Exchange Server 2003 : Creating Public Folders (part 1)

Using Public Folders

Public folders are contained in public folder stores. The public folder listing that is viewed by the client software, such as Outlook, is arranged in a tree structure that is called a public folder tree (also known as a hierarchy). Any public folder that contains subfolders is referred to as a parent folder, and a parent folder can contain child folders that exist as subfolders. Public folders that are created at the root of a public folder tree are referred to as top-level folders.

Public folders provide a number of benefits, including the following:

• Allowing messages to be sent to public folders using e-mail addresses that are stored in Active Directory directory service instead of posting messages to the folders.

• Allowing users both internal to the Exchange Server 2003 organization and external to the organization to collaborate.

• Making newsgroups available to users.

• Allowing Web browsers to gain access to public folders by specifying a Uniform Resource Locater (URL) to that folder.

• Performing full-text index searches on public folder contents.

• Allowing users to gain access to any public folder in the organization. By default, Exchange Server 2003 enables public folder referrals between routing groups.

There are other uses for public folders, as well. Public folders are very flexible in that they are able to hold almost any kind of data you might want to store and make that data available to other users. Public folders are often used to provide a customer feedback e-mail address. If you used a standard user mailbox in this situation, you would have messages being sent to a single individual. If you used a distribution list for the feedback e-mail address, everyone in the list would receive every e-mail sent to the address, which might not be desirable, particularly if an executive manager wanted to be able to monitor the feedback e-mail periodically but without having to receive all of the messages in his or her own mailbox. By using a public folder arrangement, feedback e-mails from customers could be posted to the public folder and permissions granted to the folder for everyone who needed access. This would create a central repository for the e-mail messages.

Another common scenario for using public folders is to create group or departmental shared calendars. These calendars can be used for tracking sales appointments for a sales staff, maintaining an employee vacation schedule, listing employee birthdays or anniversary dates, and so on.

Creating Public Folders

There are two ways to create public folders. The most common way is by using Outlook because users can easily create their own public folders inside of top-level folders to which they have been granted permission. This eases the administrative burden since the administrator does not have to create every public folder that is required. With the Exchange Server 2003 version of Outlook Web Access (OWA), you can use and create public folders. This is a significant upgrade from the Exchange Server 5.5 version of OWA, which had no support for public folders. The other method used to create public folders is to use Exchange System Manager. This method accomplishes the same thing as creating public folders in Outlook, but this method is used exclusively by Exchange administrators.

Creating Public Folders in Outlook

By default, all users in an Exchange organization can create public folders under the All Public Folders top-level folder. This default behavior can be modified. To create a public folder in Outlook 2003, perform the following steps:

Creating Public Folders in OWA

Creating a public folder using OWA is very similar to creating a public folder using Outlook and can be done as follows:

Creating Public Folders in Exchange System Manager

Exchange Server 2003 administrators can create public folders using Exchange System Manager. This is especially useful for creating a hierarchy of top-level folders for users and then assigning permissions so users can only create subfolders in specific top-level folders. This allows the administrator to control the amount of top-level folders and to keep the public folder hierarchy from getting too cluttered and inefficient to use.

1.	Open Exchange System Manager and navigate to an administrative group, and then expand the Folders container to view the public folder trees, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3. The Folders container
2.	Expand the Public Folders container, which is the equivalent of the All Public Folders container that displays in Outlook. This will show you the current folders in your public folder tree.
3.	Right-click the Public Folders container, point to New, and then click Public Folder. You will see a dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure 4. Figure 4. Creating a public folder in Exchange System Manager
4.	Fill in the information to identify the folder. Note that there is no option to configure the type of items the public folder will contain. The folder will contain Mail And Post Items, which cannot be changed. These folders can also be used to contain other folders, which can hold any type of items. If you need to create public folders that will contain items other than Mail And Post Items, you will need to use Outlook or OWA to create them.