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Tips to get the most out of Outlook and/or Exchange
Once Exchange is in use, whether hosted
or in-house, there are many ways to
leverage the tool for enhanced performance and increased productivity.
The following is a list of simple, yet often overlooked, ways a company
can optimize their use of Microsoft Exchange.
Lookout-
For users who use Microsoft Outlook as a filing cabinet, which is to
say they don’t delete anything, a free application called Lookout
is highly recommended. Once downloaded and installed, Lookout will appear
as a tool bar in your Outlook client and can used to quickly scan all
of Outlook for messages, contacts, notes, etc… for the term you searched.
When you need to find that email from three months ago but you have
no idea where you put it, Lookout is the tool for you. For Microsoft
Exchange help on searching mail folders click here
to visit the Lookout website.
Mailbox Size-
Those that don’t delete anything may have notice Outlook has slowed
down. Particularly with the use of Exchange, mailboxes are recommended
to be kept at 300MB or less. The more data Outlook has to synchronize
with the Exchange Server the greater the chance performance will slow.
In fact, Outlook can not properly handle mailbox (PSTs) over 2GB in
size. Click here for
Microsoft Exchange help on how you can keep your mailbox to 300MB.
Spam Filtering-
It is highly recommended that spam filters be applied before they arrive
at the Exchange server. This is likely in place for most hosted solutions
but perhaps not considered for in-house deployments. An Exchange server
can really be taxed by processing spam or a denial of service attack.
If the Exchange server does not have the horsepower to properly respond
to hordes of unnecessary spam if could literally grind to a halt. By
offloading these functions to another machine, or even an off site service,
you are able to better leverage the horsepower of the Exchange server
because the server can now ‘concentrate’ only on legitimate mail. It
is important to note that third party spam services will likely have
anti-virus solutions in place, but this should not replace an anti-virus
solution on your in-house server or desktops.
Passwords-
In some organizations passwords are consider an unnecessary annoyance.
In fact it is not uncommon to find that everyone in an organization
uses the same password. It is highly recommended that policy be put
in place to encourage, if not require, that passwords be changed by
users every 90 days. While using and changing passwords may not be well
received, they protect valuable company information. You know what they
say, ‘a chain is only as strong as its weakest link’, and in the information
age loose passwords is a serious company liability.
Continuity-
Do you have a continuity plan for your Exchange service? One of the
benefits of using an outsourced Exchange
service is that if for some reason your internet connectivity is lost
inside the office, users can still access their mail from anywhere there
is internet access via Outlook Web Access or OWA. However, if your Exchange
server resides in-house and you lose
internet connectivity to your office or your Exchange server goes down,
your concern is not only employees being able to send email but more
importantly what happens to incoming mail being sent to the company?
The last thing you want is for any mail to get lost or bounced back
to the sender. Accordingly, it is imperative with on site Exchange servers
that some intervening mechanism catches and holds on to, or queues incoming
mail until such time as your Exchange server is back up or internet
connectivity is restored. Some spam or antivirus services can offer
this but there are many other ways to enable this layer of protection
as well.
These suggestions are the tip of the iceberg in terms of Microsoft
Exchange help. The bottom line is that a little knowledge with Exchange
can go a long way to optimizing performance and productivity.
us today to see how Terminal B can increase the performance of your
Exchange services and leverage its collaborative power in your organization.
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