An Alternative to Exchange Public Folders…

I read with interest the following article from this months’ Technet magazine which provides a useful ‘helicopter’ view of the technologies available now within Microsoft’s Office System (formerly known as Microsoft SharePoint Server 2003, Microsoft CMS amongst other services). In particular the features purportedly from Microsoft’s Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 which out of the box provide an easy to use, enhanced and replacement set of features for the widely used Exchange Public folder mechanism.

Unlike MOSS (which licensed at server/client in most cases), most of the functionality described in this article is actually provided by the underpinning technology of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS v3) which is ‘free’ with your Windows 2003 server license program. WSS sits below MOSS on top of the operating system and ‘comes with’ MOSS, but WSS is also available as a free download.

It’s worth reviewing both sets of functionality (MOSS and or WSS) before committing to either one (or both). MOSS undoubtedly provides an enterprise level suite of applications, but don’t overlook its smaller sibling (WSS) as it packs a mighty punch in terms of end user productivity.