Forum Discussion
Public Folders in Office 365
Just to add my two cents here. I'm currently working on a free eBook we will soon be releasing in an attempt to bring some more attention to the "what to do with my PFs" issue. Groups are definitely one of the hot topic discussed there. But despite what some folks at Microsoft are trying to tell you, Groups are not the answer for everything, especially when it comes to email-centric content. No subfolders as you've noted. No Rules either. No access to Sent Items, Deleted Items or even Junk (yes, you can have messages in groups marked as Junk and you dont have any way to access them). The list goes on and on.
Which is not to say that Groups cannot actually offer you BETTER alternative for PSs, ins SOME cases. Everything that involves document collaboration is no-brained - PFs simply suck at that. But the idea here is - put things into context, the specific scenario and the specific implementation for your organization. Dont just listed to marketing talk.
Mohammad Sarosh I would've except you guys to have released this already!
Hi VasilMichev
We understand that Groups cannot work for every scenario that PFs are used for. This is why we are encouraging customers to try out Groups and see if it works for them. The beta migration program does exactly that. However, if customers heavily use folders then Groups certainly won't be ideal for them.
Groups doesn't have feature parity with PFs yet but it is comparatively a much younger product and has a much more dedicated work force behind it. This isn't to say that Microsoft is going to kill PFs and there are certain scenarios for which PFs still works the best.
Looking forward to your ebook.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to "defend" Public folders. They havent received any significant user-oriented update in what, 10 years now? There are definitely more suitable alternatives for almost every usage scenario for PFs nowadays, Groups included.
What I meant with my comment to you is that we've known about this "PF to Groups" migration program for a while now, and I was expecting for it to have been publicly released already. I know we cannot discuss the details here until it's released, so I'm hoping you indeed release it soon :)