Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Caveats of Snow Leopard's Exchange 2007 Integration

My Company recently switched to Microsoft BPOS which allowed me to use the native Exchange 2007 support in Snow Leopard. I'm documenting below the various caveats I've encountered while using Mail.app and iCal on BPOS. Overall Mail is very workable and easily became my default email client. Still struggling with iCal, pretty much using it as a calendar viewer but all editing is done via OWA or Outlook in a VM.

Mail.app (v4.3)
  • Cannot configure server-side Exchange email rules, only client side-rules (workaround: configure via OWA)
  • Doesn't support sending or requesting read-receipts
  • No HTML composing
  • No easy way to set font type or size when composing (see workaround from jasonjackson)
iCal (v4.0.3)
  • Doesn't allow editing message when declining invitation
  • Cannot delete event without sending a Decline message
  • Pending invitations remain in iCal even when deleted on Exchange server
  • Events forwarded to Outlook users appear to them as calendars
Address Book (v5.0.2)