It's not too early to prepare for retirement—of public folders, that
is. Eventually public folders will no longer be in Microsoft Exchange. In September
2006, Gartner Research published a report recommending that organizations prepare
to migrate away from public folders (http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/D/A/6DA5F58F-5146-4897-8111-DF32896FC1B7/Rapport_Gartner.pdf).
But never fear: SharePoint's Microsoft Outlook and Exchange integration features
enable administrators to begin the transition away from public folders to using
SharePoint as an alternative repository for shared information. In fact, Microsoft
has already begun to emphasize SharePoint as its collaboration platform to replace
public folders. Although SharePoint isn't a perfect replacement for public folders
at all sites, it can ease the transition away from public folders.
Let's peruse some popular public folder features and how they map to the latest
SharePoint technology. Some features apply to both Windows SharePoint Services
3.0 (WSS 3.0—a component of Windows Server 2003, providing core SharePoint
functionality) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007—which
adds enriched functionality such as enterprise content management); other features
apply to MOSS 2007 only.
Outlook Integration
Outlook is for many the primary interface for business communications, and the
accessibility of public folders from Outlook has been fundamental to their adoption.
Outlook synchronizes public folder content to the offline folder store (OST),
to let users work with mailbox and public folder data while offline. WSS 3.0
provides integration with the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, the Microsoft Office
2003 suite, and Outlook in particular. You can connect SharePoint calendars
and contact lists to Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. If you're using Microsoft
Office Outlook 2007, you can also connect SharePoint task lists, discussion
boards, and document libraries. Other SharePoint items, such as custom lists,
custom views, and custom properties are not yet supported.
To connect a SharePoint container to
Outlook, use your browser to navigate
to the container and select Connect to
Outlook from the Action menu.
The first time you connect a SharePoint container to Outlook, Outlook creates
a PST file in your Windows profile. The file is named SharePoint Folders.pst
for Outlook 2003 and SharePoint Lists.pst for Outlook 2007. A folder is created
in the PST file that represents the connected container. Subsequent container
connections are represented as additional folders in the PST. Outlook uses its
Send/Receive functionality to synchronize content between SharePoint and Outlook.
Outlook 2003 provides one-way offline synchronization (SharePoint to Outlook)
for calendars and contact lists. Outlook 2007 extends this integration providing
two-way offline synchronization for calendars, contacts, tasks, and discussion
lists and one-way synchronization (SharePoint to Outlook) for SharePoint document
libraries. Although you might not want to move completely over to SharePoint
until its offline synchronization improves, if you're using public folders for
collaborating on documents, SharePoint is actually a better environment in spite
of the one-way synchronization limit.
You can use Office 2007's Edit Offline function to perform manual synchronization
of Office documents stored in document libraries. Outlook 2007 keeps track of
documents in the SharePoint PST that were modified while you were offline. Office
2007 adds a link to each modified document to the Offline Documents search folder
in the PST, providing a single location to track all offline changes. After
you're back online, you can open each modified document and save your changes
back to the SharePoint server. Office 2007 handles any version conflicts.
Other Office 2007 products such as Microsoft Office Groove 2007 and Microsoft
Office Access 2007 provide capabilities such as two-way synchronization between
document libraries and custom lists, respectively. (For more information about
synchronizing data by using Groove, see the Microsoft Virtual Lab at http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/webcasteventdetails.aspx?eventid=1032326933&eventcategory=3&culture=enus&countrycode=us;
for more information about synchronizing data between SharePoint and Access,
see the Microsoft article "Introduction to integrating data between Access and
a SharePoint site" at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/ ha101314631033.aspx.)
Additionally, third-party products such as Colligo Contributor for SharePoint,
from Colligo Networks, provide two-way synchronization of lists, document libraries,
and form libraries, including all associated properties and views.
Discussion-Group Integration
You can use Exchange public folders to archive group discussions. Public folders
have an associated email address that lets an administrator make the public
folder a member of a Distribution Group (DG). All messages sent to the DG are
posted to the associated public folder, effectively creating an archive of the
discussions emailed to the group. The public folder permissions must allow group
members to create new content in the folder; otherwise, attempts to post to
the folder will fail.
To replace the public folder functionality, you can create a group in SharePoint
that maps to a DG in Active Directory (AD) and to a discussion board in SharePoint.
The members added to the SharePoint group are automatically added to the associated
DG in AD. The AD DG appears in the Global Address List (GAL), and any messages
sent to it are sent to all the DG members and posted to the SharePoint discussion
board. The discussion board permissions have to allow DG members to contribute
content to the board. The discussion board honors threading from replies, and
each post in the archive contains a history of the conversation thread.
This approach is analogous to the
public folder approach, especially as you
can synchronize the list to Outlook and it's
accessible from a Web browser, although
the archives go to a different place for the
user. Another added benefit is the fact
that SharePoint automatically indexes the
content stored in the archive and thus the
discussions are accessible through the
SharePoint Search UI.
An administrator can configure the
SharePoint farm to allow incoming email,
which means that document libraries, form
libraries, and lists can receive content via
email messages. When you configure a list
or document library to accept incoming
email, you can specify whether to retain the
original message or only the attachments. If
more than one document is attached to the
message, SharePoint posts each attachment as an individual item in the document
library.
When enabling a SharePoint container to accept email, the user identifies an
email address for the container. If the SharePoint Directory Management Service
is enabled, a matching contact object is automatically created in the appropriate
organizational unit (OU) in AD. Unfortunately, in Microsoft Exchange Server
2003 and Exchange 2000 Server environments, the Directory Management Service
doesn't populate all the required attributes for a mail-enabled contact object,
causing attachments mailed to the container to be dropped. For more information
about dropped email attachments, see "Attachment is missing from an email message
that is sent to a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 document library"
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926891).
Other anomalies exist on the Exchange
Server 2007 side in regard to mail-enabled
contact creation. For example, although
the Directory Management Service relies
on the recipient update service to stamp
the proxyAddresses attribute, Exchange
Server 2007 doesn't which means that
objects provisioned by using the Directory
Management Service will be incomplete.
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