Today, Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 for Exchange 2010: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/12/05/released-exchange-server-2010-sp2.aspx
While there are a number of hotfixes and other items included, there is also some key new functionality being introduced as well:
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- Cross-Site Silent Redirection for OWA – This is a tremendous improvement over current functionality where, if a firm leverages redirection between Client Access Servers in different sites (the preferred approach for optimal performance and implementation flexibility), users are prompted with a link and second authentication prompt if they login to a CAS server in a different site than where their mailbox is currently hosted. With this new functionality, Exchange can be configured silently to redirect users to the correct CAS server in this situation (without reauthentication or prompting).
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- Address Book Policies – Address Book Policies provide the long-awaited native functionality support for what is typically referred to as GAL segmentation. Previously, if firms wanted selectively to exclude some users or contacts from the GAL for specific subsets of users, the firm would need to create and manage security ACLs directly within ADSI. This was unsupported in Exchange 2003 and 2010 and only narrowly supported for Exchange 2007 (with Dave Goldman’s specific whitepaper). Address Book Policies will provide an object and policy based method for providing this functionality.
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- OWA Mini – This will be a lightweight, text-only version of OWA targeted for use on mobile devices or in low bandwidth/resolution scenarios.
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- Hybrid Configuration Wizard – This wizard will significantly reduce the number of steps required to streamline the process for establishing rich coexistence between an on-premises Exchange 2010 environment and Office 365 (formerly BPOS).
Due to the nature of the new features included, there is an Active Directory schema update required for SP2.