What Is Exchange Server?

In 1996, Microsoft introduced Exchange Server, a product that could be used for corporate messaging and collaboration. Since that time, Exchange has gone through several revisions. The three versions currently commonly installed today are Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000, and Exchange Server 2003 (formerly codenamed Titanium). Exchange 5.5 required Windows NT 4.0 to run. Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 require Windows 2000 and Active Directory or Windows Server 2003. Many corporations still haven't upgraded from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000 due to the requirement to move to Active Directory and Windows 2000 Server. Some features within Outlook 2003 are designed to work only with Exchange Server 2003. However, most of the features in Outlook 2003 will work with any version of Exchange Server.

Some of the features available with all versions of Exchange are

• Sending, receiving, and storing messages

• Storing and processing message rules

• Sharing information through public folders or mailbox folder sharing

• Scheduling

• Collaborative applications

• Storing Free/Busy data

There are many reasons in addition to the preceding list to use Exchange. Outlook forms can comprise complete public folder applications. The use of voting buttons, Exchange routing, and delegate access can also provide numerous benefits to organizations. Outlook Web Access can give users access to their email from any Web browser. In addition, a number of third-party applications and devices work with Exchange Server to perform such tasks as text-to-speech email conversion, redirection of email to mobile devices, and mail processing and organization. The next six chapters provide detailed information about many of these features as well as general information about using Outlook as a client for Exchange Server.

When Outlook is used as a client for Exchange Server, it's actually providing you with a view of information stored on the server. This data is stored in files that comprise the Exchange information stores. There are two main information stores for messages in Exchange: the public store and the private store.

NOTE

There is actually a third type of store: the directory store. This store isn't actually used to store email messages, only directory information.

The private store is used to store each user's email messages, calendar entries, contacts, tasks, journal entries, and notes. The public information store is used to store public folder data. Public folders can contain any of the default Outlook item types, custom forms, and even documents.