I have been managing Exchange servers for about 15 years, but a user asked a question that just has never before arisen. In order to allow multiple users to access a shared mailbox, we have, since Exchange 2003, had a number of public folders. For example, we have one for inbound orders. For each public folder, we had a subfolder called "Complete" or "Done". As soon as any user dealt with a new message in the public folder, that user would drag the original inbound message into the public folder's Complete/Done folder.
Naturally, this kind of assumes that nobody else really needs to know the specific disposition of the message, and a user finally asked the question, "How do I tell if someone has replied?"
Well, I suppose the obvious answer is to simply drop the public folder concept entirely, as I have been doing with other systems as I move out of 2003 to 2010 and then 2013 (this current system is currently at Exchange 2010), and replace each with a shared mailbox to which multiple users are given access. This gives the ability to reply either as the user actually reading the message (e.g.jane@mycompany.com) or as the user name attached to the shared mailbox (e.g.orders@mycompany.com).
But, I thought before I pass that bit of info onto my Exchange management group, I would forward the user's question here. Have I answered my own question with the suggestion to move from public folders to shared mailboxes, is there some even better way to manage this, or did we just miss something when configuring the original public folders?