Outlook also supports some standards that are fairly new, like the iCalendar standard for calendar-based data, and, with Exchange, provides a rich set of features for taking data offline such as better synchronization of folders, address books, and more. We think there are a lot of really great benefits that you'll only find with Outlook and Exchange. For example, Outlook allows direct booking of resources like conference rooms. With Exchange Server, Outlook 2000 automatically books the resource if the user has the proper privileges, and even selects the conference room that is most convenient. If the organizer has to reschedule or cancel the meeting, all of the attendees are automatically informed.
Exchange is also the only server that supports extra properties on documents.
When I store a Word document in an Exchange public folder, for example, I can label it with extra properties, such as who's responsible for the document, its due date, the area of a project it's related to, or its current status. That makes it very easy to sort through documents and find, say, only documents that are ready to be reviewed, or all documents related to customer contacts. We believe that if you offer one feature here, another over there, and a third somewhere else, you won't necessarily make it easier for users to accomplish specific tasks even if they are great features. We walk through those scenarios very carefully and make sure that we have all the right features in the right places so users can accomplish the tasks that they need to do. Suppose I have a team of sales people who visit 1,000 customers.