Exchange Server - Public Folders, OAB, Outlook 2003/2007, Exchange 2007

Asked By JasonCarte

16-Oct-07 01:54 PM

Just a quick check with you other techs to see if I have this all straight:

As far as migrating public folders from 2003 to 2007, all you need to do is
set up 2007 to replicate the public folder database with the 2003 server,
once it has replicated, just remove the 2003 server from the replica list,
pretty much correct?

I have some other "concerns" I guess you can call them.  Our enviroment is
mixed with Outlook 2003 and 2007 clients.  We give the user the choice to
upgrade and don't "force" them.  So, will there be any problems with the 2003
clients accessing public folders, as well as the OAB once everything is fully
migrated to 2007?

Right now we have pretty much everything on 2007 in the computing department
and currently still are replicating public folders between the 2003 and 2007
servers.  Once we move all mailboxes to 2007 and remove the 2003 public
folder replica, everything should be cool right?

2007 clients should be good because they get their OAB from the CAS servers.
I haven't read, but I know that Office 2003 SP3 just came out, and I don't
know if they made a change for Outlook to read from the CAS servers or not.

16-Oct-07 05:01 PM

assuming you have your public folders replicated to 2007, you can control the
level of "backwards compatibility" for the OAB by going into the EMC -> Org
Config -> Mailbox role -> OAB tab -> properties of your OAB(s) ->
Distribution tab.

You can see the same information in the powershell with:
Get-OfflineAddressBook | fl

It is listed under the Versions parameter for client backward compatibility
and the PublicFolderDistributionEnabled parameter must be set to True if you
want to use Public Folders to distribute OAB to pre 2007 clients.

Obviously you can set the parameters in the powershell with:
Set-OfflineAddressBook -Versions
Set-OfflineAddressBook -PublicFolderDistributionEnabled