Switching from Public Folders to sharepoint

Question

I don't have all to much experience with Sharepoint, so this is a bit of a learning experience for me. Your insight is greatly appreciated!

Here is our current setup: We are an engineering firm and create a new Job # for each job we have which then gets entered into our internal database along with the basic details on that job like its status, the client, the engineer, the drafter, etc. This custom site connects to our Exchange 2003 server to grab all the info on the client and any other companies involved. This is so that when a user clicks on a contact it comes up with all their info such as Name, phone, and address. After that is done, a new folder is setup in the public folders in Exchange for that job. Now whenever there is correspondence relating to that job our guys can email that job number, ex A10000@ourdomain.com and that email will go into the A10000 folder. This is basically for archiving purposes and makes it easy for people to access old emails relating to a certain job. There is a structure to this though, so we have a folder for the office location (2 offices) and then subfolders for the different years and then the job number. Ex City -> 2012 -> A10000.

Now what I want to do is move to Exchange Online and use Sharepoint on a local server. My question is: In sharepoint, can I have a similar setup where an general admin person can easily create a new folder for a job and have the email go into that folder? I am pretty sure I can get all the stuff our internal database does working on sharepoint through a web part, so its really just the email issue.

If you want any further details, please let me know!

Cheers

Answer 1

You could create something very similar. However keep in mind that if you want to go to SharePoint Online in the future this will not be possible without utilizing a third party product.

In SharePoint you can email enable document libraries. There are configuration settings in Central Administration that allow for configuring incoming email. You can set up incoming email on Document Libraries, Announcement Lists, Calendars, and Discussion Boards. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262947.aspx

For this to work you would need to create a document library for each job and then create the incoming email for each document library via the document library settings. Within each library you would want to add calculated columns and base these off of the created date. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb862071.aspx You could then create a default view that groups by year and even by month if needed those would be calculated on when the email was received by the library.

The structure could be

First Level: City 1 (Site) Second Level: Job A1 (Document Library) Second Level: Job A2 (Document Library)

First Level: City 2 (Site) Second Level: Job A3 (Document Library) Second Level: Job A4 (Document Library)

Answer 2

Cory's answer should give you a great place to start, but I would make a few modifications. That method would result in a LOT of document libraries being created, and that will be hard to manage/scale as time goes on. You should be able to create folders within a single document library for years, and subfolders for each job, just like your current setup. However, it may take a bit more work to have the emails be redirected appropriately with this setup. You could attach an event receiver to this one document library, and there is an event for email received. When you handle that even you can then move the item to the appropriate folder/subfolder within the document library.