Improving Your Outlook

Microsoft Exchange Server can serve as a rich collaboration environment. You can send messages with voting buttons, use read and delivery receipts, and configure a variety of storage options to meet your needs. Consider the following scenario and how Exchange Server can help you increase your productivity.

You've been given responsibility for planning the annual company picnic. The picnic is attended by 150 employees, their spouses, and their children. You must coordinate the meal, the decorations, and the entertainment for approximately 400 people. You can use a wide variety of Exchange Server resources to help plan the picnic.

First of all, you must determine how many people will be attending the picnic. If all of your employees have email, you can send an email with voting buttons asking for responses. Create a new email with the following message body:

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 It's time for our annual company picnic. Please use the voting buttons at the top of this  message to choose how many people from your family will be attending the picnic. Please  respond by Friday, May 2nd. Thank You! 

Click the Options button on the toolbar to display the Message Options dialog box. Click the check box marked Use Voting Buttons and enter the following voting buttons for your email: 0;1;2;3;4;5;6;Other. Click Close and then send your message. After your recipients respond to your message, the Tracking tab of your sent item will look like Figure 26.23.

Figure 26.23. Your Tracking tab will show all of your responses.

When you have the majority of responses, you can copy the results from the Tracking tab and paste those results into Excel. You can use Excel to generate the total number of people scheduled to attend the picnic. You must still contact those people who haven't responded to your email, but using voting buttons can at least make part of your initial attendance calculation significantly easier.