Today we are happy to share with you some preliminary results of our testing Lucatec® Mask 2.3.2 (build 441) with the Technical Preview build of the upcoming Microsoft Outlook 2010. First off: All of the addin’s core functionality (i.e. setting senders, moving sent items and inserting signatures, all based on context) already works as expected. So it is generally already possible to use Lucatec® Mask with the new Outlook 2010.
It should also be noted however, that as was to be expected not everything works right out of the box yet, 
all because of some major changes in the Outlook user interface. Most notably the From field is no longer a simple text field but has become its own thing entirely (see screenshot to the right) which currently prevents Lucatec® Mask from visually updating the sender name (i.e. the displayed From value does not reflect the sender that will actually be used). Furthermore, because of significant changes in the way that addin option pages are integrated with the other Outlook options, setting up signature insertion is a bit fiddly with the current build. Drop us a note if you want to play a little yourself and need assistance for getting things working.
Needless to say that we will make sure these glitches are resolved before or shortly after the final release of Microsoft Office 2010. So far we are pleasantly surprised with the latest Office package and do not expect any major holdups in providing full compatibility.
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A hotfix package addressing, among other things, an issue originally introduced in the February Cumulative Update and later included in the Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007 is now available for download via the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
973404 : Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook.msp): August 25, 2009
Even though the latest releases of Lucatec® Mask already contain a partial workaround for the issue fixed by this update, it is strongly recommended that all customers using Outlook 2007 SP2 install this hotfix package to reestablish completely correct functionality of Microsoft Outlook 2007 regarding sender data stored in Sent Items.
The hotfix package quoted above is part of the Office 2007 Cumulative Update for August 2009. You can find descriptions of hotfix packages for other Office components also included in the August cumulative update in the following article:
974982 : Office 2007 Cumulative Update for August 2009
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Last week we received from Microsoft Support another test build of the planned hotfix for the incorrect sender information in sent messages issue discussed earlier. So far, we haven’t been able to reproduce the issue again with this patch installed. Unless any unintended side-effects of the patch are discovered it is currently scheduled to be included in the next Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office which is due in late August. Note that the Cumulative Updates are not distributed via the Automatic Update mechanism. We will publish the ID and URL of the relevant Knowledge Base article as it becomes available.
Customers with a Microsoft support contract of their own can contact us for reference information that should allow them to get access to the hotfix preview by filing a new incident.
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We have received a status update on the SP2 issue today: The request has now been officially accepted by the Outlook Product Group and we’re told a developer is actively working on implementing the actual code changes. Our request is currently scheduled to be included in the next bi-monthly Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office which is due end of August. The June update is already due later today (unfortunate timing). Note that there is no guarantee yet that a fix will become available at all.
We will keep you updated on any new developments.
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On Monday Microsoft Product Support Services confirmed to us that the issue mentioned in our previous blog entry is indeed an error that was introduced in the “February Cumulative Update (CU) / Service Pack 2″. The problem has been identified and is now being worked on but at the time of this writing there is no solution yet. We will update this blog accordingly as new information becomes available.
The symptoms of the issue are:
- When sending a new message on behalf of a shared mailbox account where you have full “Send as” privileges (as opposed to “Send on behalf” or “Delegate” rights), the message stored in the Sent Items folder will appear as if sent with “Send on behalf” rights, i.e. the sender will appear as “User on behalf of Account” rather than just “Account”.
- When replying to a message in a shared mailbox, after the message has been sent, Outlook completely resets the sender information to the current user so that messages stored in the Sent Items folder no longer contain any information about the sender that appeared at the recipient, i.e. the sender will be shown only as “User” rather than “Account”.
Note again that this only affects the local copies of your sent messages. The recipients of your messages will always see the intended sender.
Note that this issue is independent of Lucatec® Mask and can unfortunately also not be fixed or worked around in an acceptable way from within the addin. This will have to be resolved by the Office team themselves.
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Minor service release containing a couple of improvements to stability and behavioural consistency as well as minor compatibility fixes for the latest Office updates.
What’s new…
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[Update (2009-08-26): A hotfix package for the issue discussed in this article is now available from Microsoft. Please see this blog entry for details.]
Earlier today we have identified an issue with Lucatec® Mask that is apparently caused directly by changes in the latest Service Pack for Microsoft Office System 2007. The symptoms of this issue are that replies and forwards are no longer moved to the intended target folder after sending, i.e. they remain in the primary user’s Sent Items folder. Furthermore when looking at those items in that folder the sender will be shown as “[Current User] on behalf of [Intended Sender]” or even just “[Current User]” even if the “Send as” permissions have been correctly set up on the Exchange Server. According to our tests however it seems the sender information is only changed after the message has already been sent, so recipients will not notice any change.
We strongly recommend users of Lucatec® Mask to postpone installation of Service Pack 2 until a fix has been devised. See below for a partial workaround.
Resolving this issue is currently our top priority. We will update this article as new information becomes available.
This issue affects all versions of Lucatec® Mask since at least version 2.0.1 (released January 2007).
Update (2009-05-19): We have now implemented a workaround for the issue of items not being moved. Note that this does not fix the issue of inaccurate sender names in stored sent items. We are still researching how best to address this.
You can download a pre-release build of the upcoming next Service Release containing the fix (amongst others) from this link:
Lucatec® Mask 2.3.1 Code name “Cadillac” (Build 435)
(please see the release notes document included with the download for further details on changes in this release)
Update: (2009-05-26): We have now opened a support case with Microsoft about the changing sender information as we have also been able to reproduce this in environments that do not have Lucatec® Mask installed at all. We will post updates on the case to this blog as they become available.
Furthermore, this issue can occur in seemingly erratic patterns, i.e. some users might never notice this at all while for others it can happen for almost every single message they send on behalf of another account.
(Last updated 2009-08-27 10:50 CEST)
Kind regards,
Oliver Giesen
Chief Software Developer
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We are happy to inform you that we have released version 2.3.0 of Lucatec® Mask. This is a major technology release with significant changes to the way the addin works “under the hood” as well as major updates to our development stack. It also adds a couple of minor new features, such as improvements to the installer and improved handling of multi-user environments like Citrix or Terminal Server.
The most visible change however is a redesigned configuration interface. As the regular tab on Outlook’s Options dialog was already getting a little crowded and as we are fully intending to add more features in the future we decided to move the options to their own sub-dialog that could more easily be adjusted to additional configuration options.
Oh yes, and Lucatec® Mask 2.3.0 has been fully tested under Microsoft® Windows 7 Beta 1! 
Please refer to the Release Notes for a more detailed list of changes.
To install the update, just download the installer from our Download page, login as Administrator and run the setup program. You do not need to uninstall the previous version. Please make sure that Outlook is not running while you install the update.
Besides the new release we have also begun adding new content to the Lucatec® Mask product pages. There is now a Feature Matrix available, allowing you to easily compare changes between different versions of Lucatec® Mask. We have also set up a Blog which should allow us to publish new information, tutorials, best-practices, etc. in a more ad-hoc fashion than the existing pages allowed. This will also eventually replace our old News page.
Kind regards,
Oliver Giesen
Chief Software Developer
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Minor service release containing a couple of third-party updates and stability fixes.
What’s new…
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Minor service release containing a couple of third-party updates and bug fixes.
What’s new…
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