You can have as many public folders as you like. It can also save you money, because unlike a dedicated mailbox, a public folder doesn’t require a license.
This is done in the Outlook Address Book tab of each folder in Outlook.Īfter doing so the contacts appear in the address book.Ī public calendar is also a useful tool. The downside of this approach is that each user has to add this folder to his or her own Outlook Address Book so that the contacts will appear there. However, since users are already accustomed to Outlook you can simply create a shared contacts public folder. Alternatively you can use third party interfaces for managing contacts.
You need to teach non technical personnel to use the Active Directory Users and Computers console and install it on Windows XP workstations. While storing contacts in Active Directory can be a valid solution, it has a few shortcomings. They can move large items to their private public folder, saving room. If you are worried about mailbox limits you can also create public folders for “heavy users” and only grant them permissions on those folders. This way the item becomes available to the relevant department personnel, if you set the right permissions. Instead of moving mail items to folders in your own mailbox, you move them to a specified public folder. Instead, you can have departmental or project related mail folders in the public folder repository. This means you have documents and other heavy mail items bouncing around, inflating your information store database.Īlso while Mark is very efficient in storing and cataloging important e-mails, once he is on vacation or otherwise indisposed, he won’t be able to forward e-mails. Exchange has single instance storage capabilities which means an item forwarded will only have one copy, but once you forward an item, it is changed, so single instance storage loses its edge. If Chris wants to show Mark an e-mail or a movie, he can either invite over or forward the item. A lot of people like Outlook so much they use it as their primary work tool. Using a Public Folder as a Mail RepositoryĬollaboration in even a small company is very important. The owner would be able to create subfolders for the folder you created and set further permissions on it. When creating a new public folder that you want a user to administer, you can simply add the user to the permission list and change the permission level to Owner. Authenticated users (designated here as Default) are granted the right to add items and delete their own items and anonymous users can add items but not read them.
The owner of a public folder is the user who created it and gets full control of the folder. The above screenshots show the default security settings for Public Folders. These can be set by the Outlook client and Exchange System Manager, but not the Outlook Web Access client. In most cases, in a small to medium company you would mostly need to set client permissions and not administrative rights. It allows you to decide which of the Exchange administrators have the right to manage security for the public folder and administrate the database (also called information store). Public Folder Administration security can only be set by Exchange System Manager. Public Folders have two types of security mechanisms – administration and client access. You can also create Public Folders using Outlook Web Access. Outlook 2003 sort of hides the public folders, so you first have to access the Folder list, then on the right side, open the Public Folder List, All Public Folders and the select “New Folder…”Įxchange System Manager can only create folders that hold mail items, such as your Inbox and Sent Items folders, while Outlook can also create other types of folders such as Calendar items.
Public folders can be created using Exchange System Manager or the Outlook client. You can set security on these folders so that only specific people will have specific types of access to these folders. Public Folders contain the same type of folders you can access using Outlook, and can hold mail, calendaring and task information. Later on I will show how public folders can be better used to even this out, so you get a smaller mailbox database and more room to grow. However, most mail accumulates in user mailboxes, leaving the public folder database pretty empty. In the fast moving Internet days, 16GB is not much.
Both databases in Exchange 2000 and in Exchange 2003 up to SP2 had a limit of 16GB. The pub1 database contains the public folders. The priv1 database, composed of both an EDB and an STM file, contains the user mailboxes. This screenshot shows the Exchange databases on a single Exchange 2003 Standard server.
If you would like to read the next part in this article series please go to Public Folder Basics (Part 2).įor the administrator, public folders are a separate database.