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 Tuesday
evening November 4th DACS members and guests were treated to
a review of the new
end-user features of Microsoft Office 2003. Our presenter was
Carl Solazzo. Carl was a last minute substitute who, as it happens,
lives only blocks from the Danbury hospital.
Carl works for Microsoft
as an Infrastructure Consultant and has spent many years taming
Microsoft Exchange installations. Three years so far doing it
for Microsoft and an additional 5+ years prior for other organizations.
The slides weren't familiar
to Carl since he had seen them only once earlier in the day,
none the less after an introduction and some questions from the
audience we dove into the presentation. T-shirts were offered
to encourage questions. As near as I was able to tell the slides
focused on
new end-user features in office and back end services such as
IRM (Information Rights
Management) and SharePoint, available from Microsoft Servers.
We didn't follow the slides
from beginning to end though. What follows are my impressions
from Carl's presentation.
He was a good speaker
and worked well with the audience. We began by reviewing the
new
Outlook 2003. To someone familiar with the interface the most
apparent change is how the
document reading pane is arranged top to bottom in the right
side of Outlook's main window.
The intent is to make reading messages easier while still maintaining
a view of folders and
message headers for better navigation of your mail folders and
messages. It seemed clear to me
that Carl sincerely appreciated this change in the user interface.
The associated slide also made it
clear more of an e-mail can be read with the reading pane in
its' new layout. Outlook has also
been changed so it no longer automatically loads objects and
pictures by default when the
message is viewed in the reading pane. This was identified as
enhanced security. My perspective
is that the new defaults are a more reasonable configuration
to deliver the product with.
SPAM filtering has also
been improved. Again, based on his own experiences, Carl described
how SPAM filtering in Outlook 2003 did indeed capture more SPAM
than is possible with
earlier versions.
Implementation of services
and features throughout the Office 2003 components (Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, Access) is more consistent. SmartTags are more widespread
and their connection
and reference links are broader. They now will popup travel and
research options, among a long
list of other topics, related to the recognized word.
Help mechanisms are improved
as well. Help from any location (a dialog box, the "enter
question here" box on the menu bar) and by any action (press
F1, mouse, menu) refers to the
same bookmark and the web will be checked automatically for updated
references and examples.
Help is cross application as well. In Word you could type "how
do I create a meeting request?" in
the "enter question here" box and you would be linked
to Outlook and Outlook help showing the
steps.
 Network
admins will appreciate the ability to control how and when Office's
programs and their
components load. The ability to specify the locations searched
for installation files and provide
some automated failover to alternate locations will be a real
time saver for users and admins alike.
I'd like you to answer
a question. Have you always used the "send report"
feature when a program crashes to send Microsoft the diagnostic
information? I've done it very rarely because of my desire to
control what information about me is available and how it might
be used. Carl was the most reassuring 'softie I've ever heard
on this topic. His enthusiasm for it was clear when he described
how the information could help correct operating system and program
flaws. From his reaction I suspect he has been able to solve
some sticky problems with information gleaned from those reports.
For the first time in
a while file formats for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are not
changing. This
is a much appreciated non-change.
Carl had no joy for Mac
users. He wasn't aware of any release plans on the OS X platform.
Rights management is a hugely significant component integrated
into the 2003 suite. For home
users it requires a Microsoft Passport id so you cannot control
document rights on a single home
system or small home network without a Microsoft Passport account.
On a business network you
must entrust authentication to Windows Rights Management Services
using Microsoft .NET
Passport as the authentication mechanism. As an admin this is
a concern to me. Microsoft could
have made the IRM feature work with any of several authentication
schemes, not just one
controlled exclusively by them. This will limit my choices for
software purchases and upgrades
which I resent.
One thing Carl did several
times was acknowledge past failures such as buggy patches. I've
attended one other Microsoft presentation on their 2003 software
and all the presenters were
ragging on Microsoft about various common customer complaints.
I've read accounts in trade
journals of similar statements being made at other presentations.
I'm starting to think this is a
deliberate strategy Microsoft has adopted as part of this release.
It's as if they're trying to regain
the good will lost to virus outbreaks and patching headaches
by acknowledging the problems
rather than trying to put positive spin on the problems as in
the past.
Throughout the presentation
Carl answered questions and kept the audience with him. After
the
presentation he fielded questions for about another 20 minutes.
These were tough questions and
slow pitches from the audience with good humor and a smile. He
did a good job showcasing
several features of the suite without giving a sales pitch. All
in all he did a great job under
difficult circumstances.
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Webmasters note
Shortly after this article was posted
Carl Solazzo sent us the following note...
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Hello..
I have a comment on the meeting
review by Alan Boba on MS Word 2003 that appeared in the December
2003 dacs.doc. I was the presenter referred to in the article,
and I’d like to correct a misprint in the article Alan wrote.
Alan states:
“On a business network you
must entrust authentication to Windows Rights Management Services
using Microsoft .NET Passport as the authentication mechanism.
As an admin this is a concern to me. Microsoft could have made
the IRM feature work with any of several authentication schemes,
not just one controlled exclusively by them. This will limit
my choices for software purchases and upgrades which I resent.”
This information is incorrect. On
a business network, the .Net Passport is not used to control
access to documents. The Windows Rights Management Server (for
Windows 2003) is used to control access. There is no link to
Passport, and rights information does not leave the corporate
network, as would be expected of this solution. RMS requires
Windows Server 2003, a database such as Microsoft SQL Server™,
Windows Server Active Directory®, and an RMS_enabled application
or browser. Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003 are examples of RMS
enabled applications. Updated APIs will be required for Windows
clients and will be made available via Microsoft Windows Update.
RMS can integrate with other technologies such as smart cards
or biometrics.
I did not go into detail during
the presentation as I felt there were mostly home users there
that were not concerned with the business network aspect of
the software and most questions were regarding integrating with
.Net Passport (as most home users would ask.).
Thank you for promptly updating
this information.
Sincerely,
Carl Solazzo, MCSE 2000
Microsoft Services – East Region – Infrastructure
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