Summary

If you're coming new to Exchange 2007 or don't have a lot of investment in public folders in your current Exchange organization, then you probably haven't been too worried about the rumors of the demise of public folders in Exchange 2007. These rumors are fortunately not true; public folders are still supported in Exchange, even if the out-of-the box management options aren't all that we could hope for.

By concentrating its effort on providing solid support for public folder management in the Exchange Management Shell, Microsoft has finally provided the missing command-line management interface that can simplify dealing with one-off public folder management tasks. These cmdlets also make it easy to do large-scale scripted and bulk management operations.

The lack of a native GUI, however, is offset by Microsoft's continued development and support of the PFDAVAdmin tool, which provides a familiar interface for those who are used to the legacy Exchange System Manager. However, it also gives you a lot more power, providing sophisticated bulk operations and import/export capabilities that make managing large public folder deployments smoother. While you still have legacy servers in your organization, you can continue using the legacy System Manager to manage your public folder replicas.