Public Folders : Best Practise

Hi friends,

This articles gives basic idea about the public folder in the exchange server. Public folders can be called as forum, Notice board, Common use board or place where we can share our ideas.
Public folders are an easy and effective way to collect, organize, and share information with other people. Public folder is one of the important recipient in the exchange server environment.
Types of Public folders in exchange server 2003 :
1. Public folders
Mapi Clients – visible in Mapi client i.e. Outlook
General Purposes – other public folders tree that can viewed by other browsers.
2. System folders – hidden folders in the system manager console and used for internal exchange server functions like offline address book generation, free + busy information and many more.

Public folder Creation:
1. From Exchange System manager
2. Microsoft Outlook client
This can be denied by setting security limitation under administrative group properties ? select users/group ? change “Create public folder” and “Create top level public folder”.
If the Security tab is missing, you must patch the Registry. Start – Regedit and create the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\EXAdmin – REG_DWORD – ShowSecurityPage – Value 1.

Quick Start for creating the Public folder tree with Virtual Directory:

1. Create the Public folder tree.
2. Create associated public store for the recent Public folder tree.
3. Mount the store.
4. Create the virtual directory (Exchange protocol - HTTP) for the category of public folder (in particular choose the public folder tree you have created).
5. Refresh the settings.
6. Create the public folders under public folder tree.
7. Open your browser http://servername/virtual-directory- name.
8. Result will be your newly created public folder tree.

Component of Public folders:
1. Public folder tree
2. public folder store
3. Public folder referrals (When a user connects to a public folder store that does not contain a copy of the content the user is looking for, the user is redirected to another store that has a copy of the content. This is called public folder affinity in Exchange 5.5.)
4. Public folder tree virtual directory
5. PFCA(public folder connection agreement) role in ADC
6. PFMIGRATE (PFMIGRATE.WSF) tool
7. Inter-Organization Replication tool (Exscfg.exe and Exssrv.exe).

Migration of Public folders:

Case I: Migrating public folders from the exchange 5.5 to exchange 2000 and above

Solution: PFCA (public folder connection agreement) role in ADC

Case II: Migrating public folders from one exchange server to other exchange server.

Solution: pfmigrate tool
Available in: Exchange CD with SP1\Support\EXDEPLOY
Syntax:
To move System Folders
PFMIGRATE.WSF /S:SourceServer /T:DestinationServer /SF /A /N:100 /F:C:\LOGFILE.LOG
To move Public Folders
PFMIGRATE.WSF /S:SourceServer /T:DestinationServer /A /N:100 /F:C:\LOGFILE.LOG
To remove Public Folders after succesful Replication
PFMIGRATE.WSF /S:SourceServer /T:DestinationServer /D

I guess this article gives you the initial gear to start exploring in public folders.

Thanks
Logu
logu_microsoft@hotmail.com
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