Domain Shares and Protocol Behavior

SmarterMail gives domain administrators the ability to create "domain shares", which act similarly to what Microsoft Exchange calls "public folders". Domain shares can be created for Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, and Notes.

When these shares are created. the domain administrator can apply permissions to both individual users as well as User Groups. These permissions include "None" (used when excluding an individual that is part of a User Group from having permissions on the share), Read-Only, and Manage. Generally, these permissions apply to standard users regardless of how the user is accessing the share: via webmail, or via a client connected using an enterprise protocol such as MAPI & EWS. However, there is an exclusion in MAPI & EWS for users who are also domain administrators in their own right.

MAPI & EWS recognizes users who have domain administrator privileges. As a result, any permissions set on a domain share are ignored. That means that when connecting a domain administrator account to something like Microsoft Outlook or eM Client, these users will always have Manage permissions for domain shares IN that client. Keep in mind, this is ONLY for domain shares / public folders. User-shares (i.e., a user sharing their calendar with another user or a User Group) are not affected by this exception.

As for EAS, another enterprise protocol, it doesn't support public folders.