Welcome to Kraft Kennedy

On August 2nd, Microsoft released an out-of-band patch addressing a critical security flaw in the Windows shell.  This flaw affects all versions of Windows and could allow remote execution of code under certain circumstances.  Obviously, any critical patch released outside of Microsoft’s normal patch release schedule should be treated with a sense of urgency.  We in the Support Practice Group have already taken steps to implement this patch at all of our clients and can happily report that we have not seen any issues whatsoever with the patch, so far.  Additional information on the security flaw and the associated patch is available from Microsoft here.

I had the privilege of attending Microsoft TechEd North America 2010 last week in New Orleans, LA and wanted to share a few confirmed new features of Exchange 2010 SP1 (due out later this year but no firm ETA).  The overall theme of this year’s TechEd was centered around, not surprisingly, cloud computing.  Specifically, Microsoft emphasized their mature Exchange Online offering but also stressed the growth of Windows Azure (Microsoft’s hosted services platform) and hosted SQL services.  The demonstrations of what Windows Azure and hosted SQL could do were extremely interesting and solidified Microsoft’s vision of being “all in” (according to keynote speaker Bob Muglia) with cloud computing.

Regarding Exchange 2010 SP1, a few of the Exchange sessions I attended had specific focus on SP1 and most of the others mentioned how different aspects of Exchange would change with SP1.  I discuss a number of my favorite changes/additions associated with SP1 below but please note that there are many more new features.  Please refer to the MS Exchange Team blog post on SP1 for more information.

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At a few recent client implementations, we have seen noticeable delays synchronizing various changes in mailboxes to Exchange 2010 when running Outlook 2003 in Online Mode.  As it turns out, this is a known issue and Microsoft has documented it at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2009942.  The following are symptoms of the issue:

• Outgoing messages stay in the Outbox for up to 1 minute
• New messages do not arrive in the mailbox for up to 1 minute
• Items that are deleted or moved between folders may take up to 1 minute for the change to be reflected

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Microsoft has recently announced some new features that will be available with Exchange 2010 SP1 (anticipated in the summer timeframe of this year).  While a more detailed list is forthcoming from Microsoft, a few highlights can be found below:

• Archiving Enhancements – With SP1, you will be able to store a user’s primary mailbox in one mailbox database and that user’s Personal Archive mailbox in a different mailbox database.  This will allow administrators to leverage tiered storage for primary and archived data.  Additionally, new server side features will allow for easy back-end PST imports directly into a mailbox.  Finally, as alluded to by Microsoft previously, SP1 will include updates that will enable Personal Archive access from Outlook 2007.  Without SP1, the only methods of access for the Personal Archive are Outlook Web App 2010 and Outlook 2010.
• Management Enhancements – New capabilities will be added to both the Exchange Management Console (EMC) and Exchange Control Panel (ECP).  Specifically, the EMC will have new tools to configure/manage Retention Policies, Retention Policy Tags, Litigation Holds, DAG IP addresses and Alternate Witness Servers, recursive public folder settings and permissions, and more.  The ECP will have new tools to configure/manage Transport Rules, MailTips, Personal Archives, RBAC roles, and more.  In summary, many tasks that previously required the Exchange Management Shell will now be available through either the EMC or ECP.
• Discovery Enhancements – Multi-mailbox search will be improved by providing a Search Preview that will provide an estimated number of results (with keyword statistics as well) before exporting the desired content to the designated discovery mailbox.  This will help discovery users understand the impact of their queries and how much data to expect before actually exporting this data.  Additionally, a search de-duplication option will be provided that, when checked, will only export one instance of each unique message to the designated discovery mailbox.  This could dramatically reduce the amount of time it would take for a discovery user to review the data exported from a query.  Finally, support for annotation will be introduced so that discovery users can include notes while reviewing discovered data.
• Outlook Web App Enhancements- Outlook Web App (OWA) gets more efficient by pre-fetching message content to make reading faster and running some actions asynchronously (delete, mark read, etc.) to make them appear faster.  Additionally, various user interface improvements will be included to reduce clutter in OWA and prevent long running operations (such as attaching files) from blocking OWA access for the end user.  A new feature to anonymously share calendars via the web will be an option as well.  Finally, OWA themes return to allow users to customize the look and feel of OWA.
• ActiveSync Enhancements- Support for send as and conversation view, along with other new features will be provided.

You can read more about these new features of Exchange 2010 SP1 at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/04/07/454533.aspx.

A couple weeks ago I blogged about the XML patent infringement that Microsoft had to deal with.  As mentioned in that post, they’ve released new code that removes some of the custom XML functionality that was built into the Office 2007 system, and brings them into patent compliance.

We’ve just heard that there is at least one vendor whose product is now basically non-functional due to the code change.   This sort of problem can result in products needing to be completely re-engineered to work with the new XML limitations.

Organizations who have already implemented or are looking to implement Office 2007 should reach out to any third-party vendor who would be integrating with the Office 2007 XML format to determine compatibility with the new rules.  In addition, any custom code that has already been written would need to be tested and possibly re-written if any issues come up.

Kraft Kennedy has worked with numerous third-party vendors that integrate with Office 2007.  If you find yourself in a tough spot due to this issue, let us know and we can help walk you through the process of finding the right solution.

As you may have read, a judge recently upheld a court ruling which bans Microsoft from selling Word 2007 after January 11, 2010, due an XML patent infringement.  That was yesterday.

Today, Microsoft announced that they have released a patch which corrects the patent infringement, bringing the Office 2007 code under compliance:

The 2007 Microsoft Office OPK Master Kit Download, available on Microsoft’s OEM Partner Center, strips Word and other Office programs of custom XML editing capabilities.

“The following patch is required for the United States,” Microsoft said in a message on the site.

The 2007 Microsoft Office OPK Master Kit Download (12.9 MB) can be found at the Microsoft OEM Partner Center.  The site also says:

After this patch is installed, Word will no longer read the Custom XML elements contained within DOCX, DOCM, or XML files. These files will continue to open, but any Custom XML elements will be removed. The ability to handle custom XML markup is typically used in association with automated server based processing of Word documents. Custom XML is not typically used by most end users of Word.

Pretty quick turnaround, but I have a feeling they were working on this for a while…

As mentioned in my previous blog post about the Exchange 2010 RPC Client Access Service and the ClientAccessArray, Exchange’s dependence on the Client Access Server (CAS) role has increased dramatically in Exchange 2010.  This is because, in Exchange 2010, on-network Outlook MAPI connectivity now connects to a mailbox through the CAS role via the RPC Client Access Service.  As a result, high availability of the CAS role is crucial since any failure of CAS could affect Outlook client connectivity.  For smaller implementations or those where the limitations of native Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) are not a major problem (please see my previous blog post for more information), NLB can work well.  The process for configuring NLB is fairly straightforward and I’ve outlined the steps below.

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One of the most anticipated new features of Microsoft’s upcoming Office 2010 release is the ability to perform simultaneous editing on documents – in other words, allowing two authors to work on a document at the same time.   Those of you who have used Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 are already familiar with the concept.   A OneNote 2007 file can be placed onto a network share, and multiple people can access the live version.   I’ve personally found OneNote’s co-authoring functionality an extremely valuable tool for note-taking during a group meeting or brainstorming business ideas.

Office 2010 brings this concept to Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.  For a  preview of the look and feel, check out this Microsoft Office Word Team Blog post.

However, in the legal industry, the transition to allow simultaneous editing is not as simple as you may think.    Even after leading DMS products such as Open Text eDOCS DM, Autonomy iManage, or Worldox announce their compatibility with the Office 2010 platform, companies and firms won’t be able to just upgrade to 2010 and start editing documents simultaneously.   These systems are built on the idea of one person accessing a live document at a time — check it out of the system, work on it, check it back in.   So let’s assume developers did re-write their code.  Even that wouldn’t be enough for this functionality to work.  According to what we’ve heard from Microsoft, the simultaneous editing will likely require working in either a Microsoft-hosted cloud, or having SharePoint 2010 on the back-end.    This doesn’t mean that a migration from a DMS product to SharePoint is necessary, but it could mean that the DMS vendors would have to support a SharePoint document repository.  Open Text has already hinted that their releases in latter half of 2010 may support this.

As an aside, the whole idea of checking-out and checking-in documents has been ingrained into the minds of all attorneys, paralegals and administrative assistants for more than 20 years.   It won’t be easy to shake, and it might not even be accepted in the legal vertical.   Anyone know of any attorneys out there interested in this feature?

Microsoft has just announced that Exchange 2010 is now globally available!  Please read more information at the MS Exchange Team blog at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/11/09/453096.aspx. 

Exchange 2010 binaries are now available for download.

Microsoft has announced that Exchange 2010 has been released to manufacturing with expected general availability and launch to be announced at TechEd Europe 2009 in early November.  More information on Microsoft’s official announcement of Exchange 2010 can be found at the MS Exchange Team blog here.  Exchange 2010 marks a significant milestone in the development of Exchange Server.  Some of the most important features have been summarized below but many more exist that make this a compelling upgrade for all firms. 

Please note that Exchange 2007 SP2 and/or Exchange 2003 SP2 are required for coexistence with Exchange 2010 in the same Active Directory site.

• Dramatically Improved Storage Footprint and Large Mailbox Support – Changes in the underlying storage architecture allow for a 70% reduction in I/O over Exchange 2007 and a 90% reduction over Exchange 2003. This allows for more efficient usage of storage and results in the ability to store Exchange databases on slower/lower-cost disk such as SATA.  This makes Exchange not only better performing for larger mailboxes but also more cost effective.
• Native E-mail Archiving – With Exchange 2010, basic archiving features are now included natively, allowing firms to reduce the footprint of production mailboxes and improve client-side Outlook performance.  While this functionality may not be as feature-rich as third-party solutions and even though it requires a to-be-released Outlook 2010 client to support it (or OWA 2010), it does present a much needed piece of functionality that many firms have desired natively for years.
• Database Availability Groups – All of the Exchange 2007 high availability and disaster recovery methods (Local Continuous Replication, Single Copy Clustering, Cluster Continuous Replication, and Standby Continuous Replication) have been deprecated and replaced with a single concept: Database Availability Groups (DAGs).  DAGs unify the concepts of high availability and disaster recovery into a single deployment and management process, thereby simplifying it dramatically over previous versions of Exchange.
• Native eDiscovery and Compliance Features – Multi-mailbox search, legal holds, and improved retention policies all combine to increase the native capabilities of Exchange to assist with compliance processes and discovery requests.
• MailTips – Exchange can now notify users if a message violates an aspect of IT or corporate policy (sending to unauthorized third-parties or exceeding a maximum allowed message size) or if the result of sending the message may be unexpected (recipient is out of the office or a distribution list contains a large number of recipients).  This can enable users to better understand the results of sending a message and potentially reduce confusion and calls to IT.

Please refer to my three-part blog post series on Exchange 2010’s specific benefits for law firms (Part 1 can be found at http://blogs.kraftkennedy.com/index.php/2009/08/19/exchange-2010-benefits-for-law-firms-part-1-of-3/).  Check back often for additional blog posts about the new features of Exchange 2010.