Defining the Users in Your Site

To define the people who will be connecting to Microsoft Exchange Server by using e-mail clients, you need to add the users to your layout by grouping them and then examining each group's information needs.

Because people communicate primarily with others in their own workgroup, it may be most efficient to group users together on one server. Microsoft Exchange Server performance is optimized when messages are sent between users on the same server. Hard disk space is also conserved because a message sent to a group of people on the same server is stored as a single copy.

To set up the groups, review your organization chart or survey each LAN segment. Add the groups to your layout with the name of the group and an estimate of the group's size. If a group is too large for one server, break it into smaller groups. Describe your groups in ways that help you design the site.

The amount of messages exchanged among users varies greatly. By predicting the volume of messages, you can better plan your hardware needs.