BrokenMonitor.NET

Exchange 2K7 - Last Call For Public Folders

How sweet it is. I haven’t been to many MS meetings in my life, however, I usually get a couple good info tips from them. Today I was at a local one sponsored by a consulting firm. The topic was Exchange 2007. I have to admit, most of the changes are either non-interesting, behind the scenes itmes (better, larger db mgmt and support, better disaster recovery through single copy cluster, etc) or do not apply to my organization, however, there were still some pretty cool ones worth mentioning:

• Integrated presence info (is user X even around for me to e-mail?)
• Built-in Unified Messaging (means no need for Unity if using Cisco VoIP)
• 5 server roles (for larger orgs to spread out workload (perimeter, mailbox, hub transport, client access, unified messaging)
• Way tittier Outlook Web Access (actually tells you your password has expired and must be changed, live access to GALs)
• Start and end times for Out of Office to automatically turn on (or off)
• Two Out of Office replies for internal and external (automatically selects the correct one)
• And on and on…

What’s not cool is people asking stupid questions that have nothing to do with the topic: “So the Edge server cannot be a DC?” “No, it cannot.” “But what if I want to make it a DC?” “Um…you can’t ma’am.” “So then I can’t use Edge server as a domain controller? That won’t work for my organization. Right now my Exchange Frontend is a DC.” “I understand that, however, that is not a best practice and therefore MS doesn’t allow it anymore.” “Oh. Okay.”

Or you could shut up and eat another bagle. The person made comments several times about not having any fiscal backing for Exchange 2007. So why are you here? Why did your company let you come to demo a product you’ll never purchase? Oh, that’s right. So you can ask stupid questions like this man: “So, if my user is in China and the VPN doesn’t work there, how can he save e-mails from OWA to his local desktop so when he doesn’t have access to OWA, he can still read those messages?”

The tip of the iceberg was someone from the consulting company saying, “How do you like your new job?” I said, “It’s going great and I’m having a good time.” To which his reply was, “I’m going to have to say you made a good choice with that move.” Slam. Ouch. Burn. Sting.

Oh, and as I mentioned in the title. While Public Folders are supported by 2K7, they won’t be anymore after that. That means (assuming MS keeps with its 10 year support plan) you have until 2017 to figure out what to do with your PFs!! (upside down question marks)Dios Mio!!