Closing Out Exchange Mailboxes

A lot of thought goes into provisioning and maintaining employees' mailboxes, but little thought typically goes into what to do with those mailboxes after their owners leave the company. Your initial thought might be to delete such mailboxes, but that might not be the best plan—at least not right away. For example, in some cases, immediately hiding the mailbox might be advantageous; in other cases, leaving the mailbox visible but preventing it from receiving new messages might be the best approach.

Maintaining a former employee's mailbox is a good idea for many reasons. The mailbox might contain important messages and documents, so deleting it could erase quotes or proposals related to active projects or important messages that haven't been opened. If the employee organized recurring meetings, associated resources such as conference rooms and equipment are probably reserved for specific time slots. You can't simply transfer the Exchange schedule objects that define the meeting times and resources to another employee; whoever assumes responsibility for the meeting must send new meeting invitations. And most organizations use some type of direct booking or automated resource scheduling, so if the new organizer wants to continue to hold a meeting at the originally scheduled time and use the same resources, the original meeting must first be canceled. If you delete the mailbox, you won't be able to send meeting cancellation notices. In addition, when an employee leaves, you need to let that employee's contacts know that he or she has left the company and tell them who's assuming the employee's responsibilities. Not conveying this information can cause customer- or public-relations problems. Finally, what you decide to do with the mailbox affects system resources. . . .