User Needs
There are several approaches to gathering users' needs, including technical briefings, questionnaires/surveys, interviews, and user forums. Throughout this, the key to determine what questions to ask is to decide what information is needed. What are the key business and technical drivers to deploying Exchange 2000 now? What do users like about the current functionality? What have they heard about Exchange features that they perceive are needed? If they have little to no background on Exchange, what are they expecting an e-mail system will give them?
User Profiles
After gathering the necessary information, you can organize it and begin to map needs onto Exchange functions. Usually, these are done as user profiles such as All Departments (standard functionality, ability to reserve conference rooms), Management (enable secretary to respond in lieu of manager, distribute company reports), Field Sales (remote e-mail access), Legal (high security to shared public folders), and Engineering (large mail attachments, research latest technical developments). Of course, you may need to create or combine user profiles as needed based on your own requirements.