Outlook or Webmail

[nick heppinstall]

We're just looking at letting some of our sales staff use a browser to connect to the Exchange Server ( 2003 ) instead of Outlook. Historicaly they move around a lot and it's a pain in the arse to have to keep setting up each machine for new users.

Does anyone use this and know the pro's and con's ?

Are their any drawbacks to using it with say 500 users instead of Outlook ?

Cheers

[miniman]

Outlook Web Access is excellent. You get maximum functionality (e.g. right-click functions to match the full version) with IE only. Downside is that it's a little slower to run searches, but not significantly slower. It's very useable indeed.

[tycho]

As ^^^^^^ said, the web interface is great but can't they have both? I have got both set up and it's great on my laptop when I don't have web access but my emails are available offline which is a big drawback with web based email.

[pebbledash]

Have my Exchange 2003 server set up for OWA. works like a charm. the Basic version (available if you are using SSL and web forms) is much faster than the full featured version, nice if you are in a hurry just to send or view new mail.

most users here use both, travel around with outlook on laptops, use this when either in the office or on a site with high speed internet links.

if they find themselves on a site with poor internet, or access limited to one PC etc. the use OWA.

users love it so who am i to disagree.

[_DeeJay_]

nick heppinstall said:

We're just looking at letting some of our sales staff use a browser to connect to the Exchange Server ( 2003 ) instead of Outlook. Historicaly they move around a lot and it's a pain in the arse to have to keep setting up each machine for new users. Does anyone use this and know the pro's and con's ? Are their any drawbacks to using it with say 500 users instead of Outlook ? Cheers

Or...you could just implement roaming profiles so that their settings follow them.

OWA in 2003 is great though (if a little slow). You also lose a few features (such as the ability to define search folders etc) but nothing they're likely to miss.

OWA also places less of a load on the server that a traditional MAPI client (pre Outlook 2003).

Being a bit geeky here but they'd be better using one or the other rather than both (as if they open a mail in one then the other Exchange does a lot of work in the background to convert the content between the formats that the clients need).

D