Is it better to create public folders verses a common email account for reducing email duplication
We are a small organization. We currently send each other emails for group work. We now have thousands of emails that are duplicated. Our clients will send emails to more than one employee, increasing the duplication.I see two solutions. Create public folders or create a common@domainname.com. I favor the email solution even though it consumes a CAL. I understand that public folders will not be supported when we upgrade from ES 2003 to 2010. We need a simple solution. Having common email put into the common account seems like a good one even though it may not be the MS tekkie elegant way.Has anyone looked at options for this as millions of people around the world are DROWNING in email.Grant Wichenkoappin@appin.com
March 7th, 2010 2:58am

On Sat, 6 Mar 2010 23:58:43 +0000, Grant Wichenko wrote:>We are a small organization. We currently send each other emails for group work. We now have thousands of emails that are duplicated. Our clients will send emails to more than one employee, increasing the duplication.I see two solutions. Create public folders or create a common@domainname.com. I favor the email solution even though it consumes a CAL.Mailboxes don't require a CAL -- unless you're actually logging in asthe user.>I understand that public folders will not be supported when we upgrade from ES 2003 to 2010. We need a simple solution. Having common email put into the common account seems like a good one even though it may not be the MS tekkie elegant way.Has anyone looked at options for this as millions of people around the world are DROWNING in email.Grant Wichenkoappin@appin.com You actually described a few different areas. Collaboration is one,and using e-mail isn't the best way to deal with it. Sharepoint ismuch better at this and eliminates the problem of not everyone havingthe same copy of the files, trying to keep track of individualschedules, etc. IM is another way to collaborate, especially for thequick Q&A that usually results in a half-dozen, or more, e-mails.For your customer stuff, it sounds like you're trying to use e-mail asa sort of CRM system. If you're trying to gather metrics about who'sdoing what, how long it takes to get things done, who need coaching,etc. then using something like SaleForce might be a good idea. It;llcentralize your communications and take away some of the headaches ofhaving to arrange for person X the cover for person Y when Y's onvacation, out sick, etc.That probably didn't answer your question, but I really think thatusing e-mail for everything is like using a screwdriver as your onlytool.---Rich MatheisenMCSE+I, Exchange MVP--- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP
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March 7th, 2010 6:21am

Thank you for your reply. I would be surprised if small organizations actually implemented sharepoint. The book one of my staff bought on this is 800 pages full of technogeek babble. What I have done is to create an email triaging system based on tasks we generate in our staff meeting notes.We are going to create a common@appin.com. 01 is the incoming. Some emails are low priority, some are high priority. The emails are triaged by our "triage nurse" who assigns them to a staff person. That person can work offline to resolve the issue. If there is a need for a senior person to review the reply before it goes out, then the draft email is moved to that folder in common. Once reviewed and approved, the email can go out.We are keeping our emails in Outlook for a year. Emails older than a year are moved to our file server. It can still be found with Copernic. We are an engineering firm so issues never really end. Emails sent 10 years ago come back as a new issue on a regular basis. We can use Copernic to find the files and the emails easily. The process starts over.We are implementing this very quickly with a minimum of fuss given the skills of our junior staff. Sharepoint may have its place, but we need a quick solution now and reading an 800 page manual is not high on our list of priorities.We see this as a far simpler solution. It also avoids having A sending the email to B who writes a reply and sends it to D and E who then sends it back to A. We have a contest in the office whereby the person who comes closest the number of duplicated emails wins $100. My guess is 5,374 in a system that has about 100,000 emails.Our clients have the same problems and they have far more emails than we do. In fact, we often get asked to re-send an email as they have no way of finding an email that is a month old.I am open to other ideas but I do not see anything that is as quick and easy as this one. As we grow, we may look at having someone manage things through Sharepoint, but that is not the solution for now as far as I can see.We debated using an email vs public folders. We are using 2003. Our computer guy says that Microsoft is dropping public folder support in newer releases of MS. Document dd298100.aspx says that support will be "optional". The various blogs have no clear answer. If publc folders are going to be dropped, the common email account solution seems easy and simple to implement now.With respect to the screwdriver comment, the culture in our office and with others we know, is that email is now the preferred form of communication. We have a fax machine and I have forgotten how to work it. We have a time and billing system under control. Our paper files and our electronic files are now under control. Paper is still required in an engineering firm for liability reasons.The problem is that everyone has their own screwdriver. This solution involves a minor sharing of tools where group "screwdriver" work is required.Thanks.Grant Wichenkoappin@appin.com204-925-1450
March 8th, 2010 2:48am

Hi,Public Folder is fully supported in Exchange 2010 life cycle as Exchange team is already announced earlier.http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/03/31/448537.aspxThanksAllen
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March 8th, 2010 8:49am

Thank you for confirming that public folder support will continue. Can you offer an opinion on the use of public folders, the common email account or the use of SharePoint as a solution for a small company to manage the email chaos that we are countless other small business are facing?We have started with the common email account as a tool to have people share their emails. We get the benefits of sorting out the multiple instances of emails within the outlook environment. The common account is just a repository of critical emails that require group work.SharePoint looks far too complex. We could not get public folders to work on our server as it needed a digital certificate to set up.Outlook will not allow us to search the common email account but we can do this through Copernic.I would appreciate any insight you may have.Grant Wichenko
March 9th, 2010 6:13am

I have refined my thoughts on this since we implemented the common@domainname.com plan. Exchange has different types of mailboxes including a Shared Mailbox. We implemented common@domainname.com as a new user so we used a CAL. Is the Shared Mailbox option a better option? If it is not, why was this done? Grant Wichenko
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March 21st, 2010 5:09am

Outlook 2007 - How do I get Outlook to search more than one email account If you look at this forum, we have opted for a shared email account. This works great and we do not have to struggle with SharePoint or Public Folders. The only problem is that Outlook Search Folders will not search each staff person's default exchange account plus common@appin.com. If there was a solution to this, and my belief is that there is no solution as Microsoft never envisaged using shared email accounts in this way, it is the ideal solution to dealing with the email chaos that most people face. This one simple solution has dealt with the email problems we faced. No-one needs to copy anyone anymore. We have implemented GTD for staff who do not have a lot of computer expertise. Thanks. Grant Wichenko
April 11th, 2010 4:10am

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