Are your clients using desktop search engines that index Exchange mailboxes or public folders?

re: Are your clients using desktop search engines that index Exchange mailboxes or public folders?

Jonathan — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 03:42:23 GMT

Um, well, YOUR MS product (Lookout) is a "desktop search agent" that can index Public Folders. Our company tries to use Public Folders as a knowledge base, and since there really isn't a native (i.e. useful) search client for indexing and searching public folders, Lookout is the only real possibility...

re: Are your clients using desktop search engines that index Exchange mailboxes or public folders?

Tony Redmond — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 14:12:44 GMT

Lookout is one of the most useful add-ons I have ever encountered for Outlook, so I would be loathe to discontinue using it. I do take the point that its indexing can stress servers and therefore perhaps the recommendation should be to use these desktop search engines when Outlook is running in cached Exchange mode, where Lookout (at least) can use the local data?

re: Are your clients using desktop search engines that index Exchange mailboxes or public folders?

Exchange — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 19:13:30 GMT

Tony,

Yes, you are making a good point, and it is mentioned in the article that I linked to... cached mode mitigates server-side problems quite a bit as local content gets indexed instead. Not in the case of public folders though, and that is something that needs to be thought of, that's all.

BTW, I was a long Lookout user myself but switched to MSN Desktop Search as it indexes PDF files (something I really wanted) :)

re: Are your clients using desktop search engines that index Exchange mailboxes or public folders?

Tony Redmond — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 16:33:56 GMT

I prefer Lookout myself as it's better integrated with Outlook... Google Desktop and MSN Desktop seem to be pretty similar.

re: Are your clients using desktop search engines that index Exchange mailboxes or public folders?

Mike Belshe — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 04:02:24 GMT

Interesting article! In the KB it states, "Method 4: Consider enabling Exchange content indexing".

Can you comment on why this isn't just defaulted to on and native within exchange already? Obviously, server side generation and maintenance of the index would the most performant. And, given where the industry currently is, its clear that fast search of email is mandatory for most email users. Indexing email at arrival time within the store, if done properly, should have almost no impact to Exchange - especially when compared to the heavy lifting that must be done to alternatively generate the index client side. If it were done this way, how would that work with Outlook 2003 cached mode?

As you can guess, I've never used the content indexing feature in exchange. Does it work well? Does it handle attachments, multiple file types, etc? Does it handle advanced query syntaxes? Does it work for public folders too?

If its a viable solution, I hope the next generation of Exchange has this feature enabled by default and implements all the same bells and whistles of MSN desktop search.

Exchange, Windows, SPS, LCS, Live Meeting, Security, MIIS, Misc.

Windows Server Clustering — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 03:55:46 GMT