Microsoft Exchange Server 2016

Penta’s entire secure email and calendar system will be upgraded to the latest version of Microsoft Exchange 2016 for all Penta clients during the month of September.

The upgrade has undergone rigorous testing and is part of the continuous free service upgrades.

As is usual with major upgrades of critical systems, Penta only deploys later versions after evaluating the software with a particular focus on stability and security.

Do I need to do anything?

You may be asked to re-enter the password for your email account at some point during the next weeks. That’s all. You can always contact our Service Desk at +41 22 316 1090 (Geneva), +971 4 376 7190 (Dubai) or support@penta.ch.

What’s new?

Some of the new Exchange 2016 features will need to be configured and activated if you would like to use them.

Better security

To activate these features please contact the Penta Service Desk at +41 22 316 1090 (Geneva), +971 4 376 7190 (Dubai) or support@penta.ch.

Scan outgoing attachments

Scan outgoing attachments for specific keywords and block the email before it leaves your company. This is a great security feature and can be completely customized to meet your specific restrictions. Also, you can customize who gets notified of any blocked email to deal with the situation appropriately.

Know who’s been trying to contact you

In the past, if someone has been trying to contact you but their email was rejected by the server for security or other reason, you would never know about it. With Exchange 2016, it is now possible to set up notifications to recipients informing them of emails to them that were rejected.

Block sensitive data

If your business regularly deals with sensitive personal information like credit card details or national identity numbers, you can now automatically scan emails for information that follows a particular format indicating a possible data leak.

If activated, Exchange 2016 can formatting against a database of sensitive information formats, and perform an action like blocking or notifying a security contact. There are already more than 80 various formats preloaded from different countries.

Better compliance

To activate these features please contact the Penta Service Desk at +41 22 316 1090 (Geneva), +971 4 376 7190 (Dubai) or support@penta.ch.

Company-wide email search

It is now possible to run company-wide email searches for keywords to easily find out what communication has been sent regarding a particular subject. This is useful to track down information for compliance reasons or to identify security leaks.

Freeze a mailbox

You may find it necessary to freeze all activity on someone’s mailbox to ensure that crucial information is not lost or purposefully cleaned, for example, if there is an ongoing investigation.

Implement either a complete or time-based hold for example, or prevent a particular user from carrying out actions.

Audit user actions

Quickly run reports to see a particular user’s actions or the actions taken on a mailbox. This logs every activity so that you can track what happened.

Better interfaces

These features come as default and require no action from you.

New Outlook on the web

Previously known as Outlook Web Access (OWA), the new Outlook on the web email software will also be accessible from any web browser by going to the penta.ch homepage and clicking on the Webmail link at the top of the page.

Changes include:

• A cleaner interface for easier working
• Pin emails to highlight them in yellow and keep them at the top of your inbox
• Use Sweep rules to manage emails from specific senders, like reoccurring newsletters, and chose to keep messages for a specified number of days, only keep the latest message, or delete all messages from the sender
• One-click archiving to declutter your inbox
• Universal Undo button so that you can quickly go back with one click
• Read the sender, subject line and body of the email all in one line, and manage them in bulk
• In-window reading pane means there are no more popups when you open up an email
• Easily resize images, add custom borders, rotate images, apply shadow effects, and more
• Access to a full set of emojis
• Hover over the To and CC fields for a drop-down of your most frequent contacts – and then start typing to filter them automatically
• Five-day weather forecast in your calendar
• Add email reminders for calendar events and automatically send notifications to selected recipients
• Completely revamped mobile browser app without the need to install anything. Just access your email through the website
  Instant email setup on Mac and PC
• Gone are the days of complicated procedures to set up your email on a PC or Mac. Simply enter your email address and password and the new Exchange Server takes care of the rest automatically

Better usability

All-in-one search

This features comes as default and requires no action from you.

Remember how you normally first search your inbox and then have to search your archived items separately? No more. The new search finds everything whether it has been archived or not.

Document collaboration

To find out more about SharePoint and document collaboration please contact the Penta Service Desk at +41 22 316 1090 (Geneva), +971 4 376 7190 (Dubai) or support@penta.ch.

Email Server 2016 deeply integrates document collaboration, meaning you could stop the endless sharing of document versions by email. Save your document on your own SharePoint server and simply share links around the company. Versioning and multiple collaborators are all taken care of.

Note that this requires your own company SharePoint server, which will require installation and configuration.