Advice: Distribution Groups, Distribution Lists, etc?

[MarkMcG]

We are in the midst of defining our Exchange environment and are mulling over
the use of mailing lists. We have looked at security groups, distribution
groups and distribution lists. Our customers would like to 1) have control
over membership of some of the distribution groups (global lists) and 2) the
ability to create and maintain the membership of team and department
distribution lists that would not show up in the GAL.

Any suggestions or references on which option to use and when?

One concept we are exploring is a contacts public folder (\Distribution
Lists) that users can create and manage their own lists in. The users who
wanted to subscribe to this folder could add to these lists to their address
books. Is there a better way?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I recommend that DLs be used only for relatively small (under 10-12 names) and very static lists. Anything that's larger or changes more than once or twice a year is going to involve a lot of maintenance effort. A better strategy in many scenarios is to use the By Category view to select contacts for a bulk message or mail merge.

 

[MarkMcG]

Thanks Sue. I see where you are going with this. And one of our goals is to
minimize admin.

Some of the users will only be in the GAL though. As long as we have an
attribute (Department) that we can find on, we can do something similiar to
categories. Problem here is Department is not always 100% accurate.

We have considered Query Based DGs, but the issue there is the quality of
the result from the query, the same as above with Department.

We have thought to use Distribution Groups and delegate list admin to the DG
owner so they can maintain the membership off the list themselves. Usually
the owner is the one who knows best who should and should not be in her list.

We are still wrestling over the DLs though. Mainly because we don't want to
admin a lot of little lists that change a lot. Some of the accounts will be
in the GAL, so they are not easy to get via filter or sorting in a contacts
folder. The DL would be stored in a PF contacts folder, would contain
members from the GAL and be edittable by a user with permissions, not an
admin. Unless this is not a good way to go...?