Using a Mixed Administrative Model

In a mixed model, administrative groups reflect both functional and geographic distribution. You create specialized administrative groups to restrict the management of certain functions to specific people, and create other groups to delegate administration along geographical lines. To illustrate this type of model, here are some sample administrative groups that you might want to create:

• To restrict who can create and maintain policies, you can create an administrative group only for managing policies, a functional task.

• To manage public folders in a specific region, you can create an administrative group only for managing a region's public folders, a geographical consideration.

You typically use the mixed administrative model in larger organizations that have many divisions or offices in many geographical locations. The mixed model can also apply when one company acquires another company.

The following figure shows how Contoso applies a mixed administrative model to its organization. To centrally administer public folders and policies, Contoso created one central administrative group for administering public folders and another for administering policies. The remaining administrative groups are regional and allow regional control of other functions, such as routing groups.

Mixed administrative model