Opening the mailbox:

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 Question from one of our readers:

 

From:
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 11:06 AM
To: Bobby Gill
Subject: (Bobby and Nima's Forefront Identity Manager Blog) : Question about FIM/Outlook
Importance: High

 

 

Good afternoon Bobby and Nima's.

 

I read your blog often as I await the release of MMS...I mean MIIS...I mean ILM...I mean FIM :)

 

I keep seeing things about how nice it is to request to be added to groups or distribution groups through Microsoft outlook. Are all of the features available from inside Outlook available from the web interface?

 

The reason I'm asking is that a lot of clients may have a need to use identity management to synchronize their Microsoft world with their HR world...and their email world ! (*cough Lotus Notes*). I understand that the level of integration (especially for distribution lists) is probably not the same, but are most other features of the Outlook FIM client available on the web console ?

 

Thank you and feel free to post the question and answer to your blog, as I think it may help other people.

 

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The simple answer to the question above is that the Outlook plug in for FIM 2010 contains a proper subset of functionality available within the web portal. That is everything that is possible through the Outlook interface is available within the web portal.

 

However the opposite is not true. While the Outlook plug in allows you to manage group memberships and approvals/requests, it does not nearly provide the same level of functionality as the web portal. For instance the creation of groups (both static and dynamic), deletion and modification (outside of membership) can only be done through the FIM portal.

 

Further, the Outlook plugin requires both Outlook 2007 as well as Exchange 2007 running on the backend. However, if you are using an email client which is not Outlook 2007, or a email server that is not Exchange 2007, you can still send notifications and approvals to email clients via any SMTP server. To perform any operations on said messages will require you to go to the portal and perform .