The release of Exchange Server 2003 introduced an updated version of Outlook Web Access (OWA). In "Exchange Server 2003 OWA Overview," October 2003, http://www.winnetmag.com/microsoftexchangeoutlook, InstantDoc ID 39790, I discuss the major new security features in OWA 2003. However, increased security isn't the only improvement that this version of OWA offers—the product also looks and functions more like Microsoft Office Outlook. Let me introduce you to some new end-user features that many OWA customers have been waiting for.
Spell-Checking
Earlier OWA versions lacked the ability to spell check email messages, so users needed to use third-party products to fill this gap. (For more information about third-party spell-checkers, see "OWA Spell Checking," January 2003, http://www.winnetmag.com/microsoftexchangeoutlook, InstantDoc ID 27212.) Now Microsoft has added this functionality to the OWA premium client, with support for six languages—English, French, German, Italian, Korean, and Spanish—and more language support coming in Exchange 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). For more information about the differences between the OWA premium and basic clients, see "Exchange Server 2003 OWA Overview."
OWA 2003 implements its spell-checking engine as an Internet Server API (ISAPI) extension (exchweb/bin/spell/owaspell.dll) that interfaces with the relevant language-specific DLL in the same folder. When the client browser requests spell-checking, it sends an HTTP POST to owaspell.dll and includes the message text in the body of the request. The Exchange server checks its dictionaries and generates an XML document containing all the possible corrections. The server passes the XML document back to the client browser, which transforms the document into an HTML form containing the options for spelling corrections. The client performs any corrections the user chooses.
Figure 1, page 2, shows the XML document that the server generated when I ran spell-checking on the message that Figure 2, page 2, shows. As you can see, the XML document supplies all the information required to correct the text; therefore, no further client/server interaction is necessary. Note that you can check only the body of the message—you can't check the subject line or selected parts of the message.
Users set their spelling preferences through the OWA Options page, and these options persist as properties in the root of their mailboxes. Administrators can preset these preferences as part of provisioning a system, thus avoiding the need for users to select a spell-checking language. Additionally, administrators can throttle spell-checking by modifying the following values in the Exchange server's HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWEB\OWA registry subkey:
- MaxSpellDocumentSize (of type REG_DWORD): This value defines the maximum size of the document in kilobytes. Any requests to spell check a document larger than this size result in an error being passed back to the client.
- MaxSpellErrors (of type REG_DWORD): This value defines the maximum number of spell-checking errors allowed before results are passed back to the client along with an error stating that spell-checking was incomplete because of too many errors.
- MaxUniqueSpellErrors (of type REG_DWORD): This value defines the maximum number of spell-checking errors allowed, but an error is counted only if it's unique.
- MaxSpellRequests (of type REG_DWORD): This value defines the maximum number of concurrent spell-checking requests that the server can process. If a new request comes in and this number is exceeded, the client receives an error that the spell-check server process is busy.
- DisableSpellCheckOnSend (of type REG_DWORD): When set to 1, this value will override the user setting so that spell-checking when sending email is unavailable. This setting doesn't change the OWA UI in any way.
Personal Tasks
Although earlier OWA versions let users display the contents of their Tasks folder, the items are treated as ordinary posts, with no mechanism for creating new tasks and associating standard task attributes. OWA 2003 treats tasks similar to the way Outlook handles tasks. Note that users can't set certain attributes, such as a designated responsible person for the task, and the number of views is less than the number available with Outlook. Users can, however, associate reminders with tasks. OWA 2003 uses the same polling mechanism to display reminder notifications that it uses for calendars and new mail notification. (For more information about new mail notification, see "Setting OWA Mail and Calendar Notifications," November 2002, http://www.winnetmag.com/microsoftexchangeoutlook, InstantDoc ID 26504.)
Auto Signature Support
OWA 2003 lets people use the OWA options pages to set up a signature that's automatically included in their email messages (including replies and forwarded messages). The signature is separate from any that a user might have set using Outlook. OWA stores a text version (http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/signaturetext) and an HTML version (http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/signature.html) of the signature in the user's mailbox properties.
The signature facility isn't as feature rich as Outlook's signature capabilities and doesn't allow, for example, the automatic insertion of a vCard or multiple signatures. You can limit the size of a signature or disable signatures completely by modifying the SignatureMaxLength registry value (of type REG_DWORD) on the Exchange server. To modify this value, use a registry editor to navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWeb\OWA registry subkey. The default SignatureMaxLength value is 4096 (4KB). The maximum value is 16672 (16KB); the server treats values greater than the maximum value as 16KB. This value comes into play only when users save their signatures. If you set the value to 0, the Exchange server removes the signature from the OWA Options page and the user can't save a new one.
With the premium client, users can create a rich-text signature, and they can insert a signature on-demand into the Compose message window. The basic client lets users create only plain-text signatures and doesn't offer the on-demand insertion capability.