This is a subject I haven't looked at for some time, maybe surprisingly its something we don't get asked about all that often. A typical scenario might be where a company has an Exchange Calendar Public Folder containing details of company events, important dates and so on. They want their mobile users to be able to view this calendar on their Blackberrys or Windows Mobile phones so how do they go about it?

The short answer I discovered at the time was that they can't - for various technical reasons (mostly to with permissions & synchronisation) both BES 4.1 and Exchange 2003 wouldn't support it. Not being the sort of person who gives up easily I investigated further and found a couple of third party products which provided a solution. This then led to help4IT becoming UK resellers for Add2Exchange , which gives you full control over synchronising Public Folders with users' mailbox folders and so neatly solved the mobile access problem.

Its now a few years since I looked at the problem and we have moved on to Exchange 2007 and BES 4.5 so I thought it was time to review it. Microsoft are moving away from Public Folders so don't encourage them in Exchange 2007, but most people aren't listening so they are still the usual way of sharing common contacts and events. Support for Windows Mobile devices has been improved though so it seemed possible that Microsoft might have provided a method for them to access Public Folders.

Again the short answer is that they haven't, the situation remains the same as when I first looked at it, both Microsoft and RIM categorically do not support synchronising Public Folders with mobile devices. A trawl about the Internet turns up a couple of ways for individual users to do it; Blackberry users can install the Desktop Manager software which will allow them to select Public Folders from the PIM sync options. There are also several Outlook utilities which can synchronise a Public Folder with a personal folder to achieve the same effect. Both of these methods have the same disadvantages, they have to be managed by the user and synchronisation only occurs whilst their PC is on and running the application. Whilst this might be adequate for a small number of users it isn't acceptable if you need to manage multiple users with a variety of devices.

 Which leads me back to Add2Exchange again, it has had a couple of upgrades since the first time I used it, most notably to support Exchange 2007, and it still does its job well. Because it works on your Exchange Server it will support any type of mobile that can sync a user's mailbox, or even for peculiar mail clients. The installation process is a little complex, similar to setting up a BES server, as it is essential to use a service account and get the permissions correct, but once it is up and running it is easy to administer. Licensing charges are based on the number of folder "relationships" (public folder to each user's personal folder) so you only have to pay for what you need, and a 21 day trial is available too.