Microsoft Exchange and Blackberry Server Specialists

Groups - All Staff

Many of the techniques on this site rely on an All Staff Group. This is simply a group that contains all mail enabled users.

This group is not only handy to have in the GAL for staff use, but also for setting permissions.
If you are in a hosted Environment, then you may want to hide the group from all of your clients so that no one can see anyone else.

It is not recommended that this group be made up of Query Based Distribution Groups, as it can place a load on the server.

The group can be created in a number of ways. You could create a single group and simply add all users to it. However you could also create lots of sub groups, based on location, department etc. These smaller groups would make up larger groups (region for example) and then the larger groups are members of the All Staff Group.

When creating the group, make sure that you take care over the permissions of the group. On the Exchange General tab of the group, you should be looking to change the permission away from Accept messages from Everyone to one of the other options. Authenticated users is probably not a good idea either. The simplest option is to add the group itself to the list, so that members of All Staff can send email to Add Staff. Secure your Groups.

Finally, on Exchange 2000/2003 you can put a space in front of the Display Name on the Exchange General tab and the group will appear at the top of the Global Address List. This doesn't work on Exchange 2007.Groups at the Top of the GAL.