I have Exchange on a Windows 2003 SBS Server. I have about 30 users set up with mailboxes. I have a group of Users who are members of the Sales Dept. These users are in contact with Customers who purchase Products from us. We have about 20 different customers. Members of the Sales Dept. deal with different Products. We have about 5 staff in the Sales Dept. Let’s zoom in on Harry who is one member of the Sales Dept. He is in charge of products X, Y and Z. In his Exchange Inbox he has sub-folders named after each Product he is in charge of. Now Harry is about to retire and the boss decides to reallocate Harry’s workload. He decides that Martha will now be in charge of X products and Sabrina will take on Y and Z. So I, as the admin, have to export the subfolders into separate PST files accordingly and import them into the new user’s mailboxes via Outlook. It can be done. And it is done, over and over, whenever someone decides to reallocate the workload and whenever someone leaves or joins the Dept. I was thinking it would be simpler to create new mailboxes per Product and tell our customers to no longer to send their mail to Harry or Martha or Sabrina @domain.com but to X@domain.com, Y@domain.com or Z@domain.com. And give each User access to the boxes according to the products he is in charge of. This way, whenever a staff-member comes or goes, I don’t have to shift emails from one account to another and mess around with subfolders etc. This also would reduce the hassle searching for emails because we have personnel turnover and our customers have turnover too. That means you’re never quite sure who the sender was, (or which of his mail accounts he was using at that particular time) and who the recipient was. (“When did Harry retire exactly?”) So you never know what search criteria to use. If all the mail concerning X went into the X mailbox then that would make searching much simpler too. But I have a question: Does each new mailbox have to have a User? Say I have 40 products, and I want to create 40 mailboxes, do I have to create 40 new users? And will each user require a separate license??? Any help, replies, links, … appreciated. TIA WayneWayne

On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:34:22 +0000, Wayne Dunlop wrote: [ snip ] >I was thinking it would be simpler to create new mailboxes per Product and tell our customers to no longer to send their mail to Harry or Martha or Sabrina @domain.com but to X@domain.com, Y@domain.com or Z@domain.com. And give each User access to the boxes according to the products he is in charge of. This way, whenever a staff-member comes or goes, I don?t have to shift emails from one account to another and mess around with subfolders etc. Sounds reasonable. That's the way lots of places do this. [ snip ] >But I have a question: Does each new mailbox have to have a User? Yes. >Say I have 40 products, and I want to create 40 mailboxes, do I have to create 40 new users? Yes. >And will each user require a separate license??? Not unless the users that are associated with the product mailboxes are logging on. You can disable those users. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

Hi - in addition to the wise Mr. Matheisen's reply: User licenses have nothing to do with AD accounts. They refer to the warm bodies that sit in the chairs in front of the computer and log into the network. You can have a company with five employees and seventy-five AD accounts and mailboxes, and you need only 5 user CALs. Rather than the cumbersome import/export process (which is slow, ungainly, and will result in store bloat), I agree that you should set up new user accounts & grant them rights to the old users' mailboxes - *they* can copy over the stuff they need. And put an OOF on the old user's mailbox for a while before you eventually retire the old mailbox/ad account entirely. If your company has a lot of turnover and cares about tracking mail, though, they should look at archival/journaling software or services. I'm a fan of an outsourced service - Spamsoap, LiveOffice, Global Relay, etc can get copies of all inbound/outbound mail for your company and keep it for 7 years (for example) - business owners don't have to worry about users deleting mail, etc - they can see everything that went out or came in. I don't see much value in a small company trying to do this in house as you have to get another server for it, and back it up!Lanwench ** Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. Fill in the box completely and erase any stray marks. Use only a #2 pencil.

Hi - in addition to the wise Mr. Matheisen's reply: User licenses have nothing to do with AD accounts. They refer to the warm bodies that sit in the chairs in front of the computer and log into the network. You can have a company with five employees and seventy-five AD accounts and mailboxes, and you need only 5 user CALs. Rather than the cumbersome import/export process (which is slow, ungainly, and will result in store bloat), I agree that you should set up new user accounts & grant them rights to the old users' mailboxes - *they* can copy over the stuff they need. And put an OOF on the old user's mailbox for a while before you eventually retire the old mailbox/ad account entirely. If your company has a lot of turnover and cares about tracking mail, though, they should look at archival/journaling software or services. I'm a fan of an outsourced service - Spamsoap, LiveOffice, Global Relay, etc can get copies of all inbound/outbound mail for your company and keep it for 7 years (for example) - business owners don't have to worry about users deleting mail, etc - they can see everything that went out or came in. I don't see much value in a small company trying to do this in house as you have to get another server for it, and back it up!Lanwench ** Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. Fill in the box completely and erase any stray marks. Use only a #2 pencil.

Hi, Thanks for the replies and the sage counsel. I see you didn't mention Postini in your list of preferred outsourcers. Is there any particular problem with them or what ? If I have a mailbox per product then that's an advantage because that product's mail will always be in the same place. And I just have to manage acces rights. Much better than physically shifting stuff around. But, practically how do I set this up in Outlook ? I imagined that I could open my own account and then add the other boxes that I had rights to, and have them in an arborescence in the folder view. But Outlook doesn't seem to work like that. With Outlook, you're in one box and in none other, AFAICS. So you switch, you can't navigate. If this is in fact the case then that's hassle. Is it not possible to my own mailbox open and see the Product Mailboxes (X, Y and Z) as so many folders ? TIA, Wayne Wayne