Information rights management (IRM) functionality is a new policy enforcement technology in Office 2003 Editions that can help protect sensitive files and e-mail messages from unauthorized access and use. With IRM, employees can even set expiration dates on files. Learn more about IRM in Office Professional Edition 2003.

Improvements in the design, layout, and features of Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 can help employees better organize, find, and prioritize their business communications. In addition, the new Research Library available in some Office Professional Edition 2003 programs enables employees to research, find, and incorporate information from reference materials into their files. Employees can access reference materials ranging from corporate information sources to online research sites to dictionaries and thesauri. Learn more about doing research and reference in Office 2003 Editions.

XML support in Office Professional Edition 2003 enables companies to develop solutions that standardize the creation and collection of information that would otherwise reside in binary files on computers and file shares. Businesses can help reduce the duplication of data and work that exists in many organizations today while improving the value of corporate information.

With support for XML, Office Professional Edition 2003 enables employees to access and analyze information from a variety of business systems—such as customer relationship management (CRM) applications, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, or other line-of-business applications—all from within the familiar tools they use today. Employees can increase efficiency and productivity while taking advantage of existing investments.

Outlook 2003 includes a new cached mode to increase reliability of connections, and improve performance and user productivity. The new Outlook 2003 cached mode can help increase the reliability and performance of connections, as well as employee productivity. The cached mode in Outlook 2003 downloads all necessary information to an employee's computer as it comes in—so that network performance issues do not affect the employee.

With Outlook 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 running on Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, employees can also access their Exchange server directly over the Internet. If employees can browse the Web, they can access their Exchange mailbox. Once the feature is operational, Outlook 2003 can automatically connect to the Exchange server over the Internet when a direct connection to the Exchange server is unavailable. IT managers can eliminate the need to set up corporate virtual private network (VPN) servers for e-mail access. Synchronous point processing is also available during cached mode synchronization. If the connection is dropped and then reestablished, the synchronization resumes where it left off instead of starting over. Employees can then have a seamless connectivity experience.

Note  Caching requires Exchange Server 2003.

Shared Workspaces—created from within programs in Office 2003 Editions and based on Microsoft Windows SharePoint™ Services—can help improve teaming, partnering, and project visibility, and enable virtual teams to work together in real time. Employees can complete projects faster and reduce the confusion inherent in multi-participant projects and processes. Employees can see when team members are online, communicate with them in real time, and publish important task lists and files to a team Web site. Learn more about collaborating with Office 2003 Editions and Windows SharePoint Services.

Support for XML in Office Professional Edition 2003 enables developers to build customized and industry-specific document solutions (or smart documents) that can help streamline processes and improve productivity without significant employee training or downtime. With smart document solutions for generating proposals, for example, sales teams can streamline processes and improve efficiency and capture of data. Learn more about smart documents in Office 2003 Editions.

Office Professional Edition 2003 provides several methods—including digital certificates and signatures, data protection and recovery, and other program-specific features—to help manage program and document security. Increased security measures in Outlook 2003—such as the blocking of incoming messages that may contain viruses, HTML image blocking to prevent address validation, and improved rules to manage junk e-mail messages—can reduce the time employees spend managing e-mail messages. Learn more about Office 2003 Editions security features.

Deploy Office Professional Edition 2003 across your organization with minimum disruption of work to employees. Improve the distribution of Office Professional Edition 2003 to employees with low bandwidth connections by allowing them to copy a compressed installation source locally and then install it from there, rather than installing from a CD or network share. Employees also don't need to reboot after installation. Consistent file formats in Office Professional Edition 2003 can help employees share documents with users who have not upgraded yet. Learn more about deploying Office Professional Edition 2003 with information at the Office 2003 Resource Kit.

Office Online—the companion Web site for products in the Microsoft Office System—can also reduce the time IT professionals spend providing support and giving assistance. It provides support to employees and IT managers to help them increase productivity and get maximum impact from Office Professional Edition 2003 and other Microsoft Office System products. Learn more about Office Online.