News

New software offers improved remote e-mail access

February 10, 2003

BOSTON -- InfoClarus has introduced ActiveNet OWA Companion, a plug-in application for Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) that the company says makes it easy to access
large e-mail attachments from remote locations, with improved security, in HTML format.

According to a news release,  ActiveNet OWA Companion let users access the portions of attachments that they need without having to download the entire file.

"If you use Microsoft Outlook Web Access to get your Microsoft Exchange e-mail from remote locations, you know that from a security standpoint, you don't want to download and leave your confidential attachments on the hard drive if you are using a public computer at an Internet cafe or a kiosk," said Vijay Thakur, the company's vice president of marketing, in the release. "Large files can take time to download and can be costly over slow-speed dial-up lines or over wireless connections.

"With OWA, many users may be using public computers or kiosks and don't want to inadvertently leave file attachments on these machines," said Chuck Sabin, Microsoft's product manager, Exchange Business Development, in the release. "OWA Companion from
InfoClarus extends the capabilities of OWA to provide the ability to view Office attachments in HTML remotely without downloading or caching on a client machine."

According to the release,  ActiveNet OWA Companion is compatible with Microsoft Outlook Web Access for Exchange 5.5. Support for Exchange 2000 will be available later in 2003.

Users can view attachment content in text or HTML. The application converts more than 40 attachment file formats to text, including Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat (PDF), and optical character recognition (OCR) of Fax (TIFF) files. It can also be used to view Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, & PowerPoint) attachments in HTML.

It enables users to select only the range of slides, pages or worksheets they are interested in seeing in original or converted format.

Besides viewing attachment contents, users can fax them, in full or in part, and in the original or converted format. For example, a salesperson can fax attachments to a customer or hotel lobby fax machine without having to download them first. Dial-up users will not have to disconnect and re-dial to send a fax; wireless users can send faxes without phone access.