While we appreciate all the positive feedback we've received on Exchange Server 2010, we know you all are eager to find out what's been going on in Redmond since November. Today, we are happy to give you a first look at what's coming later this year in Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

SP1 will include fixes and tweaks in areas you've helped us identify, including a roll-up of the roll-ups we've released to date. I also wanted to flag some of the feature enhancements we're excited to bring to you with SP1 including: archiving and discovery enhancements, Outlook Web App (OWA) improvements, mobile user and management improvements, and some highly sought after additional UI for management tasks. This is not an all-inclusive list, so stay tuned for the detailed list coming soon!

In addition to sharing these details with you, I'm pleased to let you know that we'll be offering a beta of SP1 for download in parallel with TechEd North America this June. This will give you a chance to test drive SP1 and prepare for its official release.

Archiving and Discovery Enhancements

With the release of Exchange Server 2010 last November, we introduced integrated archiving capabilities aimed at helping you preserve and discover e-mail data. In SP1, we've enhanced this archiving functionality based on the great feedback you've given us since our launch. This includes adding the flexibility to provision a user's Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox. This means your organization can now more easily implement separate storage strategies (or tiered storage) for less frequently accessed e-mail. And, we didn't just stop there! We've also added new server side capabilities so you can import historical e-mail data from .PST files, directly into Exchange, as well as IT pro controls to enable delegate access to a user's Personal Archive.

To help streamline the implementation of retention policies, SP1 updates the Exchange Management Console with new tools to create Retention Policy Tags, so you can automate the deletion and archiving of e-mail and other Exchange items. New optional Retention Policy Tags give you even more flexibility in defining your organizations retention management strategy.

Lastly, we've made several improvements to the Multi-Mailbox Search features, which can be used to conduct e-Discovery of e-mail for legal, regulatory or other reasons. A new search preview helps with, for example, early case assessment by providing you an estimate on the number of items in the result set-with keyword statistics-before e-mail located in the search are copied to the designated discovery mailbox. And, you now have a new search result de-duplication option, that when checked, only copies one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox. This can help you reduce the amount of e-mail you need to review following the search. Finally, added support for annotation of reviewed items means you can make your e-Discovery workflow even more efficient and less time consuming or costly.

For those of you that have been holding your breath for this one, we're also happy to let you know that in SP1 timeframe, there will be an update which will enable us to support access to a user's Personal Archive with Outlook 2007.

By now many of you have leveraged the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator. And my name is forever cursed as a result. Why wouldn't it be with over 116 questions that have to be answered and nearly 30 results tables? Yes, the calculator was complicated; I'm sure many of you have thought, "what in the hell were we thinking?"

And let's face it, there are a number of smart folks that have used the calculator and hats off to you guys for questioning our formulas. Yes, I hate to admit it, but we made up a bunch of the calculations (and by we, I really mean Greg Taylor; that guy doesn't know anything about storage, but loves Excel and has coveted owning the storage calculator for a long time). Honestly, we didn't try to make it that difficult, but there were some back room deals with certain vendors that resulted in our hands being tied (yes there were some awkward photos of the ESE and HA teams that sealed our doom).

But times have changed. A few weeks ago, the Exchange team managed to procure some free-lance ninjas. Last night, they successfully infiltrated the vendors in question and retrieved the compromising photos. I never saw so many high fives in my life last night in the Outlook Live datacenter (aka the command center)! That's right folks! Not only does Exchange rock, but we also have some silent ass-kicking ninjas now. That's some epic awesomeness right there. I dare say that we shouldn't expect any future versions of Windows to block upgrades of Exchange any longer! Greg Thiel was so happy he started jumping up and down yelling "I'm going to Disney World!" over and over, and at this very second is boarding a plane to Florida with his family.

But I digress. I'm finally pleased to provide you with the calculator that I've wanted to release since we dreamed up Exchange 2007. This calculator is very streamlined - it only asks a handful of questions and provides you with the data you need in an easy to read manner.

All of us in Exchange are really sorry for all the endless nights and loss of hair we caused all of you over the years with these ridiculous calculators. Hopefully one day you'll forgive us (or me since part of those backroom deals required my name to go on the calculators. Don't ask).

Now, go tryout the new version of the calculator and let us know what you think.