Misc. Exchange Services and Policies
Public Folders
Public folders are designed for shared access and provide an easy and effective way to collect, organize, and share information with other people in your workgroup or organization. This information can included items like documents, shared calendars, and messages. Public folders can also be mail enabled, meaning they can receive email messages. Public folders are hierarchically organized, stored in dedicated databases, and can be replicated between Exchange servers.
Public folders are not designed for the following purposes:
- Archiving data - Public folders are not designed for archiving data. Users who have mailbox limits sometimes use public folders instead of their personal folders (.pst) files to archive data. This practice is not recommended because it affects storage on public folder servers and undermines the goal of mailbox limits.
- Document sharing and collaboration - Public folders are not designed for document sharing and collaboration. Public folders do not provide versioning or other document management features, such as controlled check-in and check-out functionality, and automatic notifications of content changes.
NOTE:
- Ownership of root Public Folders is usually granted to a system administrator in the College or Area.
- Owners can create subfolders and designate permissions for additional owners on the sub-folders.
- Requests for root Public Folders should be made using the ITS Helpdesk form.
Contacts and Mail-Enabled Objects
Most of the objects that will exist in the University Exchange Organization will be user mailboxes. Their will also be other special mailboxes, along with distribution groups. An additional set of objects which can be created in Exchange are Contacts and Mail-Enabled Objects. These entries have a use but can also cause problems when the person who is the Contact or has a Mail-Enabled entry then has a full Mailbox-Enabled account created. Consequently, we are going to limit the use of Contacts and Mail-Enabled objects to special cases and special needs only.
Distribution Groups
Systems Administrators who have Domain or OU Administration permissions have the ability to run the Exchange Systems Manager and create Universal Distribution Groups.
These groups can be used for addressing emails to the group. They can also be used for setting permissions for various Exchange mailbox folders and objects.
We have adopted a dotted-notation naming standard which would name these objects as dept.unit.description.
Query-Based Distribution Groups
Query-based Distribution Groups are dynamic Distribution Groups that use query language to determine membership in the group each time the group is referenced. These appear to be a useful feature (i.e a List of all current Grad Students in Chemistry). However, due to the fact that the underlying data fields in Active Directory are not fully populated nor are they consistent in usage or contents, these query-based groups are not useful at this time.
Custom Address Lists
Somewhat similar to Query Based Distribution Groups, the named high-level Address Lists that appear in the Exchange Address Book list are dynamic based on in the underlying fields stored in AD for the various objects. Aside from the standard Address Lists that have been created for University-wide use, we cannot support custom departmental address lists at this time.
Support for Macintosh, IMAP Clients
In addition to support for Outlook and Outlook Web Access clients, the Exchange system has support for clients such as Macintosh Entourage, Ximian Evolution Connector for Linux, and other mail clients using Secure IMAP protocol. However, ITS’ ability to provide end-user support for these non-Outlook, non-Outlook Web Access clients is limited.
Support for PDA’s, SmartPhones, Blackberry Devices
Users of various handheld devices can use ActiveSync or Outlook Mobile Access to connect to their Exchange Account. All users can configure these devices themselves.
ITS also supports a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) for Blackberry users to access their Exchange account. Users who wish to be registered in the BES should contact the ITS Helpdesk for instructions on account setup. There is no charge for this service
Eligibility for Live Communications Server Accounts
ITS is planning on providing Live Communication Server support. Initially this may be restricted to Exchange users only.