Public Folder Watcher is an add on to MS Outlook. It provides notification facility for workgroup members for email folders that are public status. Timely notifications can greatly improve interaction between team members with this notification facility.

Pros: 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. The notification works on similar lines as the Outlook email notifications but has additional feature useful to people using public folders. Group email addresses for example can use this facility very easily.

The application is integrated with the standard outlook menu thus there is nothing new to learn, settings are available through the familiar interface of the Outlook. While the Outlook works for Inbox only the Public Folder Watcher works for all the public folders. All of the members get to see the messages and interaction improves greatly.

This is a multithreaded application and thus should not affect the outlook performance to any significant level. Notifications at 20 minutes default interval are received for Public folders and email folders. These settings can be changed. Besides there’s a notification window available near the system tray that can provide an immediate snapshot, if desired.

Through the VPN mode participating members can be distributed geographically and work the same way as if they were on a local net.

Cons: There was not anything problematic that was noticed.

Overall: Generally a useful application though of limited utility. Considering everything this is a package that rates 3 stars.