Mailboxes and Folders
If you've used Microsoft Outlook for a while, you've probably heard the terms mailbox, personal folders, public folders, offline folders, and archive folders. Add to this the new concept of CRM folders and it can get a bit confusing. Let's make some sense of it.
To use CRMSO, your company must be set up to use Microsoft Exchange Server as its email server software. Exchange is responsible for receiving, sending, and storing email, among other things. When using Exchange server, you can specify where you want your messages to be delivered. The options are
Exchange Mailbox
Personal Folder file
Exchange Mailbox
Mailboxes are structures on the Exchange server where your mail can be delivered. In reality, the term mailbox is deceiving because this mailbox holds more than just email. Your Exchange mailbox also holds tasks, appointments, notes, and contacts. If you're set up to only use your mailbox without other folders (offline and/or personal folders), all your mail stays on the server and each time you open a message, Outlook fetches it from the server and displays it on your computer. Exchange sets up a mailbox by default when a new user is added.
Personal Folder File
You can optionally create a personal folder file for mail delivery and/or storage locally on your computer. A personal folder file is a file with a .pst extension that is stored locally on your computer. If you choose to have your mail delivered to your personal folder file, each mail item will be downloaded to your computer when you check your mail. Copies of your downloaded messages will not be stored on the server. You can create a personal folder file and not have your mail delivered to it. This is common in cases where you want to keep copies of more mail than your system administrator has configured Exchange to allow.
The other file types involved with Exchange/Outlook/CRM are
Offline Folder File
If you use your Exchange mailbox for email delivery and storage, you can set up an Offline Folder file to provide you with copies of messages so that you can read and reply to them when you are not connected to the network. Offline Folder files end in an .ost extension and enable you to specify which folders are synchronized.
Public Folders
Public Folders are folders that reside on the Exchange server and provide a common place for the storage of messages and other Exchange objects. You can synchronize public folder information to Offline Folders for disconnected use.
Archive File
Outlook can be set up to archive objects on a scheduled interval or on demand. Archiving is a way of keeping local copies of items to which you might want to refer in the future. An archive file is a local .pst file (typically named archive.pst). Outlook's archiving mechanism makes it easy to move items into archive files.
CRM Folders
CRMSO installs a series of folders to house CRM objects including Contacts, Leads, Accounts, Activities, and so on. To do this, CRMSO uses a personal folder file (MSCRM.pst) to represent the folders in the interface. However, this .pst file does not store the offline CRM data. All data storage is handled by the MSDE database.