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The Microsoft Outlook E-Mail and Fax Guide
Last Updated 7/27/2009 2:10:28 PM
Chapter 19: Using Microsoft Outlook to Collaborate
Exchanging email is just one example of the many ways Outlook can help individuals and groups collaborate in their work. But email isn't the only method. This chapter covers how to use and design public folders and how to share mailboxes and send mail on behalf of other users.
Exchanging e-mail is just one example of the many ways Outlook can help individuals and groups collaborate in their work. But e-mail isn't the only method. If you connect to Microsoft Exchange Server, you can also
- store information about customers and prospects in a public
- Contacts folder
- monitor another user's mailbox, respond to that person's messages, and use their Contacts folder
- subscribe a public folder rather than your own individual mail address to an Internet mailing list
In this chapter, we cover how to use and design public folders and how to share mailboxes and send mail on behalf of other users.
WHY MICROSOFT EXCHANGE SERVER IS REQUIRED
This chapter is for Microsoft Exchange Server users only. In the initial release of Microsoft Outlook, it is only with the full Microsoft Exchange Server that you can share mailboxes, send e-mail on behalf of other users, and design and manage public folders for an organization. Microsoft Mail doesn't support mailbox sharing, nor is its implementation of shared folders compatible with the Contacts, Calendar, and other special Outlook folders.
Microsoft has recognized that this leaves out many small organizations looking mainly for the ability to share contacts and calendars as they could with Microsoft Schedule+. Look for future versions of Outlook to support folder sharing without Exchange Server.
USING PUBLIC FOLDERS
Public folders are the foundation that Microsoft Exchange Server uses to build applications that help groups of people work more efficiently. By placing information in a shared location and enhancing it with automatic assistants and custom forms, Outlook can become more than just a place to get your mail.
For Outlook users, a very important type of public folder is a shared Contacts list, which we explore with examples in this section. If you want to follow along and create your own public Contacts folder, check with your Exchange Server administrator to find out whether you have permission to create public folders and where in the public folder hierarchy you should create such a folder.
Types of Folders
Public folders come in many flavors, but we can classify them into several basic types:
- Reference — personnel policies, product literature, and other information that doesn't change frequently
- News — news feeds, messages from mailing lists, newsgroup messages, and other information that changes rapidly
- Discussion — topics and responses to those topics (and responses to the responses); similar to newsgroups but internal to your organization
- Tracking — customer contact items, group calendars, and workflow applications
Public folders can be organized by department, by geographic region, by product line, or any number of other different ways. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the public folder structure in your organization. (See Figure 19.1 for an example.) Look for an area where you can create your own public folders to share information with your colleagues.
If many people in the organization are using Outlook, you can use a Contacts public folder to maintain information about customers, suppliers, and other correspondents. See "Working with the Outlook Address Book" in Chapter 15 for details about how to add a public Contacts folder to your Address Book.
Although the original version of Outlook does not have the ability to read and post directly to Internet newsgroups, Exchange Server 5.0 can host newsgroups as public folders. Outlook users can read and post messages to the newsgroups using folder post forms (see "Posting and Replying to Items" below). By putting a newsgroup folder in your Favorites folder, you can track new items (see "Adding a Folder to Favorites" in Chapter 9).
Working with Public Folders
The main Public Folders folder in the Folder List has two subfolders, Favorites and All Public Folders.
Favorites, where you keep shortcuts to frequently used public folders, is empty when you first start using Outlook. We covered Favorites in "Using the Favorites Folder" in Chapter 9. When you encounter a public folder for the first time, take a moment to explore. Look at the View, Current View menu and experiment with the different available views to get an understanding of how the information in the folder is organized.
Then look at the Compose menu. Here you'll find commands for posting to the folder, with either the standard post forms or any custom forms the folder uses.
Posting and Replying to Items
Many public folders let you use the standard Outlook post form to add items. Choose Compose, New Post in This Folder to display the New Post form, shown in Figure 19.2.
Notice how this form differs from the e-mail message form:
- There's no To or Cc field.
- Instead of a Send button, there's a Post button.
You can use rich-text formatting, attached files, and embedded objects in posted items, just as in messages. However, if you are posting to an Internet newsgroup via a public folder, the rich-text formatting will be visible only to your colleagues using the local public folder.
When you've completed an item for posting, click the Post button. Another way to post to a public folder is by sending an e-mail message to the folder's address. See "E-mailing to Public Folders" under "Tips and Tricks" at the end of this chapter.
Posting with Custom Forms
Many folders are designed to use custom forms to enter information in a more structured format, lending itself to more powerful views and Folder Assistant rules, which work much like Inbox Assistant rules (see Chapter 17). Look on the bottom of the Compose menu for choices available in any particular folder. Sometimes these choices depend on the item currently selected (or opened) in Outlook. For example, Figure 19.3 depicts the Compose menu for a customer account tracking folder. You can either enter a New Account or choose to "Add account contact" or "add product entry" for the currently selected account. Similarly, in folders intended for use as discussion groups, you may see custom reply forms that let you comment on a topic. (If you don't see a Post button on a custom form, choose File, Save to post it.)
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