By Martin Heller, Contributor, InfoWorld |

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 highlights

Operational and usability improvements promise to make Exchange 2010 a major step up from Exchange 2007. Here's a quick visual tour of the new release.

The improvements in Exchange 2010 will be felt by both end users and administrators. See "First look: Exchange 2010 beta shines" for my take on the most important ones. The screen images and captions below walk through some of the highlights, from changes in Outlook and Outlook Web Access to continuous database replication for automatic recovery.

Click the image for a closer view.

Outlook Web Access has been improved to incorporate all of the functionality of an Outlook desktop client.

OWA and Outlook 2010 both support voice-mail previews. Note the transcription of the voice-mail created automatically by Exchange 2010.

Outlook Web Access now supports FireFox and Safari as well as Internet Explorer. OWA also has a new conversation view that greatly reduces mailbox clutter.

Users can now create their own server distribution groups.

Users can now obtain delivery reports for their messages, at least within the Exchange server.

The Exchange Control Panel allows users to control their own server settings. Changing a user's mobile phone number in the global address list used to require a help desk call.

Authorized users (such as HR and compliance officers) can perform multi-mailbox searches. This used to require administrator privilege.

Multimailbox searches run asynchronously on the Exchange server.

The results of a multi-mailbox search can be sent to a designated mailbox; they appear as a named folder.

Mailboxes can now be moved live without taking the user offline.

Database Availability Groups use continuous replication to provide automatic recovery and fail-over.

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Martin Heller is a contributing editor and reviewer for InfoWorld. Formerly a web and Windows programming consultant, he developed databases, software, and websites from 1986 to 2010. More recently, he has served as VP of technology and education at Alpha Software and chairman and CEO at Tubifi.