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Microsoft to Release Exchange 2000 Server RC2 This Week

Microsoft Corp. will issue a second release candidate (RC2) of Exchange 2000 Server this week and it will be available as a developer download early next week, a company official said.

The final version of Exchange 2000 Server is expected to release to manufacturing by June 30, said Anders Brown, lead product manager for Microsoft Office 2000 Developer.

Exchange Server 2000 is the follow on to Exchange Server 5.5, and will be the first Microsoft application to rely heavily on the Active Directory, Microsoft’s new directory service introduced with Windows 2000 Server. Exchange 2000 Server is also one of the key pieces that must be released before the BackOffice 2000 suite can come out.

Brown discussed the Exchange 2000 Server RC2 today in the context of an upgraded edition of Office 2000 Developer. Version 1.5 of Office 2000 Developer was unveiled today and will be available in July.

The version will incorporate a new Workflow Designer for Exchange 2000 Server. The workflow tool is designed to ease the creation of collaborative business-process automation based on Microsoft Office. The tool is similar to a Workflow Designer for SQL Server, which is currently only available as a Web download.

Both workflow designers will be incorporated into version 1.5 of Office 2000 Developer. "Because we’re introducing two workflow tools, we’re really enabling the developers to use the most appropriate infrastructure," Brown said.

The SQL Server workflow tool runs on SQL Server 7.0. The Exchange workflow tool will only work with Exchange 2000 Server, not Exchange Server 5.5. – Scott Bekker

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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