Ron said:
I saw a post in this fourm that said you should not setup Outlook to
Auto Send/Recevie less that 5 minutes.
I have a client that insistes that all his employees have their
Outlook setup to Send/Receive in 1 minute intervals.
Is there a Tech Document from Microsoft that I can show him that says
Do Not Set less that 5 minutes?
Thanks
Hey, if it is their own company mail server, let them abuse it however
quickly they want. Then let their IT folks handle the complaints when
employees ask why Outlook keeps trying to re-retrieve the same
e-mail(s). The mail poll interval has to be longer than the time to
complete a mail session, and that mail session includes the time to
retrieve the e-mails. If the user receives a huge e-mail, perhaps
because of a large attachment, the mail session will take longer to
complete. If during that mail session it gets stepped on and aborted
because, gee, it's time for the next scheduled mail session, then
whatever e-mails got downloaded won't get updated as getting downloaded.
You never mentioned the TYPE of the mail server. Is it POP? If so, you
run into the problem of stepping atop a current mail session if the poll
interval is too short. Might not be a problem if you are using Exchange
as the mail server assuming the Outlook user isn't using a .pst to keep
offline or local copies of their e-mails. Since you are asking about
the mail poll interval, my guess is that you are using POP and not using
Exchange. Exchange (in cached mode in Outlook) gets informed when new
items show up in the user's mailbox. You don't need to poll for mails
when using Exchange (unless you have a problem in your network that
blocks the UDP packets sent by Exchange to your Outlook and you have to
revert back to the old poll scheme).
Also, just how fast are these employees expected to read e-mails and
then do something about them? Say in a mail poll, you get half a dozen
e-mails. Well, you might get more if this employer wants 1-minute poll
intervals because that means LOTS of e-mails are coming in. Are you
going to get those e-mails read before the next poll within the next
minute? No, so you'll be getting e-mails into your Inbox faster than
you can read them. If the e-mails were not coming in at this frantic
pace then why the need to catch them at 1-minute intervals? Think of a
comedy skit where you are at the end of a conveyor belt on which cookies
are delivered to your mouth. What happens when the speed of the
conveyor belt is faster than you can eat the cookies? Ask the employer
what is the expected turn-around time for their employee to process an
e-mail. Not just to notice there is a new e-mail, not just the time to
read it, but also the time to take some action on it. E-mails are being
sent to the employee for more than just their reading enjoyment.
