Overview

Public Folder Watcher (PFW) is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook enabling support of notifications about changes in Exchange Public Folders and providing a status of unread email messages. It works similar to standard Outlook email notifications, but also has several additional features that may be useful for those who use Public Folders. The add-on is integrating into Microsoft Outlook and providing access to its settings through menu in Outlook. Everyone is familiar with standard Outlook notification window:

Public Folder Watcher works the same way, but in comparison with email notification working for Inbox folder only, PFW works for all Public Folders. As a result, it improves interaction level through providing the latest Public Folders changes notification.

Features List

• Notification of Public Folders’ updates
• Notification of e-mail folders’ updates
• Outlook native visual style
• Smart notifications
• Configuration of the checking intervals
• Folders checking configuration
• Special "read messages" mode
• Multi-threaded application. Doesn’t reduce Outlook performance
• VPN environment support
• Outlook 2003 and Outlook Office 12 support
• Multi-monitors environment support

Installation

Public Folder Watcher installation is provided as MSI package. Please follow the instructions during the installation process. Remember, it’s important to close Outlook before PFW installation. After the installation, when Outlook starts the registration window appears and registration details are requested. Please follow here to access a trial key if you still don’t have a registration key.

Press Cancel to skip activation, PFW will be disabled and the registration window will appear during the next startup of Outlook. When Public Folder Watcher runs for the first time, it scans all the content of Exchange Public Folders. It may take up to several minutes, but it’s necessary to do this for the successful work of the add-on.

How to use

When PFW is successfully installed, it’s ready to show all the changes in Exchange Public Folders. When some change is observed, the notification window appears near System Tray. It shows a list of all the folders containing unread messages including email Inbox folder. Also, if there are unseen changes in Public Folders, the notification window shows up every 20 minutes and shows the status of the changes. It’s possible to change this interval in the configuration menu. In case when there is a need to see the changes status immediately, “Rescan Public Folders” button should be pressed. It will start changes rescan and the notification window will show recent changes in the Public Folders.

A notification window appears on the nearest corner to your clock. It shows up automatically every 20 minutes and on the program start. You can find here the list of all folders which contain your unread mail including your Inbox letters (Non-public folders scanning is not conducted by default but this can be changed in options) and Public Folder posts. Folders containing posts are marked as important with the exclamation mark and the rest of folders without it.

In order to look through your unread mail click on the folder item you are interested in. The new Outlook window appears. After clicking on the folder it disappears from the list. If some message was read but its status remains unread it will appear in the list of unread messages during the next scan again. If there is just one unread post or message in the folder you click on, it will be opened instead of opening the folder it is contained in. If you want to mark your mail as read, use a tick before the message path in the notification window. You can expand your notification window by using up arrows or by dragging the top window border. Any notification pop-up window can be closed by the right click of the mouse as well as by clicking on the close button. To drag the widow all along the free window space, hold the left mouse button and drag window.

System Requirements

• Windows 2000/XP
• Outlook 2000 or later
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or later

What’s new in Public Folder Watcher 1.52.0?

• New Public Folder Watcher includes a wealth of functionality, including a multilingual support for English and Russian users with other localizations coming up soon.
• In 1.52.0 the process of scanning folders at the first launch can be hidden. Or, you can put it off – in this case the re-scan of folders will be delayed until the next launch and there will be an opportunity to disable some unnecessary folders.
• When the terminal is used, you can disable notifications.
• New Public Folder Watcher will automatically stop monitoring the folders with slow access when the connection is slow or when working in VPN.
• New to 1.52.0 is support for group policies. Customers can get more information about it when they buy a corporate license.
• During the first three minutes after the launch of Microsoft Outlook, Public Folder Watcher will not monitor the availability of new messages, so you can get all mail in the morning and read all messages at once without any notifications about them.

Feedback

Please contact our support team if you have any questions or fill in the online support form to leave your comments about the product.