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Getting Started

What is Oracle Outlook Connector?

Oracle Outlook Connector is a calendaring and messaging service provider that gives the Microsoft Outlook client access to Oracle's calendar server and any IMAP4-compliant e-mail server including Oracle9iAS.

Users benefit through enhanced calendaring features, real-time scheduling, and access to all the other benefits of Oracle's Unified Messaging solutions, including wireless access and full interoperability with a wide range of clients.

Administrators benefit from the scalability, reliability, and availability of a standards-based, application-specific infrastructure.

What's new in this release?

Oracle Outlook Connector 3.4 includes a number of new features and enhancements:

• Full support for Outlook XP and Windows XP
• Ability to switch between online and offline states
• Automatic detection and performance optimizations for slow network connections
• New wireless preferences
• New convenient menu commands to compact mail folders
• Easier folder administration
• Ability to specify folders for automatic refresh
• Ability to tentatively accept multiple meetings in the Inbox
• Ability to forward contacts and appointments by right-clicking
• Appointments and events that span multiple days
• Time ranges for opening other users' folders
• Support for digitally signed and encrypted e-mail
• New progress indicators when synchronizing and opening large folders
• Ability to specify an organization and a reply-to address for the SMTP server
• Improved SSL and TLS negotiation procedures
• Noticeable performance enhancements and significant bug fixes

For detailed information on the new features and resolved limitations, see the Oracle Outlook Connector release notes.

Ways to get assistance while you work

This help describes the new mail and calendaring features that Oracle Outlook Connector makes available to you, and explains how Outlook's behaviour will be different from its behaviour when running against a Microsoft Exchange server.

Because Oracle Outlook Connector does not change most of the basic tasks and options available in Outlook, such as creating and sending e-mail, those tasks are not described here. For help with these tasks, see the Outlook online help or your Outlook user's guide.

For all other information, consult the product documentation supplied on your Oracle Collaboration Suite CD Packs or online at Oracle's Web site.

Setting up Oracle Outlook Connector

If your Oracle Outlook Connector installation was successful, everything should be ready for you to use Outlook for managing your mail and calendar.

You can modify your Outlook profile to configure certain Oracle Outlook Connector preferences and change a variety of information about your user accounts on the mail and calendar servers. For more details, see the Configuration section of this help.

It is also recommended that you disable Outlook Add-ins that are specific to Microsoft Exchange, to avoid confusion with Add-ins created by Oracle Outlook Connector. For details, see "Configuring Add-ins".