When setting up Public Folder archiving, consider the following:

• When you specify a public folder root path then, by default, all folders underneath that path are archived.

• If you want a setting to be applied to a whole section of a public folder tree, use Enterprise Vault Policy Manager.

• An Exchange Public Folder task takes its settings from the site that the Exchange Public Folder task is in and applies those settings to every folder under its root path.

  If you change any archiving policy using Outlook, the change applies only to that folder, even if the folder is the root path.

  So, for example, you could have three root paths archived under one site and you want to change the policy for one of those paths. You could use the Enterprise Vault folder properties in Outlook. However only that folder and not its subfolders will have the new archive policy. If you want to have folder policy inheritance you must use Policy Manager to set up the policy. Policy Manager will set the new policy on all subfolders.

• Any new public folder is archived using the site settings until you change the settings for that folder. The new folder does not inherit any settings from its parent.

  For example, if you set a particular part of the public folder tree as Do Not Archive, any new folder created in there will archived until you change its settings. The same is true for a folder move.

  To correct this you would run Policy Manager every day to ensure that the correct folder policies are being applied.

• If you use Policy Manager to apply settings to a folder and its subfolders, Policy Manager applies those settings to all folders underneath the folder you specify. So, for example, if there is a lower-level folder that has a different policy, you need to run Policy Manager to reapply the correct policy to the lower-level folder.

  For a complicated folder hierarchy you can may have a Policy Manager entry for each folder. To be safe you'd have a policy setting that archives only very old items, perhaps as old as 10 years. By doing this you turn off archiving for new folders that have not yet had a Policy Manager policy applied to them.

• "Default" access permissions are not applied to vaults. Thus, anyone accessing a shortcut in a Public Folder using the default permission cannot access archived items. However, using a registry entry you can configure View online so that there is no permission check for public folders. This means that anyone with access to the shortcut has access to the archived item.

• It is best to make Enterprise Vault archive the home server for the public folder because this reduces complications of replication and bandwidth. However, this might mean that you need extra Enterprise Vault servers.

• If there is public folder replication then, when a user opens a shortcut, View Online goes to the vault server where the item is located.

• To view items, a user's mailbox must be enabled for Enterprise Vault archiving. Consider where users may be when viewing these archived items in Public Folders. Will those users have Enterprise Vault? Will their mailboxes be enabled?