Workgroup Templates Best Practice?

[Michael]

Our company has recently migrated over to Exchange and Outlook 2003.
Previously, there were several shared email templates that were accessed
amongst the users. Does anyone have any recommendations on best practices to
set them up for Outlook?

Currently in Outlook, I have set it up so that a user would need to select
New --> Choose Form --> Select Folder from "Look In" --> Select Template.

I haven't found a setting to configure the Workgroup location. I would also
like to have the templates available to a user in as few steps as possible.
Any alternatives?

Thanks!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Outlook has no workgroup template location like Word does.

Best practice is to use published forms, not .oft template files. You can use the Tools | Forms | Publish Form command to publish them to the Organizational Forms library on Exchange, if you have permissions. (Ask the administrator.)

See http://www.outlookcode.com/d/launchform.htm for ways to make them easy to launch.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Michael]

Thank you, Sue! This is exactly what I was looking for.

Out of curiosity, why are .oft files not recommended?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Much of the forms functionality isn't available to .oft files, only to published forms. See http://support.microsoft.com/?id=907985 for starters.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers