In an Outlook 2007/Exchange 2007/Windows XP environment, what's the best way to manage multiple email accounts? Several users have the task of monitoring multiple accounts. The incoming messages and replies (Inbox/Sent Mail) need to be segregated per account so other users can determine what has been read/sent/etc.
Currently we use Outlook profiles, which require the users to open/close Outlook for every account. They have to do this periodically throughout the day. This is inefficient, so we are looking for a better solution.
Best Answer
I would have the users open their primary mailbox and then open the "shared" mailboxes as secondary mailboxes. Microsoft gives you the click-for-click procedure here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291626 Since you've already got these people opening the shared mailboxes you shouldn't run into permission issues,
If you need these people to be able to "Send As" the shared mailboxes, grant them "Send As" permission (or, more appropriately, create a group, put them in the group, then grant the group "Send As" permission) on the shared mailbox recipients.
Using "Public Folders" to do this is a very nice option, but that feature is going away in future versions of Exchange I'm not directing people toward it as much as I used to. We used to do a lot of this kind of thing for, for example, incoming customer service emails. We'd have the incoming issues go into one public folder, a CSR would pick up the issue email and move it to a "work in process" public folder (to let the other CSRs know that someone "had the issue") and then they'd move it into a "Resolved" folder, along with the email they sent as a resolution (they'd cc the "Resolved" folder) for history.