Introduction to Offline Address Book Best Practices GuideThis guide provides recommendations and best practices for deploying and managing offline address books with Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003. Whether you are deploying a new Exchange Server 2003 messaging system or upgrading from a previous Exchange version, this guide gives you best practice recommendations, including recommendations on how to optimize offline address book usage in a variety of scenarios. In addition, this guide addresses the most common issues that you may encounter when using offline address books. Assumptions Used in This GuideThe following assumptions were made for this guide:
Who Should Read This Guide?Although almost anyone with a technical background can benefit from reading this guide, it is designed to produce maximum benefits for the following professionals:
TerminologyBefore reading further, familiarize yourself with the following terms. Offline address book An offline address book is a container that stores a collection of offline address lists. Administrators configure available offline address books, and Outlook users can choose which offline address lists they want to download. Offline address list An offline address list is a set of address lists in files that are created and stored on an offline address list server. Users who work offline can connect to an Exchange Server computer and download offline address lists to obtain information about other users in the organization. When you create an offline address book, the specified address lists are converted to a separate set of files and stored in a public folder. When users download the offline address book, this data file is used as the source of information. Offline address books typically contain at least one address list that represents the global address list (GAL). Users who are working offline can use this global address list with Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) e-mail clients. For more information about other Exchange-related terms, see the Exchange Server 2003 Glossary. |