We have created an account called common@domainname.com that we are using as a shared network drive. We find this to be be a far simpler solution for triaging and processing emails per the "Getting Things Done" philosophy from David Allen. In order to make this work we have increased the number of objects from the MSFT defaults to higher numbers. To date we have not had any problems but we cannot find anything in Technet about the impact of doing this. We have increased objtfolder from 500 to 2000. So far so good. Can someone in the know explain why the defaults are what they are and what the impact is of increasing them in order to make our shared email account work properly. Thanks Grant Wichenko

On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:06:21 +0000, Grant Wichenko wrote: > > >We have created an account called common@domainname.com that we are using as a shared network drive. We find this to be be a far simpler solution for triaging and processing emails per the "Getting Things Done" philosophy from David Allen. In order to make this work we have increased the number of objects from the MSFT defaults to higher numbers. To date we have not had any problems but we cannot find anything in Technet about the impact of doing this. > >We have increased objtfolder from 500 to 2000. So far so good. > >Can someone in the know explain why the defaults are what they are and what the impact is of increasing them in order to make our shared email account work properly. If there are only a few hundred users on the server, and the server has an adequate amount of memory, you probably won't see any problems. OTOH, if you have several thousand users on the server and they all have 2,000 folders open you'll start to see problems as the memory needed to manage all those folders starts to erode the memory needed to keep the number of I/Os down (i.e. buffers are going to be in shorter supply). --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:06:21 +0000, Grant Wichenko wrote: > > >We have created an account called common@domainname.com that we are using as a shared network drive. We find this to be be a far simpler solution for triaging and processing emails per the "Getting Things Done" philosophy from David Allen. In order to make this work we have increased the number of objects from the MSFT defaults to higher numbers. To date we have not had any problems but we cannot find anything in Technet about the impact of doing this. > >We have increased objtfolder from 500 to 2000. So far so good. > >Can someone in the know explain why the defaults are what they are and what the impact is of increasing them in order to make our shared email account work properly. If there are only a few hundred users on the server, and the server has an adequate amount of memory, you probably won't see any problems. OTOH, if you have several thousand users on the server and they all have 2,000 folders open you'll start to see problems as the memory needed to manage all those folders starts to erode the memory needed to keep the number of I/Os down (i.e. buffers are going to be in shorter supply). --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

Rich: Thank you for the response. We do not have that staff volume. I would be interested in your view on our use of an email account to allow for groupwork vs SharePoint or Public Folders. I developed this model before I read Allen's material on GTD. His email triaging model is identical to mine. It has taken awhile to get staff to stop sending emails to each other and copying the planet on trivial things. I realise that Exchange does not make multiple copies of emails. The issue is not hard drive space but the need for everyone to have to process their emails. We generate an issue. We assign it to one or more staff members. We are an engineering firm so there is a need to have submittals available to all staff both as files on the server and the emails (both originating and destination emails). We have reduced the number of copies that we need to process substantially. If someone else has to cover for another person, going to common to find all the relevant traffic is there. If someone leaves, the emails are already organized. Only emails that affect that person or emails that constitute a personnel or security issue stay with the staff member. The big problem is that Outlook 2007 only supports one profile. Thus while everyone can see common, the search folders do not work. We have computers signed in as common so multifolder searches can be done. I understand that 2010 can support three simultaneous profiles. Will this solve the need for each staff person who needs access to common. We also have an admin@domainname.com for administrators and confidential information. Thanks. Grant Wichenko, Appin Associates.

Rich: Thank you for the response. We do not have that staff volume. I would be interested in your view on our use of an email account to allow for groupwork vs SharePoint or Public Folders. I developed this model before I read Allen's material on GTD. His email triaging model is identical to mine. It has taken awhile to get staff to stop sending emails to each other and copying the planet on trivial things. I realise that Exchange does not make multiple copies of emails. The issue is not hard drive space but the need for everyone to have to process their emails. We generate an issue. We assign it to one or more staff members. We are an engineering firm so there is a need to have submittals available to all staff both as files on the server and the emails (both originating and destination emails). We have reduced the number of copies that we need to process substantially. If someone else has to cover for another person, going to common to find all the relevant traffic is there. If someone leaves, the emails are already organized. Only emails that affect that person or emails that constitute a personnel or security issue stay with the staff member. The big problem is that Outlook 2007 only supports one profile. Thus while everyone can see common, the search folders do not work. We have computers signed in as common so multifolder searches can be done. I understand that 2010 can support three simultaneous profiles. Will this solve the need for each staff person who needs access to common. We also have an admin@domainname.com for administrators and confidential information. Thanks. Grant Wichenko, Appin Associates.

On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:38:32 +0000, Grant Wichenko wrote: >Thank you for the response. We do not have that staff volume. I would be interested in your view on our use of an email account to allow for groupwork vs SharePoint or Public Folders. I developed this model before I read Allen's material on GTD. His email triaging model is identical to mine. It has taken awhile to get staff to stop sending emails to each other and copying the planet on trivial things. Since you're using this as a collaboration tool Sharepoint would seem to be a better fit. >I realise that Exchange does not make multiple copies of emails. The issue is not hard drive space but the need for everyone to have to process their emails. We generate an issue. We assign it to one or more staff members. We are an engineering firm so there is a need to have submittals available to all staff both as files on the server and the emails (both originating and destination emails). We have reduced the number of copies that we need to process substantially. If someone else has to cover for another person, going to common to find all the relevant traffic is there. If someone leaves, the emails are already organized. Only emails that affect that person or emails that constitute a personnel or security issue stay with the staff member. Would this fit a "workflow" model? >The big problem is that Outlook 2007 only supports one profile. Thus while everyone can see common, the search folders do not work. Couldn't you use OWA for that common mailbox? The search index on the server would be used. >We have computers signed in as common so multifolder searches can be done. I understand that 2010 can support three simultaneous profiles. Will this solve the need for each staff person who needs access to common. We also have an admin@domainname.com for administrators and confidential information. > >Thanks. > >Grant Wichenko, Appin Associates. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:38:32 +0000, Grant Wichenko wrote: >Thank you for the response. We do not have that staff volume. I would be interested in your view on our use of an email account to allow for groupwork vs SharePoint or Public Folders. I developed this model before I read Allen's material on GTD. His email triaging model is identical to mine. It has taken awhile to get staff to stop sending emails to each other and copying the planet on trivial things. Since you're using this as a collaboration tool Sharepoint would seem to be a better fit. >I realise that Exchange does not make multiple copies of emails. The issue is not hard drive space but the need for everyone to have to process their emails. We generate an issue. We assign it to one or more staff members. We are an engineering firm so there is a need to have submittals available to all staff both as files on the server and the emails (both originating and destination emails). We have reduced the number of copies that we need to process substantially. If someone else has to cover for another person, going to common to find all the relevant traffic is there. If someone leaves, the emails are already organized. Only emails that affect that person or emails that constitute a personnel or security issue stay with the staff member. Would this fit a "workflow" model? >The big problem is that Outlook 2007 only supports one profile. Thus while everyone can see common, the search folders do not work. Couldn't you use OWA for that common mailbox? The search index on the server would be used. >We have computers signed in as common so multifolder searches can be done. I understand that 2010 can support three simultaneous profiles. Will this solve the need for each staff person who needs access to common. We also have an admin@domainname.com for administrators and confidential information. > >Thanks. > >Grant Wichenko, Appin Associates. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

SharePoint: I looked at the 800 page manual on SharePoint that someone bought and I decided that there had to be a better solution. We are using common@appin.com as a shared drive. The advantage is that Outlook allows one to have multiple instances of a "file" (MailSubject.msg) whereas Windows file system does not. This thread we are using to communicate could be a series of emails. If Windows allowed for files with the same filename within the same folder, we would abandon Outlook as the "email fileserver" and use the email subfolder in a fileserver job folder like all other jobs. We have folders for correspondence, drawings, design notes, submittals and emails. We only put emails in the email folder as .msg files because if if the archive person moves them all at once, Outlook will save emails with the same MailSubject.msg as MailSubject (Instance nnn).msg. Otherwise they are overwritten. We have all our emails in standard folder names and Outlook does not allow one to move a folder only the files (really instances on the exchange server). We have to keep all of our files and emails for the past 25 years as live documents (around the time that Bill Gates gave up his bicycle for a Cadillac after he made his first or second million) because of design liability reasons. We use Copernic as our search engine as it will index all file types and more than one email account. It is the best solution for us. We tried the Outlook archive folders but this did not allow for searching and ground all our machines to a halt. By moving archived emails into our file server as .msg files, our exchange server is far faster. The other advantage is that even though we back up our exchange server, we can back up all the emails as individual .msg files. If we lose an email, we can go to our offsite backup system to get the email rather than backing up exchange. An ost file may be slightly more compact, but hardrive space is cheap relative to labour costs and downtime. Ultimately our preference would be to use Windows Explorer within Outlook so we can treat emails as .msg files the way we manage all other files. Email is essential to the way all businesses work. It is the only set of data files that we have to manage within a program. We do not manage and organise .doc files in word nor .dwg files in AutoCAD. We are forced to manage emails within Outlook because of the design of the emails. This harkens back to the early DOS days. Allowing Explorer to manage multiple instances of the same file within a folder would solve this problem as there is no need for a staff person to have his or her own emails unless it was a truly personal email. Emails like word files belong to the company and are therefore a corporate good to be managed. The real solution is for Windows Explorer to support instantiation and for Outlook to use Windows Explorer as an add-in instead of its own folders. We would then be able to apply Group Policy the way all other security measures are implemented. We would not have to bother with SharePoint, Public Folders or other Outlook specialties. If you decide to make this fundamental change to Explorer, you can eliminate SharePoint, Public Folders and the Outlook 2010 multiple account feature. OWA We have no experience with this. Would we keep an IP client window open and if so can we move emails from common to a user email account and back again. I would doubt that one can do this so OWA would not be an option. If OWA supported a Window Explorer solution for email we would use that. Summary In sum, these are the real solutions. Anything else like our use of common and admin@domainname.com is simply a workaround to real solutions that allow us to manage email. If we could buy a third party add-in to Outlook that would use the Windows directory structure or a third party Explorer that allowed for mulitple instances of file names, we would eliminate all Outlook folders. Outlook would become another application like Word or Excell that simply uses files in the Windows directory tree instead of using outlook.ost. If you decide to adopt this sea change, I expect to be in the Windows 11 commercial as Windows 11 was MY idea. Thanks. Grant Wichenko

SharePoint: I looked at the 800 page manual on SharePoint that someone bought and I decided that there had to be a better solution. We are using common@appin.com as a shared drive. The advantage is that Outlook allows one to have multiple instances of a "file" (MailSubject.msg) whereas Windows file system does not. This thread we are using to communicate could be a series of emails. If Windows allowed for files with the same filename within the same folder, we would abandon Outlook as the "email fileserver" and use the email subfolder in a fileserver job folder like all other jobs. We have folders for correspondence, drawings, design notes, submittals and emails. We only put emails in the email folder as .msg files because if if the archive person moves them all at once, Outlook will save emails with the same MailSubject.msg as MailSubject (Instance nnn).msg. Otherwise they are overwritten. We have all our emails in standard folder names and Outlook does not allow one to move a folder only the files (really instances on the exchange server). We have to keep all of our files and emails for the past 25 years as live documents (around the time that Bill Gates gave up his bicycle for a Cadillac after he made his first or second million) because of design liability reasons. We use Copernic as our search engine as it will index all file types and more than one email account. It is the best solution for us. We tried the Outlook archive folders but this did not allow for searching and ground all our machines to a halt. By moving archived emails into our file server as .msg files, our exchange server is far faster. The other advantage is that even though we back up our exchange server, we can back up all the emails as individual .msg files. If we lose an email, we can go to our offsite backup system to get the email rather than backing up exchange. An ost file may be slightly more compact, but hardrive space is cheap relative to labour costs and downtime. Ultimately our preference would be to use Windows Explorer within Outlook so we can treat emails as .msg files the way we manage all other files. Email is essential to the way all businesses work. It is the only set of data files that we have to manage within a program. We do not manage and organise .doc files in word nor .dwg files in AutoCAD. We are forced to manage emails within Outlook because of the design of the emails. This harkens back to the early DOS days. Allowing Explorer to manage multiple instances of the same file within a folder would solve this problem as there is no need for a staff person to have his or her own emails unless it was a truly personal email. Emails like word files belong to the company and are therefore a corporate good to be managed. The real solution is for Windows Explorer to support instantiation and for Outlook to use Windows Explorer as an add-in instead of its own folders. We would then be able to apply Group Policy the way all other security measures are implemented. We would not have to bother with SharePoint, Public Folders or other Outlook specialties. If you decide to make this fundamental change to Explorer, you can eliminate SharePoint, Public Folders and the Outlook 2010 multiple account feature. OWA We have no experience with this. Would we keep an IP client window open and if so can we move emails from common to a user email account and back again. I would doubt that one can do this so OWA would not be an option. If OWA supported a Window Explorer solution for email we would use that. Summary In sum, these are the real solutions. Anything else like our use of common and admin@domainname.com is simply a workaround to real solutions that allow us to manage email. If we could buy a third party add-in to Outlook that would use the Windows directory structure or a third party Explorer that allowed for mulitple instances of file names, we would eliminate all Outlook folders. Outlook would become another application like Word or Excell that simply uses files in the Windows directory tree instead of using outlook.ost. If you decide to adopt this sea change, I expect to be in the Windows 11 commercial as Windows 11 was MY idea. Thanks. Grant Wichenko

On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:11:46 +0000, Grant Wichenko wrote: >I looked at the 800 page manual on SharePoint that someone bought and I decided that there had to be a better solution. And yet you use Exchange?! I guess you've never bought a book that describes it? IIRC, you've asked this question before. Your retort ('800 page manual') sounds awfully familar. >We are using common@appin.com as a shared drive. The advantage is that Outlook allows one to have multiple instances of a "file" (MailSubject.msg) whereas Windows file system does not. But Sharepoint, which doesn't use the O/S flat file system does. >This thread we are using to communicate could be a series of emails. Yeah, threaded discussions. >If Windows allowed for files with the same filename within the same folder, we would abandon Outlook as the "email fileserver" and use the email subfolder in a fileserver job folder like all other jobs. We have folders for correspondence, drawings, design notes, submittals and emails. We only put emails in the email folder as .msg files because if if the archive person moves them all at once, Outlook will save emails with the same MailSubject.msg as MailSubject (Instance nnn).msg. Otherwise they are overwritten. We have all our emails in standard folder names and Outlook does not allow one to move a folder >only the files (really instances on the exchange server). I haven't suggested using the O/S file system as a replacement for e-mail. >We have to keep all of our files and emails for the past 25 years as live documents (around the time that Bill Gates gave up his bicycle for a Cadillac after he made his first or second million) because of design liability reasons. Really? And yet you store those important items in a form, and place, that allows them to be altered or deleted? Yikes! Have you brought this point up with your legal counsil? >We use Copernic as our search engine as it will index all file types and more than one email account. It is the best solution for us. For indexing? Okay. >We tried the Outlook archive folders but this did not allow for searching and ground all our machines to a halt. PST's? Oh, no . . . you don't want to go down that rabbit hole. No, no, no, no, no. >By moving archived emails into our file server as .msg files, our exchange server is far faster. > >The other advantage is that even though we back up our exchange server, we can back up all the emails as individual .msg files. If we lose an email, we can go to our offsite backup system to get the email rather than backing up exchange. An ost file may be slightly more compact, but hardrive space is cheap relative to labour costs and downtime. Well, if this works for you (I'm assuming you mean you're doing some sort of "brick level" backup?) it still doesn't cover you (unless you keep ALL your backups forever -- something else you should discuss with legal counsil) when you have to prove that your copy of the the message is unadulterated. But that's not what you're asking about. >Ultimately our preference would be to use Windows Explorer within Outlook so we can treat emails as .msg files the way we manage all other files. Email is essential to the way all businesses work. That may be true, but trying to force an e-mail system into the role of an archive, fie system, and CRM system is rarely successful. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:11:46 +0000, Grant Wichenko wrote: >I looked at the 800 page manual on SharePoint that someone bought and I decided that there had to be a better solution. And yet you use Exchange?! I guess you've never bought a book that describes it? IIRC, you've asked this question before. Your retort ('800 page manual') sounds awfully familar. >We are using common@appin.com as a shared drive. The advantage is that Outlook allows one to have multiple instances of a "file" (MailSubject.msg) whereas Windows file system does not. But Sharepoint, which doesn't use the O/S flat file system does. >This thread we are using to communicate could be a series of emails. Yeah, threaded discussions. >If Windows allowed for files with the same filename within the same folder, we would abandon Outlook as the "email fileserver" and use the email subfolder in a fileserver job folder like all other jobs. We have folders for correspondence, drawings, design notes, submittals and emails. We only put emails in the email folder as .msg files because if if the archive person moves them all at once, Outlook will save emails with the same MailSubject.msg as MailSubject (Instance nnn).msg. Otherwise they are overwritten. We have all our emails in standard folder names and Outlook does not allow one to move a folder >only the files (really instances on the exchange server). I haven't suggested using the O/S file system as a replacement for e-mail. >We have to keep all of our files and emails for the past 25 years as live documents (around the time that Bill Gates gave up his bicycle for a Cadillac after he made his first or second million) because of design liability reasons. Really? And yet you store those important items in a form, and place, that allows them to be altered or deleted? Yikes! Have you brought this point up with your legal counsil? >We use Copernic as our search engine as it will index all file types and more than one email account. It is the best solution for us. For indexing? Okay. >We tried the Outlook archive folders but this did not allow for searching and ground all our machines to a halt. PST's? Oh, no . . . you don't want to go down that rabbit hole. No, no, no, no, no. >By moving archived emails into our file server as .msg files, our exchange server is far faster. > >The other advantage is that even though we back up our exchange server, we can back up all the emails as individual .msg files. If we lose an email, we can go to our offsite backup system to get the email rather than backing up exchange. An ost file may be slightly more compact, but hardrive space is cheap relative to labour costs and downtime. Well, if this works for you (I'm assuming you mean you're doing some sort of "brick level" backup?) it still doesn't cover you (unless you keep ALL your backups forever -- something else you should discuss with legal counsil) when you have to prove that your copy of the the message is unadulterated. But that's not what you're asking about. >Ultimately our preference would be to use Windows Explorer within Outlook so we can treat emails as .msg files the way we manage all other files. Email is essential to the way all businesses work. That may be true, but trying to force an e-mail system into the role of an archive, fie system, and CRM system is rarely successful. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

Perhaps you are not the person to be responding to this. I do not need my intelligence insulted here. You need to appreciate that many Outlook users face email chaos as they continue to send emails out with copies to many people. This represents a cleanup task of an enormous scale. No-one would keep multiple copies of a word document. This is commonplace with email. Despite this situation, we are regularly asked to re-send emails because they cannot find them whereas we can very easily. Our clients range from the Federal government to small businesses and we have to find anyone who has implemented SharePoint or have any other solution. In addition to our system we have a discipline of a naming convention. All staff delete the Re: and Fwd: from the replies as this screws up the movement of the .msg file to Windows. Email naming convention controls to force a discipline would be a helpful add-on as well. Some of our clients have implemented similar conventions based on our model. The issue of document control can be handled by GPO and we do this. We do not need nor care about about your opinion as to what we need to do for legal advice. You say that email cannot be used in this way, yet to date it has worked well for us. The performance of our workaround solution has improved immeasureably since we increased objtfolder from 500 to 2000. I thank you for that information. You must appreciate how fed up people are with the email chaos inflicted by the current design of Outlook. I sign the paychecks in this company as the Owner and I implemented this solution because I was fed up with the chaos in my organization. You are likely not in this position so you may not appreciate how much staff time is wasted dealing with cleaning up and organizing email. My suggestions are scalable and they leverage existing technology within the existing Windows OS. You tell me that trying to force an e-mail system into the role of an archive, fie system, and CRM system is rarely successful. This is singularly unhelpful. If you do not know the reason, I fully understand. Pllease have someone else reply or tell me where I can find the answer in TechNet. I bought Microsoft stock a few years ago. I have since sold it. Please give me a reason to buy it back. Thank you. Grant Wichenko

Perhaps you are not the person to be responding to this. I do not need my intelligence insulted here. You need to appreciate that many Outlook users face email chaos as they continue to send emails out with copies to many people. This represents a cleanup task of an enormous scale. No-one would keep multiple copies of a word document. This is commonplace with email. Despite this situation, we are regularly asked to re-send emails because they cannot find them whereas we can very easily. Our clients range from the Federal government to small businesses and we have to find anyone who has implemented SharePoint or have any other solution. In addition to our system we have a discipline of a naming convention. All staff delete the Re: and Fwd: from the replies as this screws up the movement of the .msg file to Windows. Email naming convention controls to force a discipline would be a helpful add-on as well. Some of our clients have implemented similar conventions based on our model. The issue of document control can be handled by GPO and we do this. We do not need nor care about about your opinion as to what we need to do for legal advice. You say that email cannot be used in this way, yet to date it has worked well for us. The performance of our workaround solution has improved immeasureably since we increased objtfolder from 500 to 2000. I thank you for that information. You must appreciate how fed up people are with the email chaos inflicted by the current design of Outlook. I sign the paychecks in this company as the Owner and I implemented this solution because I was fed up with the chaos in my organization. You are likely not in this position so you may not appreciate how much staff time is wasted dealing with cleaning up and organizing email. My suggestions are scalable and they leverage existing technology within the existing Windows OS. You tell me that trying to force an e-mail system into the role of an archive, fie system, and CRM system is rarely successful. This is singularly unhelpful. If you do not know the reason, I fully understand. Pllease have someone else reply or tell me where I can find the answer in TechNet. I bought Microsoft stock a few years ago. I have since sold it. Please give me a reason to buy it back. Thank you. Grant Wichenko

On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 23:52:02 +0000, Grant Wichenko wrote: > > >Perhaps you are not the person to be responding to this. I guess that's the chance you take when asking questions in a public forum. >I do not need my intelligence insulted here. Sorry you took it that way. Perhaps you'd do better hiring someone to answer your design question? >You need to appreciate that many Outlook users face email chaos as they continue to send emails out with copies to many people. Hmmm . . . didn't I say that an email system is unlikely to used successfully as a CRM system? >This represents a cleanup task of an enormous scale. No-one would keep multiple copies of a word document. This is commonplace with email. Yes, it is. But why would they (and I use "they" collectively) have multiple copies? Are they collaborating? An e-mail system is no (or little) help as a collaboration tool. >Despite this situation, we are regularly asked to re-send emails because they cannot find them whereas we can very easily. Let me understand . . . you expect a large company to have one common mailbox? >Our clients range from the Federal government to small businesses and we have to find anyone who has implemented SharePoint or have any other solution. So . . . document management systems don't exist? Or are you saying that the entities that purchase them don't use them? >In addition to our system we have a discipline of a naming convention. All staff delete the Re: and Fwd: from the replies as this screws up the movement of the .msg file to Windows. Email naming convention controls to force a discipline would be a helpful add-on as well. Some of our clients have implemented similar conventions based on our model. > >The issue of document control can be handled by GPO and we do this. We do not need nor care about about your opinion as to what we need to do for legal advice. I wasn't offering legal advice, just pointing out that while you think what you're doing is protecteing you in some way it probably isn't. You brought up the issue of "design liability", I didn't. My advice (or opinion) still stands. >You say that email cannot be used in this way, Back up and read it again. What I said was "trying to force an e-mail system into the role of an archive, fie(sic) system, and CRM system is rarely successful." >yet to date it has worked well for us. Well, good for you! >The performance of our workaround solution has improved immeasureably since we increased objtfolder from 500 to 2000. I thank you for that information. > >You must appreciate how fed up people are with the email chaos inflicted by the current design of Outlook. I sign the paychecks in this company as the Owner and I implemented this solution because I was fed up with the chaos in my organization. You are likely not in this position so you may not appreciate how much staff time is wasted dealing with cleaning up and organizing email. My suggestions are scalable and they leverage existing technology within the existing Windows OS. If you're signing paychecks you probably don't have more than a few score of employees. The places I've run e-mail systems for have ten thousand and up. So, yes, I'm pretty well aware of the way e-mail has been forced into business practices that are ill-suited for the medium. >You tell me that trying to force an e-mail system into the role of an archive, fie system, and CRM system is rarely successful. This is singularly unhelpful. If you do not know the reason, E-mail kept for "legal reasons" in places that allow original copues to be modified are no protection at all. If your legal counsil tells you otherwise ask one that's actually had to deal with this issue. Why doesn't it work as a CRM system? Becasue e-mail system can't produce the metrics that help you deal with your customers or point out where your employees can benefit from coaching/mentoring, or where some should be reassigned or let go because of poor performance. Since I don't know our business I can't offer something more specific. Why isn't e-mail a good file system? Because it can't be protected as well, doesn't offer the ability to keep different version of the same file, takes longer to recover, etc. >I fully understand. Pllease have someone else reply or tell me where I can find the answer in TechNet. Sorry, I have no control over who answers questions in a public place. >I bought Microsoft stock a few years ago. I have since sold it. Please give me a reason to buy it back. If you sold it when it was running aroung $130 a share, good on you! Just as you have a competent legal advisor, I'll bet you have someone to advise you on the risks of investing . . . or you could, I suppose, ask people chosen at random for that advice. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 23:52:02 +0000, Grant Wichenko wrote: > > >Perhaps you are not the person to be responding to this. I guess that's the chance you take when asking questions in a public forum. >I do not need my intelligence insulted here. Sorry you took it that way. Perhaps you'd do better hiring someone to answer your design question? >You need to appreciate that many Outlook users face email chaos as they continue to send emails out with copies to many people. Hmmm . . . didn't I say that an email system is unlikely to used successfully as a CRM system? >This represents a cleanup task of an enormous scale. No-one would keep multiple copies of a word document. This is commonplace with email. Yes, it is. But why would they (and I use "they" collectively) have multiple copies? Are they collaborating? An e-mail system is no (or little) help as a collaboration tool. >Despite this situation, we are regularly asked to re-send emails because they cannot find them whereas we can very easily. Let me understand . . . you expect a large company to have one common mailbox? >Our clients range from the Federal government to small businesses and we have to find anyone who has implemented SharePoint or have any other solution. So . . . document management systems don't exist? Or are you saying that the entities that purchase them don't use them? >In addition to our system we have a discipline of a naming convention. All staff delete the Re: and Fwd: from the replies as this screws up the movement of the .msg file to Windows. Email naming convention controls to force a discipline would be a helpful add-on as well. Some of our clients have implemented similar conventions based on our model. > >The issue of document control can be handled by GPO and we do this. We do not need nor care about about your opinion as to what we need to do for legal advice. I wasn't offering legal advice, just pointing out that while you think what you're doing is protecteing you in some way it probably isn't. You brought up the issue of "design liability", I didn't. My advice (or opinion) still stands. >You say that email cannot be used in this way, Back up and read it again. What I said was "trying to force an e-mail system into the role of an archive, fie(sic) system, and CRM system is rarely successful." >yet to date it has worked well for us. Well, good for you! >The performance of our workaround solution has improved immeasureably since we increased objtfolder from 500 to 2000. I thank you for that information. > >You must appreciate how fed up people are with the email chaos inflicted by the current design of Outlook. I sign the paychecks in this company as the Owner and I implemented this solution because I was fed up with the chaos in my organization. You are likely not in this position so you may not appreciate how much staff time is wasted dealing with cleaning up and organizing email. My suggestions are scalable and they leverage existing technology within the existing Windows OS. If you're signing paychecks you probably don't have more than a few score of employees. The places I've run e-mail systems for have ten thousand and up. So, yes, I'm pretty well aware of the way e-mail has been forced into business practices that are ill-suited for the medium. >You tell me that trying to force an e-mail system into the role of an archive, fie system, and CRM system is rarely successful. This is singularly unhelpful. If you do not know the reason, E-mail kept for "legal reasons" in places that allow original copues to be modified are no protection at all. If your legal counsil tells you otherwise ask one that's actually had to deal with this issue. Why doesn't it work as a CRM system? Becasue e-mail system can't produce the metrics that help you deal with your customers or point out where your employees can benefit from coaching/mentoring, or where some should be reassigned or let go because of poor performance. Since I don't know our business I can't offer something more specific. Why isn't e-mail a good file system? Because it can't be protected as well, doesn't offer the ability to keep different version of the same file, takes longer to recover, etc. >I fully understand. Pllease have someone else reply or tell me where I can find the answer in TechNet. Sorry, I have no control over who answers questions in a public place. >I bought Microsoft stock a few years ago. I have since sold it. Please give me a reason to buy it back. If you sold it when it was running aroung $130 a share, good on you! Just as you have a competent legal advisor, I'll bet you have someone to advise you on the risks of investing . . . or you could, I suppose, ask people chosen at random for that advice. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

What are these server objects and there defaults? In Exchange Server 2003, the number of server-side objects that are allowed by clients is limited to prevent a single client from the exhausting resources on the Exchange server If a MAPI client opens more than the default value of the server objects, an event is logged on the exchange server( Event ID 9646) and the client no longer can connect to the server. The default value of the various server objects are: objtMessage 250 objtFolder 500 objtAttachment 500 objtFolderView 500 objtMessageView 500 objtAttachView 500 objtStream 250 objtACLView 50 objtRulesView 50 objtFXSrcStrm 50 objtFXDstStrm 50 objtCStream 50 objtNotify 500,000 Folder contents are stored in a table in the information store database. As the number of items increases, there is a corresponding growth in storage complexity. The storage mechanism for the Exchange store is the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE). ESE uses B+ trees data structures to store records. As the number of records increases, the potential number of disk I/O requests that are required to locate the information and traverse the B+ tree also increases If a user is opening enough additional mailboxes through the "Open additional mailboxes" option in the profile settings, and is running Outlook in cached mode, this issue will occur. From my findings, it appears that when we first start, we make an attempt to sync all of the mailboxes, which is by design for shared mailboxes in Outlook 2007. Apparently the sync process was not designed to throttle how much it would go and try to access at one time, and ends up opening more than 500 Folder and Folder View objects, and because the Exchange store limits one session from opening more than 500 of these objects, the 9646 occurs and any further opens are blocked until enough objects are released to stay below 500. In my testing, if I let Outlook run for a bit after starting, it would indeed end up syncing all of the mailboxes successfully, although it would log the initial errors. Potential solutions: 1) Have these users use File, Open, Other user’s folder to open the Inbox of the additional mailboxes, rather than adding them to their profile. 2) Have these users run Outlook in Online, not cached, mode. This works because we don't attempt to actually open the folders or folder views until we access a folder. 3) Up the object limits on the server to allow the users to access more objects in one session. Impact of changing the default limits When you increase the maximum number of objects of a particular type, you also increase the amount of memory that may be consumed by client requests. Incorrectly configuring this value could lead to out-of-memory warnings or virtual memory fragmentation warnings. As Microsoft we recommend to stick to the defaults, but if a need arises and you have to modify the default, its pretty much dependent on the organization and environment. If its a very large organization, increasing these values may affect the server performance badly, and the server may just stop responding to any requests for the clients. A baseline should be developed, so in your case you might want to capture perfwiz report during busy hours on the server, ( with objtfolder set to 2000) and analyse the counters. if the performance of the server is finw, even in busy hours with serverobjects modifed from default, its good for you . Else reduce it to say 1000 and then compare the performance. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;830829 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905803

If it is a common logon account used by the shared mailbox users, you may want to provide the account the "view information store status" permissions which will skip the session limits check for the account. Increasing the object limits on the server will allow all the mailbox users on the server to enjoy the bonus limit you wanted to set for the shared mailbox.

If it is a common logon account used by the shared mailbox users, you may want to provide the account the "view information store status" permissions which will skip the session limits check for the account. Increasing the object limits on the server will allow all the mailbox users on the server to enjoy the bonus limit you wanted to set for the shared mailbox.

On Thu, 1 Jul 2010 06:12:24 +0000, Ekta-MSFT wrote: [ snip ] >If a user is opening enough additional mailboxes through the "Open additional mailboxes" option in the profile settings, and is running Outlook in cached mode, this issue will occur. From my findings, it appears that when we first start, we make an attempt to sync all of the mailboxes, which is by design for shared mailboxes in Outlook 2007. Isn't the recommendation to clear the "Download shared folders" checkbox on the "Advanced" tab of the "More Settings..." dialog box? >Apparently the sync process was not designed to throttle how much it would go and try to access at one time, and ends up opening more than 500 Folder and Folder View objects, and because the Exchange store limits one session from opening more than 500 of these objects, the 9646 occurs and any further opens are blocked until enough objects are released to stay below 500. In my testing, if I let Outlook run for a bit after starting, it would indeed end up syncing all of the mailboxes successfully, although it would log the initial errors. > >Potential solutions: 1) Have these users use File, Open, Other user?s folder to open the Inbox of the additional mailboxes, rather than adding them to their profile. 2) Have these users run Outlook in Online, not cached, mode. This works because we don't attempt to actually open the folders or folder views until we access a folder. If those additional mailboxes are subject to being searched then you'll lose the ability to use WDS and local indexes. If the mailboxes are large, searched often, and used by may people, the RPC load can climb pretty rapidly. You may get rid of the 9646 events but pay for in other ways. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

On Thu, 1 Jul 2010 06:12:24 +0000, Ekta-MSFT wrote: [ snip ] >If a user is opening enough additional mailboxes through the "Open additional mailboxes" option in the profile settings, and is running Outlook in cached mode, this issue will occur. From my findings, it appears that when we first start, we make an attempt to sync all of the mailboxes, which is by design for shared mailboxes in Outlook 2007. Isn't the recommendation to clear the "Download shared folders" checkbox on the "Advanced" tab of the "More Settings..." dialog box? >Apparently the sync process was not designed to throttle how much it would go and try to access at one time, and ends up opening more than 500 Folder and Folder View objects, and because the Exchange store limits one session from opening more than 500 of these objects, the 9646 occurs and any further opens are blocked until enough objects are released to stay below 500. In my testing, if I let Outlook run for a bit after starting, it would indeed end up syncing all of the mailboxes successfully, although it would log the initial errors. > >Potential solutions: 1) Have these users use File, Open, Other user?s folder to open the Inbox of the additional mailboxes, rather than adding them to their profile. 2) Have these users run Outlook in Online, not cached, mode. This works because we don't attempt to actually open the folders or folder views until we access a folder. If those additional mailboxes are subject to being searched then you'll lose the ability to use WDS and local indexes. If the mailboxes are large, searched often, and used by may people, the RPC load can climb pretty rapidly. You may get rid of the 9646 events but pay for in other ways. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

Recommendation to clear the "Download shared folders: In Office Outlook 2007, shared folders (Calendars, Contacts, Tasks) that users access in other mailboxes are downloaded and cached in the user's local .ost file when Cached Exchange Mode is enabled. Note Mail folders, such as the Inbox folder are not cached. No matter how the client is accessing sharde folder( added additional mailbox or use File-Open -other user's folder), ny default the shared folders( calendars, contacts, tasks) would get cached in OST file. Recommendation is to disable the caching of the shared folder in Outlook 2007 on an individuaal basis. RPC load on the server due to a lot of searches: Yes thats true, if a lot of search is done on the shared mailboxes, and it uses the store search it may load the server. cx needs to take a call on what his requirments are and decide on the trade offs.

Recommendation to clear the "Download shared folders: In Office Outlook 2007, shared folders (Calendars, Contacts, Tasks) that users access in other mailboxes are downloaded and cached in the user's local .ost file when Cached Exchange Mode is enabled. Note Mail folders, such as the Inbox folder are not cached. No matter how the client is accessing sharde folder( added additional mailbox or use File-Open -other user's folder), ny default the shared folders( calendars, contacts, tasks) would get cached in OST file. Recommendation is to disable the caching of the shared folder in Outlook 2007 on an individuaal basis. RPC load on the server due to a lot of searches: Yes thats true, if a lot of search is done on the shared mailboxes, and it uses the store search it may load the server. cx needs to take a call on what his requirments are and decide on the trade offs.

Grant: Let us know if your questions about the server objects and there impact has been answered in my earlier reply.

Grant: Let us know if your questions about the server objects and there impact has been answered in my earlier reply.

I appreciate you stepping in as the last person was not helpful. We have increased the limit to 2000 so we can process emails in our common and our admin faster. This has helped somewhat but we are finding that the exchange server is not updating other people's commons until we sign into common to to a manual send/receive to force a synchronization. We are going to try increasing the limit to 3000 to eliminate the need for manual resync. I have the online and offline send/receive set to 3 minutes but this does not work. You must do a manual send/receive. Your solution of using file/open/other user's folder is not a solution because you can only see the inbox, not the sent. My understanding is that 2010 supports three simultaneous profiles. If this is the case then Microsoft may actually get the message here. You must understand that Microsoft has created email chaos by forcing us to keep our email in Outlook. Word, Excel, etc do not require this. This sort of requirement stopped 20 years ago. We are looking at an Outlook add-in called Mail Manager. Now it still does not do what we have done with our common but it allows us to put email in our file server by job instead of in Outlook. If email was not so integral to our business we would not be so concerned. I cannot believe that bigger customers than us have not raised this issue. Just last week one of our military clients had one person leave and we ahve to re-send our emails to the new person as accessing the former person's account is very difficult. We have now commited the company to this. No-one has a separate email folding anymore just as no-one has their own directory for docx files. We are moving to put all shared emails in common and adminstrative emails in admin. We now have a computer that stays on all the time signed into common and anyone can go up to it to force a manual sync to make outlook resync. This is a ridiculous solution but given what we get from Microsoft, there are not other choices. This could be a killer app for Microsoft but you may not see the elegance of our solution or third party add-ins like Mail Manager. Thank you for intervening. Grant Wichenko

I appreciate you stepping in as the last person was not helpful. We have increased the limit to 2000 so we can process emails in our common and our admin faster. This has helped somewhat but we are finding that the exchange server is not updating other people's commons until we sign into common to to a manual send/receive to force a synchronization. We are going to try increasing the limit to 3000 to eliminate the need for manual resync. I have the online and offline send/receive set to 3 minutes but this does not work. You must do a manual send/receive. Your solution of using file/open/other user's folder is not a solution because you can only see the inbox, not the sent. My understanding is that 2010 supports three simultaneous profiles. If this is the case then Microsoft may actually get the message here. You must understand that Microsoft has created email chaos by forcing us to keep our email in Outlook. Word, Excel, etc do not require this. This sort of requirement stopped 20 years ago. We are looking at an Outlook add-in called Mail Manager. Now it still does not do what we have done with our common but it allows us to put email in our file server by job instead of in Outlook. If email was not so integral to our business we would not be so concerned. I cannot believe that bigger customers than us have not raised this issue. Just last week one of our military clients had one person leave and we ahve to re-send our emails to the new person as accessing the former person's account is very difficult. We have now commited the company to this. No-one has a separate email folding anymore just as no-one has their own directory for docx files. We are moving to put all shared emails in common and adminstrative emails in admin. We now have a computer that stays on all the time signed into common and anyone can go up to it to force a manual sync to make outlook resync. This is a ridiculous solution but given what we get from Microsoft, there are not other choices. This could be a killer app for Microsoft but you may not see the elegance of our solution or third party add-ins like Mail Manager. Thank you for intervening. Grant Wichenko

Grant, did you ever get this situation resolved? I have a similar situation. We're a SaaS company with two Support engineers but a number of other employees need to access support emails. The shared support@... mailbox has about 1500 folders under it, one for each customer (current or past). Every email from a customer goes into their folder. We have about 100K emails now. We're having all sorts of problems. The user running Outlook 2007 can see the whole folder tree but she cannot create new folders and move messages from the Support@... inbox to the folder where the message belongs. In addition to her own personal mailbox, she opens the Support mailbox using the "Open Additional Mailboxes" option. The user running Outlook 2010 was never able to get the Support mailbox synchronized; it stopped about 10% of the way in. In addition to his own personal mailbox, he opens the Support mailbox as a second Exchange account. I'm running Outlook 2011 (Mac) and I can see the whole tree, can create folders and move messages around. But every couple of minutes, I get a Mac beachball (=Windows hourglass) and my system "freezes" for about 10 seconds while it synchronizes something. Then I get control back and continue as normal. DanDan

Grant, did you ever get this situation resolved? I have a similar situation. We're a SaaS company with two Support engineers but a number of other employees need to access support emails. The shared support@... mailbox has about 1500 folders under it, one for each customer (current or past). Every email from a customer goes into their folder. We have about 100K emails now. We're having all sorts of problems. The user running Outlook 2007 can see the whole folder tree but she cannot create new folders and move messages from the Support@... inbox to the folder where the message belongs. In addition to her own personal mailbox, she opens the Support mailbox using the "Open Additional Mailboxes" option. The user running Outlook 2010 was never able to get the Support mailbox synchronized; it stopped about 10% of the way in. In addition to his own personal mailbox, he opens the Support mailbox as a second Exchange account. I'm running Outlook 2011 (Mac) and I can see the whole tree, can create folders and move messages around. But every couple of minutes, I get a Mac beachball (=Windows hourglass) and my system "freezes" for about 10 seconds while it synchronizes something. Then I get control back and continue as normal. DanDan