Mail forwarding using Exchange - not so simple

[dellboy]

Exchange 2000 SBS

This is not as simple as would first appear. I have a mailbox xyz@abc.com. The mail that arrives in this mailbox is a generic account and 4 users wish to have their own copy so that they know that they have read/responded to the mail. At the moment xyz@abc.com forwards to xyz-a@xyz.com, this then forwards onto xyz-b@xyz.com and this then forwards to xyz-c@xyz.com. All the forwarding is set up in the Exchange accounts, john who has access to xyz-a@xyz.com forwards to dave, who has access to xyz-b@xyz.com who forwards to sue who has access to xyz-c@xyz.com. John, Dave and sue also have default accounts and access to the forwarding mailboxes, if that makes sense.

While this is rather long winded it works, to some extent. I thought I would be able to create a distribution group and simply distribute to the group, adding the users into the group, but this does not seem to work as I can not set up forwarding to the group. So the first question is:

How do I create a distribution group with 3 users within that I can forward email to? Is this possible, at the moment it seems not.


Secondly, the current setup works, whereby mail is forwarded from -a to -b to -c etc. However, when -a tries to open attachments on the emails that are forwarded to him the account times out, the attachments are only 126k and smaller attachments open. Browsing through the mail list itself is fine until we come across the attachements that are slightly larger - 126kb - so therefore the Exchange server is just having a problem serving up the attachment I believe. It would seem that when the client is retrieving back from the Exchange database it is slowing, the server itself seems fine. All these operations are performed within the office on a 10/100 network and so the time out/delay is due to Exchange database retrieval and not network speed.


The question is how do I go about resolving this, the current setup while long winded works but 'forwarded' users can not open attachments.

As John, Dave and Sue are not the default owner of the account I can not set up mail forwarding from within outlook (trying to work around the problem / test another idea solution) as it appears that the rules wizard will only work on the default account. Is there a way to make the rules also work on other accounts that the user has access to?

If anyone has any ideas I would be very greatful

Cheers

 

[Davetoo]

Not sure why your mail enabled group doesn't work. Basically, you create the group, mail enable it, then set the mailbox for the group to the xyz@abc.com. Put each member that you wish to receive this email in the group and they should each receive a copy of any email sent to xyz@abc.com.

I have several mail enabled groups and they work just as described.

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It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[abrannon]

Distro groups are the way to do this, but if that is not working you can create a rule for forwarding this mail, or just redirect it, to the users account.

 

[Marcs41]

It is a long winded solution indeed. (What about when a, and or a are absent?).

Did you consider using just 1 account, and give the 4 members access, BUT using IMAP.
Everyone will see the same, when any one of the 4 answers the others can see that. When a message gets deleted, leave them un-purged, so the others can see that too.
The rest is discipline in handling the answers and when to purge.
Maybe this is an alternative to work for you?

Marc
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[dellboy]

Thanks for the responses.

I have set up a mail enabled group, I couldn't initially forward to the group as I was being a bit dim and didn't mail enable it.

Thanks for the comments re IMAP, I will have to investigate this.

At the moment I am forwarding from Exchange using a group but the main problem still exists whereby all users are experiencing time outs on the mailbox when trying to open items/attachments. This is a really small office of 10 users with 4 accessing the mailbox over a 10/100 network, the server should be more that capable and so I am not sure what is causing the Exchange slowness, maybe I need it investigate defrag of the Excahnge and service packs etc, although I am loath to as the last time I attempted this the server completely died on me and I mean to the point of a complete rebuild. I think I better go and start a new thread.

cheers

 

[greg013]

It's also possible that your anti-virus is causing the slow-down on messages with attachments, as it's scanning it for viruses. The bigger the attachment, the slower the scan.