Managing and Administering Public Folders and Public Folder Database in Exchange Server 2007

In this post, we are going to discuss on how to manage the public folders and the Public Folder Database in Exchange Server. As we all know, exchange server 2007 release don’t have the management console to manage the public folders, only option available its exchange management shell and in the release of Exchange server 2007 SP1, we got the New Management Tool called Public Folder Management Console.
We have three option to manage and Administer Public folders and public folder databases.

1. Exchange Management Console – We have the option to manage and admin Public Folder Databases
2. Exchange Management Shell – Full control over the public folders and databases to manage them
3. Public Folder Management Console – GUI mode to manage public Folders located in Tools

Here in the post, we are going to look at the below topics

1. Public Folders in Simple
2. Managing and Administering Public Folder Database
3. Managing and Administering New Public Folder
4. Managing Permission on Public Folder
5. How to view the permission on a public folder for a specific User
6. How to set public Folder replication
7. Public Folder Management Console

Public Folder in Simple
Public folders are designed for a shared access of information to the employees. Public folders are hierarchically organized, stored in dedicated databases, and can be replicated between Exchange servers using public folders replication. With the release of exchange server 2007, public folder is an optional one, where, if any of the users in an organization is using outlook 2003, he needs public folder database to get the free busy information and the offline address book. In no outlook 2003, then there is no need of a public folder database

Managing and Administering Public Folder Database
Public Folder Database: Public Folder Database it’s just same like a Mailbox Database created as an .edb file. The public folder database contains data that is available to all users who have mailboxes and appropriate permissions

Public Folder Replication
As like CCR, SCR or LCR, we don’t have any option to have high availability concept for exchange server Public Folder Database, if the second server is having public folder database, we can replicate the content of the database to achieve high availability.
Public Folder Replication replicates two types of information to other public folder database, if public folder replication is enabled. They are the Hierarchy Information and the Public Folder Contents

Public Folder Referral
When a client application, such as Outlook, attempts to open an Exchange public folder, the Exchange server determines which folder replica the client application should access. This process is called public folder referral. If a replica of the requested content exists on the Exchange server that serves the request, the client application accesses the local replica. If the replica does not exist on the local server, Exchange attempts to locate a replica in the same Active Directory directory service site. You can modify the flow of user traffic to allow referrals over certain connectors by specifying a list of referral servers and assigning a routing cost to each server

Creating a Public Folder Database
In my environment, I don’t have Public Folder Database and for the first time I’m creating the public folder, Below figure shows the current storage group and available mailbox database in my environ before create Public folder



Since it’s a test environment, I’m not mentioning Storage group path or Public folder path, while creating a new storage group for public folder database and the public folder database



Below figure show the status after creating public folder database on fifth storage group. Where you have to mount the mailbox database



Exchange Management shell command on managing and administrating Public Folder Database

Below are few exchange management shell commands related to public folder managing and administration

Get-PublicFolderDatabase

à To view the list of public folder database in your organization
Mount –Database -Identity “your public folder database name”
à To mount the PF database
Dismount-Database –Identity “”your public folder database name”
àTo dismount the PF database

To maintainmodify public folder database settings
Set-PublicFolderDatabase -Identity “Server namePF Database name” -DeletedItemRetention 07.00:00:00 -RetainDeletedItemsUntilBackup $true -EventHistoryRetentionPeriod 14.00:00:00 -ItemRetentionPeriod unlimited

To remove a public Folder Database, we have to pass the server name, Storage group name and the PF database as mentioned below
Remove-PublicFolderDatabase -Identity “<server><storage group><public folder database>”

To move the public folder content from one PF database to other
MS provide a script name “MoveAllReplicas.ps1″ to move all the public folders in a PF database from single server to other server, we can use it like
MoveAllReplicas.ps1 -Server Server01 -NewServer Server02

Managing and Administrating Public Folders
We can createdelete, assignremove public folder permission and also mail enablemail disable public folders using public folder management console or the exchange management shell
To createDelete a New Public Folder
New-PublicFolder -Name ‘System Administrator’ -Path ” -Server ‘test-ex-ccr.ssmtest.com’
Remove-PublicFolder –Name ‘System Administrator’ -Path” -Server ‘test-ex-ccr.ssmtest.com’ –Recurse:$true

How to view public folder statistics
Public folders statistics command will give the details such as the display name, creation time, last modified time, and item size.



Managing and Administering Public Folder Permission
To assign or remove public folder permission, We have two types of permission that can be assigned to public folders for a user

Public Folder Administrative Permission – granting administrative access to user on the public folder like deleted item retention, managing public folder quotas etc…
 
Add-PublicFolderAdministrativePermision –Identity ‘System Administrator’ –AccessRights viewinformationstore –user Rajkumar

None The administrator does not have any rights to modify public folder attributes.

• ModifyPublicFolderACL The administrator has the right to modify client access permissions for the specified folder.
• ModifyPublicFolderAdminACL The administrator has the right to modify administrator permissions for the specified public folder.
• ModifyPublicFolderDeletedItemRetention The administrator has the right to modify the Public Folder Deleted Item Retention attributes (RetainDeletedItemsFor, UseDatabaseRetentionDefaults).
• ModifyPublicFolderExpiry The administrator has the right to modify the Public Folder Expiration attributes (AgeLimit, UseDatabaseAgeDefaults).
• ModifyPublicFolderQuotas The administrator has the right to modify the Public Folder Quota attributes (MaxItemSize, PostQuota, PostWarningQuota, UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults)
• ModifyPublicFolderReplicaList The administrator has the right to modify the replica list attribute for the specified public folder (Replicas).
• AdministerInformationStore The administrator has the right to modify all other public folder properties that are not defined above.
• ViewInformationStore The administrator has the right view public folder properties.
• AllExtendedRights The administrator has the right to modify all public folder properties.

Public Folder Client Permission – granting client access permission to user on the public folder to have access control over the public folder to create items, owner of the public folder etc. Below are the access rights that can be set for a user

Add-PublicFolderClientPermision –Identity ‘System Administrator’ –AccessRights createitems –user rajkumar

• ReadItems The user has the right to read items within the specified public folder.
• CreateItems The user has the right to create items within the specified public folder and send e-mail messages to the public folder if it is mail-enabled.
• EditOwnedItems The user has the right to edit the items that the user owns in the specified public folder.
• DeleteOwnedItems The user has the right to delete items that the user owns in the specified public folder.
• EditAllItems The user has the right to edit all items in the specified public folder.
• DeleteAllItems The user has the right to delete all items in the specified public folder.
• CreateSubfolders The user has the right to create subfolders in the specified public folder.
• FolderOwner The user is the owner of the specified public folder. The user has the right to view and move the public folder, create subfolders, and set permissions for the folder. The user cannot read items, edit items, delete items, or create items.
• FolderContact The user is the contact for the specified public folder.
• FolderVisible The user can view the specified public folder, but cannot read or edit items within the specified public folder

To Manage Full access permission for a user on a public folder



To Manage Send As permission for a public folder
Add-ADPermission -Identity ‘CN=System Administrator,CN=Microsoft Exchange System Objects,DC=SSMTEST,DC=COM’ -User ‘SSMTESTrajkumar’ -ExtendedRights ‘Send-as’

Managing and Administering Public Folder Settings
Below are the shell commands available to manage public folder settings
Set-Public Folder – help us to configure only the mail-enabled public folder settings that are not mail related
Set-MailPublicFolder – help us to configure mail-enabled public folder settings that are mail related
Set-PublicFolder -Identity ‘System Administrator’ –MaxItemSize 2048 –IssueWarningQuota 10240 –ProhibitPostQuota 20480 –UseDatabaseReplicationSchedule: false –RelicationSchedule:Always
Enable-MailPublicFolder or Disable-MailPublicFolder – To mail enable or mail disable public folders
Enable-MailPublicFolder -Identity ‘System Administrator’



While mail enabling public folder, if there is a gap between the two words, it will be automatically filled with _ and the email address will be created like firstname_lastname@domainname.com

Managing and Administering Public Folder Management Console
Below figure shows the public folder management console available in the Tools option on exchange management console



Public Folder tree: The public folder tree is located on the left side of my console and is organized by nodes that are based on the public folder hierarchy. As you can see, I’ve got the classic

Default Public Folders node, where all of the public folders that I’ve created exist. Users can access these folders either directly or by using a client application such as Microsoft Outlook. And then I’ve got the snazzy

System Public Folders node, Users don’t access these folders. These folders store the information that is used by Outlook such as free and busy data or offline address books (OABs).
For easy understanding and navigation, I marked few option in red box in the below figure



Additional shell commands to manage and administration related to public
folder
To export the list of public folders those are available in a server and export the output in csv

Get-PublicFolder -recurse -Server test-ex-ccr | select name, parentpath |export-csv c:public.csv

To get the list of mail enable public folders in a server
Get-MailPublicFolder -recurse -Server test-ex-ccr | select name, parentpath |export-csv c:public.csv

To view the client access permission for on a single public folder
Get-PublicFolderClientPermission -Identity “System Administrator” | fl



Inform your feedback on this post, I’ll add few more information later on this topic