infrageeks
A quick summary of the Exchange integration in Snow Leopard since this seems to be a hot topic for lots of people. I can safely say that if you're a Mac user in an Exchange environment, you can now (finally) get rid of Entourage and replace it with the standard tools of Mail, iCal and Address Book. If you've used the iCal and Address Book integration with OS X Server you won't see anything new here other than the choice of the server. All of the UI elements and workflow are exactly the same as when you use OS X Server shared calendars and address books.
My take: nailed in one. It's exactly what I've been waiting for since seeing the ActiveSync integration on the iPhone.
This set of tests were done using a non-admin account which seems to have slowed the initial auto configuration down a little bit compared to when I first tried with a standard account.
The basic configuration steps begin in the Mail application with a new account. If possible, it will automatically select the Exchange server, or if it can't you'll have the option to select Exchange 2007 as the account type and enter the appropriate information.
Once selected it will automatically synchronize the contents of your mail, iCal and Personal address book from the Exchange server. The Global Address List is not downloaded, but is searchable as long as you have a connection to the server.
Exchange in blue points to your Exchange Global Address List address book, Exchange in brown is your personal address book, On My Mac is the local address book (and potentially MobileMe synchronized) and of course you can drag and drop between the various lists.You'll see the new calendars in the iCal interface in a subsection with the name of the account, very similar to the way that iCal handles shared iCal calendars with OS X Server or other online calendars. Nice touches are that you can drag and drop meetings between accounts, which is nice when you forget to select the right account when adding things on the iPhone (where you cannot change the calendar after creation). iCal also lets you do things that you can't do in Outlook, like option-drag a meeting to create a copy.
There are a number of iCal specific options that you manage in the iCal preferences, like the external OWA server if it uses a different name from the internal address. This is also where you add in users from your Exchange organization that have given you read or read/write permissions so that you can view them directly in your iCal window, or automatically select available meeting times.
So with a user selected they appear in a new Delegates section in iCal, separate from your Exchange calendars. Like almost all Exchange integrated solutions, it's only the primary calendar that can been accessed, so (as far as I can tell) you only get the one calendar per delegate so the the two level view is a little redundant, but that may change in the future, but I don't have a multi calendar Exchange account to test against.
As far as I'm concerned this is a home run in terms of utility for Exchange users using OS X. I didn't try this with an Active Directory integrated computer to see if it was able to auto configure the Exchange account, but I expect that would probably work even better since you would inherit the Certificate Authority of the domain and perhaps even the auto identification of the server the way that Outlook does.
For many people this is the perfect mode of cohabitation between personal and work information - the data sources and storage are clearly separated, but you can consolidate the views. This means not storing personal data on the Exchange server with personal/private tags, but keeping it in your environment and (hopefully) helping you not book that meeting the day you're supposed to leave early for a birthday.
All of this requires exactly no special configuration or settings on the server side.
For this feature alone, I'd have paid the regular $129 OS upgrade fee without blinking. At $29 plus the overall performance increases and stability Snow Leopard (10.6) is an unbeatable upgrade.
Missing in action: I couldn't find any interface for managing server-side rules. Given that this is also a new feature of OS X Server, I suspect that it simply hasn't migrated down to the current beta release since they're still hammering out the UI.
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Comments
greg in nashville (unauthenticated)
Jun 16, 2009
Have you been able to determine if the Snow Leopard Exchange support has all the security options that Outlook has? The company I work for requires SSL on both incoming and outgoing mail. I haven't been successful in setting that up with Exchange access in Leopard, and have had to resort to IMAP (uggh!)
Great writeup, though!
gigathlete (unauthenticated)
Jun 16, 2009
Does it push emails like on the iphone and entourage or it has to refresh every minute?
DRayMIS (unauthenticated)
Jun 16, 2009
Any idea if this only works with Exchange2007, or if it - like the iPhone - will work with Exchange2003?
alphageek
Jun 16, 2009
@greg: It's SSL all the way so it should pass all of the security checkpoints just fine.
@gigathlete: I couldn't tell if it was doing push or just the old fashioned regular checks (I'll try and test that out tomorrow and see if I can determine that.
@DRayMIS: It's Exchange 2007 only from what I can tell. There is still an option for Exchange IMAP if you're using 2003.
DRayMIS (unauthenticated)
Jun 16, 2009
@alphageek: that's strange, considering they licensed the activesync protocol, and they already support 2003 on the iPhone.
Joseph Awad (unauthenticated)
Jun 16, 2009
How about PKI for secure email.
rebg (unauthenticated)
Jun 17, 2009
What about Exchange-based Task / To-dos -- are those implemented and supported in 10.6?
alphageek
Jun 17, 2009
@DRayMIS - it doesn't look like it's push on the Mail.app client. I think that they're currently using MAPI rather than ActiveSync (which is normally licensed for mobile devices only AFAIK)
@Joseph Awad - The usual certificate tools work just fine. I've used a Thawte Freemail Certificate and have been able to send signed and encrypted mails. Not sure about the level of automatic integration if your Exchange/AD environment provides you with keys, you'll probably still have to copy them manually into the Keychain, but once you have a certificate linked to a known email address, the signing/encryptiion icons appear in your mails directly.
@rebg - Yes. I just created a task in iCal and it shows up in Outlook and vice versa.
EdHarris (unauthenticated)
Jun 17, 2009
The irony for me is that last year the company I work for switched to GMail, thus eliminating my need for Exchange integration.
simon (unauthenticated)
Jun 24, 2009
I'm currently testing iCal and Exchange, I am able to access my mail account, address-book and calendar on the exchange server in our company.
I can't get to work "Shared Calendars" (as they are called in Outlook) in iCal. I find people under 'Delegation' but I have no read access. In Outlook I have access to those people, so that first thought of wrong permissions doesn't fit.
How do I open 'Additional mailboxes' (as it's called in Outlook) in iCal (along with contacts that are in those mailboxes? Or would I have to add them as dedicated accounts?
Thanks for the help
simon
simon (unauthenticated)
Jun 24, 2009
and something that I just noticed :
I suppose Flags are not supported? The nicely colored flags are a nifty categorisation and organisation tool, it would suck big time if that's left out?
What are your experiences?
alphageek
Jun 25, 2009
@simon : AFAIK, there's no equivalent in the iCal standard for the Outlook flags, so that information won't be usable in iCal. The iCal approach is to use separate calendars for that type of categorization. I'll check out the shared calendars, but I don't think we have any here to test against.
pendolino (unauthenticated)
Jul 14, 2009
i really do hope that server-side rules can be managed somehow via Snow Leopard Mail. Would make a huge difference than having to find a windows machine ( i plan to trash parallels post-snow leopard) and then run outlook to hook into exchange. as far as i know you cannot use OWA to modify server side rules although that could have changed. how about a way to track comments on this page btw?
simon (unauthenticated)
Jul 20, 2009
So, what's the verdict on the Shared Calendars? Doesn't ANYBODY need that feature? ;)
Wazzanz (unauthenticated)
Aug 4, 2009
Hi - what's creating an appointment and tracking the responses like? I use that feature a lot through Exchange, but to action that I've been trialling Codeweavers crossover + Outlook 2007 ... but have since given up and gone back to managing the appointments on a seperate Windows machine.
Do images stored in contacts now come through in the Address book?
Thanks!
gizo (unauthenticated)
Aug 14, 2009
Hi hi - thanks for the write-up.
Any word on Public Folders?
hugs!
rlager (unauthenticated)
Aug 20, 2009
I have Mail, iCal, and Address book set up with our Exchange server, and am getting all of my data ok (mail, calendar, contacts). The problem I'm having is when I attempt to add someone whose calendar I have access to, or give someone access to my calendar. If I try to give someone access to my calendar - I click on Preferences, Accounts, Delegation, then Edit. I type in the name of the person whom I want to have access, then click away and it pops up an error which says "Cannot enable access to your account. <Name of user I'm trying to add> was not found. If I try to open someone's calendar that I have access to - I enter the name but when I save the information it just disappears - nothing happens. Any clues?
rlager (unauthenticated)
Aug 20, 2009
I have Mail, iCal, and Address book set up with our Exchange server, and am getting all of my data ok (mail, calendar, contacts). The problem I'm having is when I attempt to add someone whose calendar I have access to, or give someone access to my calendar. If I try to give someone access to my calendar - I click on Preferences, Accounts, Delegation, then Edit. I type in the name of the person whom I want to have access, then click away and it pops up an error which says "Cannot enable access to your account. <Name of user I'm trying to add> was not found. If I try to open someone's calendar that I have access to - I enter the name but when I save the information it just disappears - nothing happens. Any clues?
Stuart Watson (unauthenticated)
Aug 27, 2009
Can I migrate an existing Exchange IMAP account over to the true Exchange set-up?
MacPilot (unauthenticated)
Aug 29, 2009
I need a shared calendar. It does not let me add any delegates.... real pain. Anyone else having that problem?
Beth (unauthenticated)
Sep 3, 2009
Yes, I'm having that issue to, where I can't access other users' calendars even when I know I have permission and can see them in Outlook. They say "no access" in the delegation window of iCal. Has anybody solved this?
Brad (unauthenticated)
Sep 15, 2009
I have iCal sharing my calendar with everyone else in the company. That much works fine. However, I can't access anyone else's accounts. That's why I'm here. (It works in webmail. I just can't get it to work in iCal. The permissions are all "no access."
Sorted! (unauthenticated)
Sep 15, 2009
I figured out the delegation issue in iCal. iCal does permissions individually, while Entourage will share with a whole group at once. Thus, to share my calendar with others, I add individual permissions for each user. To view *their* shared calendars, they have to add me as an individual user in Entourage (as opposed to the single default entry for everyone.) I can work with this, I guess.
JMS (unauthenticated)
Sep 15, 2009
HELP------!! Pls---> I waited for iCal for a long time. Our platform is a mixed env. We use Exch 2007 and Entourage/Outlook 07 as email client.
--Case 1,
If you assign permissions in Entourage/Outlook 07 to your calendar to an Active Directory "Security group"; any user that is member of that group will be able to open that user's calendar. However, It does not work like that in iCal.
---Case 2,
If you add that an individual (Entourage/Outlook) to your calendar; you'll be able to open that user's calendar in iCal.
Any clues?
Kinthor (unauthenticated)
Nov 30, 2009
I'm Wondering if anyone has been successfull in adding a secondary mailbox within the mail app. (without using IMAP)
alphageek
Nov 30, 2009
@Kinthor - I had a colleague ask me the same thing a couple of days ago and it's working fine on this end. I can manage Exchange folders on my account (creation, movement, deletion) no problem. But I wasn't able to create a folder inside the folder designated as the Inbox.