Managing Public Folder Referrals
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.
Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Server 2007 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP3
Public folder referrals have an associated cost number. The numbers range from 1 to 100. This cost number is used to optimize message flow. Specifically, e-mail messages are routed according to lowest cost number. If two or more routes are available with the same cost, the load is distributed as equally as possible between them. This cost is also used to calculate the most appropriate route that the client application (such as Microsoft Office Outlook) can use to access public folders on remote servers.
Although Exchange administrators can create public folder referrals and site costs, we do not recommend that you do this because the maximum public folder referral cost that Exchange administrators can set for a public folder database is 100. However, by setting the maximum referral cost for a server to 100, the server may still be used for referrals.
Instead, public folder referrals and site costs should be determined by an administrator who is a member of the Domain Admins group or the Enterprise Admins group in the Active Directory directory service. In Active Directory Sites and Services, a user who has Domain Admin or Enterprise Admin permissions can set the Active Directory site link cost up to or greater than 500.This higher cost number helps ensure that a server will not be used for referrals.
This topic lists the management tasks that you can perform for public folder referrals, including links to topics that can help you complete the task:
How to Configure Public Folder Replication
Perform this procedure to configure costs for public folder referrals. In addition, you can configure the custom referral cost list to not use certain servers by excluding them from the list.
After you configure the cost referrals for public folders, you are required to maintain the list of cost referrals. Therefore, you must make sure that each new public folder database is added to the referral list as needed.
How to Change the Default Public Folder Database for a Mailbox Database
Perform this procedure to change the default public folder database for a mailbox database.
MAPI client applications, such as Office Outlook, open a connection to the default public folder database and perform all hierarchy-based operations against the server that contains that database. These operations include viewing public folders, creating and deleting public folders, and querying for the location of public folder content.
For More Information
To learn more about public folder referrals, see Understanding Public Folder Referrals.
To learn more about public folders, see Understanding Public Folders.
For more information about how to manage public folders, see the following topics: