HowTo-Outlook

If you have taken the latest Office 2010 Beta for a spin already, then you probably have noticed the Outlook Social Connector as well. Currently the only provider that can be used for this is a SharePoint server. Microsoft will later develop a Windows Live connector as well which allows you for instance to pull contact and related content information from Windows Live Messenger and SkyDrive. LinkedIn is also working on a provider for the Outlook Social Connector.

If you are a developer, you can create a provider for your own web service as well. You can find more information about it in this blog post of the Microsoft Outlook Team.

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2007 SP2 has been released.
For a list of changes that are included in this update rollup, see KB971534.

Download: Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (KB971534)

After official testers and MSDN and TechNet subscribers got their hands on the new test build of Office 2010, the Office 2010 Public Beta program has now become active as well. So as of now, anyone could get some hands on with Office 2010.

You’ll find that Outlook has gotten a major overhaul with the Ribbon now in the main program as well and a completely new Options dialog. If you have a hard time finding things, take a look at this guide which lists the locations of the most common options in Outlook.

The Outlook Social Connector is a completely new add-in which introduces “The People Pane”. This pane gives you some related information of the person you are in contact with or persons that have been added to the conversation. You can find out more about the Outlook Social Connector on the Outlook Team Blog.

More about the entire Office 2010 product line (which also includes Exchange and SharePoint) can be found here.

Download: Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta

For all you testers out there; Microsoft has just released a new beta release of Microsoft Office 2010. Its build number is 14.0.4536.1000 which is a significant step forward of the 4006 Technical Preview release which had been available for some time now.

Currently it is only available to testers via Connect and people with a TechNet or MSDN subscription. A broader beta release available to everyone is upcoming as well and even expected this week.

The Outlook Team has posted some new developer content at MSDN regarding Outlook 2010 BETA.

The topics covered are;
Extending the User Interface in Outlook 2010
Programming the Outlook 2010 Solutions Module
Shutdown Changes for Outlook 2010 Beta
What’s New for Developers in Outlook 2010

Microsoft had already confirmed that the Public Beta would be released in November.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 is now globally available.

More about Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 can be found on the official Microsoft Exchange Server website.

You can download the trial here. If you have a TechNet, MSDN or Action Pack subscription, it should now also be available to you.