Outlook 2003 and shared mailbox advice 1

[PaulMThomas]

We have a Exchange 5.5 server with Outlook 2003 clients.

We have the following scenario:-
User1 - own mailbox and full access to mailbox 'Hotline'
User2 - own mailbox and full access to mailbox 'Hotline'

Customers send faults through to the Hotline mail account and each user can read these mails and and reply as the 'Hotline' account.
Is there any way for e-mails sent as 'Hotline' to be automatically stored in the 'Hotline' sent items, rather than each users personal mailbox sent items ?

They also have a network PST file called 'Archive 2005' where e-mails from customers are archived away. Only 1 user at a time can access this PST file as Outlook complains it is already in use if 2 try and open it together. Any suggestions on a way around this ?

 

[smoss51]

You don't want to share a PST file unless you really don't care about the emails stored there. That said, there may be some 3rd party app to help with that - like Public Outlook ...

Unfortunately, you cannot save sent items in the folder they were sent from vs. the logged on users sent items folder. Why? I don't know - especially in light of MS KB article 202517.

Sue

 

[PaulMThomas]

Hi Sue

The e-mails in the PST are related to Customer calls, both people that man the Customer Support Hotline need to be able to places e-mails into the shared PST file so that each of them knows what is happening with each call.

Any suggestions on how to share a PST file or another way to archive e-mails for easy sharing ?

 

[smoss51]

Since you have Exchange, why not have them store the archive messages in a Public Folder?

 

[PaulMThomas]

I hadn't thought about using a Public Folder.

However I am not sure that a Public Folder would be big enough, currently they have to keep every received and sent e-mail. This ammounts to at least 1Gb per annum.

Any other suggestions on how to share PST files ?
(How about if the both logged on as the same user ?)

 

[smoss51]

If you have the standard version of Exchange 5.5 your Public folder store can grow to 16GB. If you have the enterprise version, your only limitation to the PF size would be the time it needs to be backed up and disk space.

If you are not using unicode PST files, your limit is 2GB (or somewhere near that). You also lose single instance storage with PST files (unicode or non-unicode) - which tends to make them more bloated than what you would get from a Public store.

We use Public Folders here - our PF store is roughly 8GB and contains at least 5 years of data (our Marketing dept. saves all customer correspondence and the PF store has served them well).

PST files just aren't made to be shared - Outlook locks them so no matter how you try it, the only way you have any chance of sharing a PST is to use a 3rd party application (which would likely not be supported by Microsoft).

It's your data, but if it is that important you should consider using public folders instead of PST files to keep it safe, on a server and getting backed up. There's better justification for upgrading your Exchange server than there is for buying 3rd party tools to do what is not intended to be done (JMHO).