Are public folders holding you back? Modernize your email collaboration strategy

An on-premises Microsoft Exchange server and public folders are useful tools but nowadays there are more modern and efficient alternatives.

An on-premises Exchange Server is highly configurable and does not require a monthly fee but maintaining it requires continuous work from your IT team. In addition, Microsoft can offer reliability and security that your IT team cannot compete with.

Public folders are a viable tool for organizing email collaboration. However, they have some significant limitations in the modern workplace. To start with, public folders cannot be accessed by mobile app and have limited functionality on the web. Furthermore, public folders are not integrated well with modern Microsoft cloud solutions like SharePoint.

The best alternatives to public folders are Microsoft 365 Groups and Shared Mailboxes. This article will help you decide which option to proceed with.

Shared mailboxes are one alternative to public folders. One of their big advantages is that they function quite similarly to public folders. Therefore, they will be simple to use. Shared mailboxes allow you to continue using team wide categories and folders. You can learn about how to collaborate effectively with shared mailboxes in our guide. Even using best practices, collaborating with a shared mailbox is cumbersome and prone to errors. Also, similarly to public folders they are not well integrated with other Microsoft services. Thus, you may want to consider another solution, especially if you have a larger team.

Microsoft 365 Groups integrates well with other Microsoft services like SharePoint. In fact, you may need to use a group for another application anyhow, making it very convenient to use a group for email as well since a group email address is created automatically. A big problem with Groups is that it has more limited options for email collaboration. Groups does not have the option to set categories teamwide like public folders and shared mailboxes do. This limits your ability to organize your team’s email as a collective.

The most effective way to get the benefits of a Microsoft 365 Group and a Shared Mailbox and more is to extend your Outlook with SBX. Your email will still use groups, but SBX allows you to use shared teamwide categories and easily assign emails.

With the number of cloud solutions currently available, you can find one that will make your email communication more reliable as well as saving your company time.