Outlook 2007 has a new feature which is provided to it by default only by Exchange 2007.
I recently thought of giving Outlook a try instead of Windows Live Mail. Of course, the geek in me wanted my Outlook 2007 first run experience to be awesome. I wanted autodiscover to work for me.
It turns out if you read a KB article and a technet article you can figure out that for 99% of POP/IMAP/SMTP installations, placing an autodiscover.xml file at a url of http://myemail.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml or at http://autodiscover.myemail.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml is all that is needed. The format of the xml is very simple.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Autodiscover xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/autodiscover/responseschema/2006">
<Response xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/autodiscover/outlook/responseschema/2006a">
<Account>
<AccountType>email</AccountType>
<Action>settings</Action>
<Protocol>
<Type>IMAP</Type>
<Server>mail.xmtp.net</Server>
<Port>993</Port>
<DomainRequired>off</DomainRequired>
<SPA>off</SPA>
<SSL>on</SSL>
<AuthRequired>on</AuthRequired>
</Protocol>
<Protocol>
<Type>SMTP</Type>
<Server>mail.xmtp.net</Server>
<Port>25</Port>
<DomainRequired>off</DomainRequired>
<SPA>off</SPA>
<SSL>on</SSL>
<AuthRequired>on</AuthRequired>
<UsePOPAuth>on</UsePOPAuth>
<SMTPLast>on</SMTPLast>
</Protocol>
<Protocol>
<Type>POP3</Type>
<Server>mail.xmtp.net</Server>
<Port>995</Port>
<DomainRequired>off</DomainRequired>
<SPA>off</SPA>
<SSL>on</SSL>
<AuthRequired>on</AuthRequired>
</Protocol>
</Account>
</Response>
</Autodiscover>
Do that, and the next time an Outlook2007 client tries to configure itself, it will.