Outlook 2010

[stippett]

I have read the post regarding Outlook 2010 and EV9. Since I have no other outlet to voice my opinion, I am going to make a post here. I as an end user do not understand why it is going to take Symantec until the end of this year or beginning of next year to release a vault client plug-in for Outlook 2010. I understand Microsoft might have changed the code a bit for the final release, but with Symantec’s resources, that would mean a small tweak to the client and releasing an update. You don’t have to rewrite EV, just the client add-in. As it is now, I am purchasing new workstations with Window 7 and Office 2010 and I am going to have to uninstall Outlook 2010 and install Outlook 2007. This violates the Microsoft licensing, but I have no choice. And at some point down the road when Symantec finally gets up to speed, I will have to go back and take 2007 off and reinstall 2010.  I am pretty sure Symantec is a Microsoft partner of some sort and probably has had access to the 2010 beta for a long time. My message to Symantec is this… “Remember who is using your product. The end user needs your support!”

PS. I would like for nothing better than someone at Symantec to tell me I missed something and that the client is available.

Steven Tippett
IT Director

[JesusWept3]

Well the thing is it's not a small and trivial change that Microsoft made with Outlook 2010, they completely changed the way that an add-in has to interface with outlook, there can be ways that a server side change would require changes to the Enterprise Vault server code itself,

But really when you think about the size of the client now, especially with vault cache and virtual vault parts, you are looking at significant QA efforts also, and for each issue that QA comes across it has to be fixed in development, then go through more QA testing especially for regression testing and the back and forth.

Microsoft have had 3 years to work on Outlook 2010, Symantec has less than half a year to pump out code, after all, no client is better than an extremely buggy client, so let it get released properly in a quality manner, instead of being rushed out of the door, just to claim support for it.

Last but not least, it is also worth noting that no other offering such as iron mountain, EMC etc have support for Outlook 2010 yet

[Rob_Wilcox1]

A couple of points ...  Bear in mind though I'm not in the Product Management group, just the (poor, old :)) Engineering side of things :

* As JW2 said we only had access to the regular Beta, at first though we have had a few builds released to our development team which addressed specific bugs/issues that we have encountered.

* It is a *huge* rewrite exercise.  The interfaces that our Addin uses are no longer available.  The interfaces have been in development by Microsoft for years, so simply not have them available to us, is a challenge.  Add to that, during the beta there was little to no documentation on how we could hook into the new Object Model.  There still isn't "much", when you compare it with the "old" interfaces.

* As JW2 said it's not just development effort it's also a huge QA effort.

* We have an additional version of Exchange to test against, and, an additional 'format' (since Outlook 2010 is available in 64 bit flavours too).

In addition, as you're going for Windows 7.. why not use XP Mode to have your Office 2007 installation?  You're not violating any licensing agreement there, I wouldn't think -- though you'd have to check to be certain (I can't advise you on the in's and out's of Microsoft licensing).  I certainly run Outlook 2007 in Windows 7 XP Mode, and it's great.

Hope that heps shed a little bit of insight in "why it takes so long" ..  rest assured you are not the only one who wishes it were quicker.

[stippett]

Rob,
I hear you and your points make sense. However, it doesn't ease the frustration from the end users point of view. And from an admistrators point of view it doesn't help when eveything I read says the update will not be ready until end of year or early next year. Sorry for the complaining, but that does seem like a long time and I have new machines arriving this week, deploying to end users soon afterwards.

However, I am glad you offered a possible workaround. I will take a look at XP Mode and see if that will work as a temp solution.

Thanks
Steven

[Rob_Wilcox1]

Oh yes, I know..  and I hear what you're saying.  I too wished the client was available on Day 0, but it's one mountain we weren't able to move.

With regards to XP Mode, I would have to point that *technically* it's not a certified solution... by that I mean it's not an environment that our QA teams test in, or our Certification teams have certified.  It's just something to bear in mind that if you encounter a client side issue you should ensure you point out to Support, or the forums that you're running in XP Mode, and you should also try your best to reproduce the issue in a "regular" machine.