One frequent complaint from users with multiple POP3 accounts is the inability to have the messages delivered to a different folder. The solution was to use Rules to move messages by account, which worked well for most users. Outlook 2007 makes this even easier by allowing you to set a delivery folder in the Accounts dialog.

If your POP3 accounts are already a part of your profile, create a folder for each POP3 account you maintain. You can create the folder either as a subfolder of the Inbox or at the same level as the Inbox. To make it easier for you, name them the same as the account name or use the email address for that account.

Next, go to Tools, Account Settings and select your POP3 accounts, one at a time, then click the Change Folder button at the bottom of the dialog. Select the folder you want the messages delivered to from the New Email Delivery Location dialog or click the New button to create a new folder. If you prefer keep the messages in separate personal folder stores, you can create a new one from this dialog as well. Note: The Change Folder button only appears when a POP3 account is selected.

If you are creating new POP3 accounts, assign a delivery location to the account after adding it to the profile.

Close the dialogs and new mail retrieved for these accounts will be delivered to their respective folders. And yes, Junk Email settings will apply to messages sent to these accounts.

The Scheduling Assistant makes it much easier to book meetings when clients are using Outlook 2007 or OWA. When free/busy data is available for the attendee, the scheduling assistant automatically recommends the best days and times for meetings in a color-coded pane. Previous versions have AutoPick, but Scheduling Assistant offers more features, including a navigation calendar and a checkbox which makes it easier to choose 'don't send to this attendee' if you don’t want to send the meeting to a specific attendees.

Another feature which will be helpful when scheduling appointments is the ability to set one of two new permissions for access to free/busy information: Free/Busy Time and Free/Busy Time, Subject, Location. As with many new features in Exchange 2007, users need to use Outlook 2007 to set these new permissions on their calendar. Go to the Permissions tab of the Calendar folder properties to choose these new permissions.

A reader asks: "We have Exchange 2003 in this office but the users in another office need to access it too. There is a 2 MB link between the offices. Can I setup two Exchange boxes, one at each location, and have data replicate between them, or control traffic between users? "

Yes, you can. You actually have two options; you can use one server and have the remote users use Outlook 2003's RPC over HTTP to access the server. It's very easy to set up and cost effective: you need just one Exchange server. User will have a local copy of their mailbox, so they won't lose access to their existing email, calendar, or contacts if they lose their internet connection.

The other option is to set up a second sever in the remote office for the mailboxes of those users, so that all of their mail is local. When you use this method, they can still communicate with other local users if the Internet connection goes down. This requires you to setup routing group connectors between both servers so they can communicate with each other, which is also very easy to set up, but more costly as it requires two Exchange servers.

All you need to do is to create a routing group connector, then look on the General tab to specify the other routing group as the connector it will connect with. You can also specify the server that can send mail over the routing group connector, or leave it set on "any local server". On the remote bridgehead tab in the connector, you'll need to specify the other server.

Now, because you have a 2 MB connection between the two sites, you don't necessarily need to use two routing groups. Since Microsoft considers anything over 256mb to be a well-connected site, you can stick with the standard single routing group. If you choose this option, you'll just need to install another Exchange 2003 server at the remote site, and then move the mailboxes for the local users to that site if they are already in Exchange, otherwise, create their mailboxes on the new server. Keep in mind that one advantage to using to routing groups when both sites have their own Internet connections is if one Internet connection goes down, you can easily re-route traffic to the other server, plus Internet traffic won't be routed over the inter-site link.

"Can we use the same email domain on both servers? What are the advantages or disadvantages? "

If both domains use the same name, either one site needs to accept all messages and hand them off to the other server or you need to set up both servers to receive Internet email. If both servers are collecting email, inbound email would be delivered to both servers round-robin style and passed to the other server. The advantage to this method is that you always have a back-up server if one Internet connection goes down; a disadvantage is that you'll have a lot more traffic on the inter-site connector.

If each server has its own domain name, they would each get only the email destined for users on that server and you won't have a convenient backup server should one connection go down.

As you can see, you have several options available, which is the best way depends on your topography and your business needs.