Work Life: Sharing PST Files

The corporation only provides 50MB of email space. I reach this quote with only one month's worth of emails. To lighten this load, I had suggested a group mailbox so that we can reduce the amount of emails needed in our personal mailbox. The group mailbox has a slightly higher quote but unfortunately also contains more important emails for audit.

Network Share

I tried to search for solutions to store the emails at some location on the network. But, it appears that any sharing over the network is discouraged. I tried testing this anyways and appears that the file gets locked once someone accesses the PST file.

Unlocking File

I could not find a way to unlock the file. I tried to close the mailbox and then tried to close/reopen Outlook. I keep getting the following error:

"The file [[filename]].pst cannot be opened."

I even tried after the user had logged off. After a period of time, I was able to successfully able to access the file. Most likely there is a timer that unlocks the file if somehow the lock is not released properly (whatever that process is if there is one). So this makes this not appealing as a solution to the group.

My Workaround

Because we are just using this so we can keep records of old trails to certain processes, I decided for the short-term to create a local PST and store all the old emails there. Once completed, copy the PST file to the shared folder. Whoever on the team that needs the archived emails can then copy the PST to their local system and attach it to their Outlook.

The user may choose to keep a permanent local mailbox. The user will still follow the steps to "download" the PST from the network folder then simply copies all the emails to the permanent mailbox. Drop and delete the downloaded PST file.

To update the archive file, download the latest copy then copy all old emails to the archive mailbox, drop the mailbox, and copy mailbox to the network folder.

There are some risks that the PST file may get corrupted. Keep a backup file may be useful.

Reference

http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/aboutpst.htm
http://www.publicshareware.com/public-share-outlook-description.html

Terms

shared mailbox - some sites use this term in place of group mailbox

Complaint: Microsoft Exchange - Group Mailboxes

I like that group mailboxes decrease the amount of mail circulating within the group, but there have been a few things that do not work as I expected them.

The reason we switched to using a group mailbox is because it allows our team to have a central location for emails. Since we use a lot of personnel rotations for each role, this can be confusing for people outside our group. Also, this forms some bad habits within the group of not checking all emails (even though they should be checking the email when they are off-rotation).

Sending mail from group box

When sending emails after changing the 'from address' to the group email id, the sent mail is saved in my personal box's sent folder. This means that I cannot tell if someone in my team already responded to the email nor the team knowing that I responded to the email without copying ourselves.

Sending meetings to the group box

When someone accepts the meeting in the group box, the meeting automatically goes to the deleted folder. This does not allow anyone else in the group to see the invite to accept. On the other hand, this is good if the invite only needs a single representative from the group.

Rules

You need additional permissions to add rules to the group mailbox. Since I do not have it, there are limitations to what I can add. One rule that I would like is to copy certain emails to my personal box. I think it should be possible to create a local rule to copy from one mailbox to another, but I cannot find a way to get the rule to check the incoming mail to a group mailbox.

Overall

Group mailboxes are still usable and useful to have especially when you have low email quotas. Otherwise, a distribution list (DL) may be an better alternative.




Reference:
http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2013/10/complaint-outlook-2010-adding-rules-to.html