Email has become perhaps the most pervasive business communications tool today. To enhance its efficiency and productivity, users are now asking for access to rich messaging capabilities, such as shared calendars, address books and attachments, to be available wherever they are and on any device.

Coupled with Microsoft Outlook, Exchange Server provides valuable messaging features that go beyond simple e-mail that allow business users to take control of their inbox.

Contacts in the company directory (Global Address List or GAL) are centrally maintained for sharing throughout the organization and can be downloaded to Outlook and synchronized for access from Outlook Web Access (OWA) and Outlook Mobile Access(OMA). Distribution lists also can be centrally shared and maintained to facilitate communication to groups such as departments or customer lists.

In addition to Outlook, Exchange Server enables a large number of clients for mailbox connectivity,including web browsers through OWA (Outlook Web Access) and Windows-mobile devices through OMA (Outlook Mobile Access),Providing flexibility and productivity for information workers regardless of location.

Public folders are a shared resource, available offline and online, for instantaneous storage of digital content and Communications. Any user with access privileges can retrieve and contribute information from a public folder while working in Outlook.Rather than e-mailing file attachments back and forth, they can be stored in a common location for sharing and discussion.

Exchange Server includes rich features for personal, group, and resource scheduling that integrates with e-mail, Contacts, and tasks. Users can share their calendar information with others and view multiple calendars simultaneously to Send meeting requests for shared open times. Recipients can decline or propose a different time, or accept and have the Meeting automatically entered in their calendars. Schedules for shared resources like conference rooms and projectors may also be incorporated.

A task list provides the ability to create and assign tasks and can be integrated with e-mail notification and scheduling for basic project management and personal time management. Users can track progress as a task moves from active to complete to overdue, while managing status through various criteria like the person responsible and the category.

In addition to Outlook, Exchange Server enables a large number of clients for mailbox connectivity,including web browsers through OWA (Outlook Web Access) and Windows-mobile devices through OMA (Outlook Mobile Access),Providing flexibility and productivity for information workers regardless of location.

Over the last several years, it has become increasingly more common for an organization’s email messages to be subpoenaed as part of the litigation process. The problem is that email is dynamic in nature. Messages are constantly being sent, received, and deleted. Likewise, messages in the archives are often set to expire after a specific length of time. All of these factors have made it difficult to comply with litigation-related message retention requirements.

A complementary feature to legal hold is the new multi mailbox search feature. This feature makes it a lot easier for organizations to perform E-discovery. As the name implies, multi mailbox search allows a designated person to perform organization-level searches across users mailboxes. The search interface is designed to allow administrators to search for multiple keywords or phrases simultaneously.

The Exchange Control Panel is a new management tool built into Exchange 2010. While the Exchange Control Panel isn’t designed to take the place of the Exchange Management Console or the Exchange Management Shell, it is definitely a welcome addition.
The Exchange Control Panel is integrated into OWA. It allows users to perform a few basic self-service tasks, such as changing their contact information. For administrators, the Exchange Control Panel provides a way of performing some of the more common management tasks remotely using a Web interface.

Exchange 2007 provided several high availability features, such as Cluster Continuous Replication. Exchange 2010 takes things a step further with database availability groups. Database availability groups allow you to designate multiple servers to host copies of individual databases. In the event of a failure, Exchange can automatically recover. Databases are no longer server specific, so you are free to mix and match the database replicas that are hosted on each mailbox server.

In previous Exchange Server cluster implementations, a failure required an entire cluster node to fail over. This meant that if a server was hosting multiple databases, and the disks associated with a single database were to fail, the entire server would have to fail over which would be disruptive to users whose mailboxes weren’t even stored on the failed disks.
In contrast, Exchange 2010 supports database-level fail over. That way, if a failure affects only a single database, that database can fail over without disrupting the other databases on the server.

In Exchange 2010, each user can now have two mailboxes a primary mailbox and an archive mailbox. By using an archive mailbox, users can keep their primary mailboxes uncluttered. They’re free to browse their archive mailbox at will, and items can be automatically moved from their primary mailbox to their archive mailbox using retention policies.

Retention policies allow messages to be tagged in a way that reflects their useful lifespan and what should happen when they expire. For example, you could specify that items in one folder should be deleted after 30 days, while items in another folder should be moved to the archives after five years. Users can also apply retention policies to individual messages that are separate from folder-level policies.

Exchange 2010 uses a new access control model called role-based access control. Now, administrators can perform delegation based on the role that the delegate will be performing. This means that rather than guessing which permissions the delegate will need, the administrator can simply tell Exchange which tasks the delegate will be performing.