribution lists to schedule and plan meetings, circulate information and gather input on design projects. Toys R Us uses public folders for collaboration, electronic forms for tracking and project support and Microsoft NetMeeting® conferencing software for real-time collaboration. Find more Exchange 5.5 success stories grouped by industry.

• Business Problem: A small, growing group of 12 IT consultants at Cyberstreams in Seattle, Washington, needed a better way to share each other's calendars. Without an easy way to look at their coworker's schedules, project managers often double-booked employees for meetings and sometimes didn't book them at all.

  Solution: The consultants at Cyberstreams acquired an enterprise calendaring application that uses Exchange Server 5.5 and Outlook 2000. The Exchange-based application uses scripts written in the Visual Studio® development system to develop a shared calendar for easy accessibility. After employees enter items into their schedule, the calendar entries are automatically placed in the shared calendar and made available in a public folder. Employees view it by day, week or month and even sort it in different fields—by employee, project or vacation time. The solution uses the server side scripting available in Exchange.

• Benefit: Project managers at the consulting company can see at a glance what projects employees are working on and when. From a planning standpoint, it gives them a better idea of who is busy and who is available to accept more work. "The only way small companies can compete is to be efficient," says Josh Leewarner, one of the principals at Cyberstreams. "We use this Exchange- and Outlook-based application to manage our resources and make the best use of our time."

• Additional Opportunities: Law practices, research organizations and professional groups are just some examples of where this solution can prove useful. In larger enterprises, this type of solution can work in selected departments.

Exchange 2000 Server RC1 released: As you're preparing Exchange Server 5.5-based solutions, be prepared to answer questions about Exchange 2000 Server. The newest version should be released later this year and includes some significant advancements. Some of those include: Extending the Active Directory8482; service in Windows® 2000 Server, which provides for a single, unified enterprise directory. A more powerful database that delivers even higher reliability. New Web Store technology in Exchange 2000 Server, which enables companies to store and access e-mail, documents, Web content and applications in one location. Real-time conferencing services, video teleconferencing and instant messaging to provide new ways to communicate. These and other technologies will be discussed in upcoming feature stories.

Organize E-mail, Information

• Business Problem: Employees at an 80-person accounting firm needed a better way to organize and find information in their inboxes, which were too heavily populated with e-mail messages. Some of the messages contained data related to several accounts; employees either had to store the same document in several places or spend ample time searching through their inboxes. The company had just completed an Exchange 5.5 Server deployment and wanted a more efficient way to organize and find information.

• Solution: Scott Sinclair, a consultant with SASolutions in Atlanta, Georgia, used the category feature and the Outlook Journal option to help the accountants organize and search e-mail. As accountants receive e-mail, they mark it with different categories—such as the names of the company's different projects. When they want information related to each account, they search the Exchange database using the category names.

  Items are organized into categories easily. By right-clicking on an unopened e-mail message, selecting Options, and then clicking Categories, employees can place an e-mail message into several categories as it relates to various projects. To create a new category, employees select the Master Category List (in the Categories dialog box) and type in the name of the project. Employees search for items by choosing Find in the Outlook Bar, clicking on Advanced Find, choosing the More Choices tab, and then typing in the category they designated earlier.

• Benefit: Employees now have an internal, personal index for seeking information. They save time and start out on their project knowing they have a complete set of data. It also enhances the Exchange 5.5 deployment without additional technology expense. Sinclair earned additional service revenue by hosting training sessions to teach employees how to categorize and find information.

• Additional Opportunities: Solution providers can suggest the same solution to any company that works simultaneously on several projects or needs a better way to organize information. It's an easy way to add value to Exchange deployments and services.

Tip: Enabling employees to reserve conference rooms for meetings is another Exchange-based solution available with tools right out of the box. This white paper, "How to Set Up a Conference Room as a "Resource" in Outlook 2000" , walks you through the steps.

Putting Information at Your Fingertips

• Business Problem: With documents and corporate information stored in several places, employees at mii , a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider Partner (MCSPP) in Austria, often failed to find information needed to do their jobs. At times, they didn't know when new documents and technical solutions were published on the company's network—the company wasn't taking advantage of its available resources or sharing information. mii wanted to use its existing technology, like e-mail and public folders, to give employees easier access to crucial information.

• Solution: mii developed the company's Knowledge and Information Portal (K&IP) solution. Similar to a digital dashboard, the knowledge management solution uses Exchange Server 5.5 to make an employee's personal information available to the rest of the company from one central location. In addition to using Exchange 5.5 to store, collect and share information, K&IP is built for Internet Information Services (IIS) in Windows NT® Server 4.0 as a Web server, Microsoft SQL Server™ 7.0 to store company financial information, and Microsoft Site Server 3.0, which adds a search capability. Because the K&IP portal is displayed in HTML, employees access the information using a Web browser.

• Benefit: The K&IP portal is the first screen employees view when they turn on their PCs. It gives them quick, easy access to information and keeps them more informed of companywide news. To make data available to everyone, employees place items into public folders and also post information such as corporate news or new solutions on the Web portal. The portal contains individual e-mail accounts, access to public folders, technical information, important news, production key figures and graphs, and stock quotes. The portal enables employees to access telephone numbers and addresses, calendar information and important links from the same Web page. The Exchange-based solution e-mails employees when new items become available. "We collect a lot of information each day," says Izmir Marcus, an mii consultant. "The K&IP portal helps us find information, as well as share it with our coworkers."

• Additional Opportunities: K&IP acts as this company's "digital dashboard." You, like mii, can maximize your clients' access to information by implementing a similar solution. Note that mii installed the K&IP solution for 15,000 employees at the Bank of Austria. Think what you can do for a client you service of a smaller size.

The "Integration and Interaction" white paper, offers more detailed instructions about integrating Exchange Server, Site Server and IIS to build knowledge management solutions. Exchange can be used to collect and organize information in public folders, while the indexing and searching capabilities of Site Server help employees find that information. IIS delivers the query pages used to request the information.

Building a Help Desk Solution

• Business Problem: Employees at First Edge Sornson , an MCSP with service centers in Michigan, Georgia, Texas and Mexico, had trouble learning the status of tasks sent to the Help Desk. Employees wanted to know which administrator was working on their request and when it would be finished.

• Solution: First Edge Sornson developed an Exchange-based Help Desk tool that tracks requests and gives employees an updated status report for each task. It uses Exchange features available right out of the box and requires no additional programming. First, administrators created a Help Desk mailbox in Exchange that all employees can access and use to send task requests. Managers check the mailbox, rerout the request to the administrator assigned to the task and the employee who sent it. The request, stored in the public mailbox, allows administrators to keep notes up-to-date on the task—such as how they expect to solve the problem and when they expect it to be finished. Employees access the message when they want to monitor the progress.

• Benefit: First Edge Sornson employees have immediate information on project status. For better communication, employees also post questions and deliver additional information to the administrator by entering notes into the task request. The solution gives employees a central location to find information and work with other employees more efficiently.

• Additional Opportunities: After success with the Help Desk solution, First Edge Sornson implemented the solution for their clients as another way to add value to an Exchange deployment. Other companies have used the Help Desk solution similarly while some managers have used it as a way to assign employees projects and update progress reports.

Exchange: A Collaboration Platform

There are many ways for you to create Exchange-based solutions to help your clients' employees share information and work together. Public and team folders are just two examples of these solutions. Hopefully, the other solutions we've outlined here will help maximize your use of Exchange Server 5.5 and make information sharing and data organization easier than ever for both you and your clients.

For more information:

Exchange Server

Digital Dashboards

Team Folders

Knowledge Management

 What's Your View?

What did you think about this article? Do you agree? Got more ideas? Share your thoughts and experiences with Microsoft and your peers, and we'll post them on this page!

There are currently no opinions on this topic: be the first!