Every
organization has its own branding. Nike uses the swoosh,
Reese’s (yum!) uses the familiar brown and orange package. In an era where
image means everything and the “brand” transcends all, implementing a
consistent image across systems can be considered important for some
organizations. Where I work, for example, everything that can be purple is
purple (including the soap in the bathrooms and the staples in our staplers).

For
organizations that want to take it to the extreme, consider “skinning”
your Outlook Web Access implementation. Microsoft uses the term “theme”
rather than “skin,” but it’s the same thing.

Microsoft
has actually made it really easy for you to create your own Outlook Web Access
theme by making heavy use of style sheets and then by providing an entire guide devoted to the art of
skinning OWA. Microsoft makes a sample OWA Xbox theme available for download so you can see what is
possible with OWA skins.

Only
the premium client (used with Internet Explorer 6 or later) can be fully
skinned. The basic client does not support rich themes.

Among
the items you can change are:

  • Background color
  • Border colors
  • “Outlook Web
    Access” logo
  • Fonts
  • Just about every
    other screen element you see in OWA

The
design guide explains where to find everything on your OWA server in order to
be able to modify it. This tip space is too short to be able to offer specific
theme update information, but use the links above to learn more about something
that just might take some of the tediousness out of your day.