A new option in OWA allows Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF) to be accessed as e-mail attachments or through public folders to be displayed as HTML, even if Office isn’t installed on the client PC.

Improved direct push e-mail ensures Active Sync clients receive messages on server connect. Other mobile-friendly features include inline message fetch — the ability to download long attachments without reloading the entire message — and information rights management, which allows users with proper authority to view protected messages without being connected to a server

The latest OWA client is a near-perfect clone of the Outlook 2003 desktop interface. Features and views are nearly the same, and performance is excellent. Incredibly, thin-client deployment becomes a real option.

The addition of Scheduling Assistant and Calendar Attendant mean that Exchange tracks not only the schedules of all meeting invitees but also the availability of meeting rooms and can manage all of this on the server, so meetings can be fully scheduled without everyone’s Outlook client being connected.

A rewritten search algorithm noticeably boosts the speed at which Outlook can find specific messages in large message stores. Administrators can access the same fast indexing in multiple-mailbox searches.

Exchange can now automatically encrypt all e-mail messages sent within the local organization. It also automatically supports TSL (Transcript Security Layer) encryption, including built-in certificates, as long as both hosts support TLS.