Smartest way to share information in Exchange (public folders?)

[jollyreaper]

Exchange 2003, SP2.

I'm trying to figure out the smartest way to do things in Exchange. We have several departments and I set them up their own public folders. Those folders have shared tasks, contacts, calendars, etc. We have a few issues with it, though.

1. The public contacts are cumbersome. It's nice to have these contacts in a public area so everyone can see them but it's annoying to have to keep copying them back to your personal contacts. Why am I doing that, you might ask? Because we're using Blackberries here and they can't read public folders, any contacts have to be in your personal folder if you want them to sychronize over to the unit. Very annoying. Is there a way to make contacts replicate over to user folders?

2. As far as I am aware, we have to create a mailbox for a resource to be usable from the address list, i.e. a conference room. That way they can be added to meetings and someone with appropriate authority can review the meeting requests and approve/disapprove them. Is there a smarter way of doing this? Some of our users would like to have certain meetings on their personal calendars also show up on a department calendar. At the moment, they would have to create those meetings in both places.

3. Is there any decent way to make tasks shared between public folders and the personal task folder? Have a task appear in the public as well as the private folder and sync any changes.

Thanks in advance!

 

[tadpole226]

1. As far as Public folders and blackberries they can read public folders you have to go into the pim snyc and add those folders to the list of folders you want synced on the blackberry. and in exchange sys manager you can add those blackberry email addresses so that they get copies of the emails that go there as well. If you had BES this is obviously much easier and less work in the long run.

hope this helps

Jeremy

 

[jollyreaper]

I have BES. I figured out how to add those public folders when syncing using the desktop manager before installing BES. I didn't see any obvious way to do it with BES and Blackberry technical support assured me there was no way possible. Did tech support lie? *gasp!* *shock!*

So, would the approach be to sync those public folders via the desktop manager software AND use BES? In other words, only part of what I have wirelessly syncs and the rest has to sync via the cradle?

 

[jollyreaper]

To expand on some of what I've subsequently learned:

Blackberry Enterprise Server cannot sync public directories. You can do via the IntelliSync software. So if you want, you can have a Blackberry that only partially syncs wirelessly, requiring the cradle for the rest of the information.

I think it's a crappy compromise but that's the best I've come up with.

There are also other weird sync problems I'm working on with them and they're still unable to provide an answer. These are Nextel blackberries and have the walkie talkie feature, i.e. Direct Connect. The DC#'s are in the contacts in Outlook and show up on the Blackberry and work just fine. However, after a period of time the DC's will disappear from the Blackberries, even though they're still in Outlook! If I move those contacts from my contact folder and paste them back in, they'll show up on the Blackberry with their numbers.

No explanation for this so far.

 

[Zelandakh]

Or you could cheat. Public folder to Blackberry is possible using the clients own personal contact folder and public to private contact folder syncing from slipstick.com.

 

[jollyreaper]

Oooh, that sounds neat! I'll have to check it out.