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I'm helping an office with a failing SBS2k3 with three workstations setup. They literally only use Exchange for calendaring, intra-office mail (very lightly) and for shared Contacts, where they have squirreled away a great deal of detailed information. I've been asked to get their calendaring into Google Calendar, they no longer care about intra-office mail, but the Contacts remain. The result will be three workstations, taken off the domain, with a NAS for all their document storage They don't really care where their calendaring ends up. But now, I'm looking for a way to continue to allow them to have a shared pool of Contact data that Employee1 can edit and Employee2 and Boss can view, revise, etc (Outlook 2010/2007). I would really appreciate input and suggestions on this one. Is there a really good hosted Exchange provider I could use? Or, is there a CRM program or such that will run on a simple non-domain/Workgroup 3 PC setup? Bottom lines: 1) Is the past of least resistance and least amount of change for the users just to throw 3x$10 per month at Rackspace's Hosted Exchange? 2) Is there a goon-recommended HE provider other than Rackspace I should consider? 3) Is there a decent software solution other than continuing to use some form of Exchange for shared email contacts? Thank you very much!
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Jul 11, 2015 15:48
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| # ? May 6, 2024 23:58 |
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Office 365 Business is only $5/user/mo (assuming they're okay sticking with their current versions of Outlook) and it's incredibly easy to setup a shared mailbox. I don't know anything about Rackspace but I don't know why you would go with a hosted Exchange other than O365.
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Jul 11, 2015 16:41
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Yeah Office 365 is the way to go for this stuff. Exchange is dead for small biz.
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Jul 11, 2015 17:47
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Interesting. Thank you for your replies. I didn't know O365 could take over these roles from Exchange... I get that Exchange isn't a common/good fit for not-many-seats offices, but could O365 really allow them to: 1) keep using the Outlook (2010) program's Contacts window to annotate contact/client records (in Notes) and have it shared from PC1's Outlook to PC2's Outlook and so on? 2) keep using the Outlook program's Calendar window to manage their schedules?  Edit: I bought a two-seat month of O365 Essentials to try it out the above. Any quick pointers for getting sharing set up? Tapedump fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Jul 12, 2015 |
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Jul 12, 2015 05:09
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Tapedump posted:Interesting. Thank you for your replies. I didn't know O365 could take over these roles from Exchange... Login to o365, click on Admin, under Users add your user email addresses. Then under Shared Mailboxes, create a new shared mailbox, assign your users to it, and give it a name. Then in the client Outlook, under Account Settings -> Change -> More Settings -> Advanced, there is an option to add a mailbox. Just add the shared mailbox using the name you gave it. Make sure the box for "download shared folders" is checked. The shared mailbox will then show up and sync automatically. Things can get weird if you're still on the same network as the local Exchange though. One thing my users complained about : contacts in the shared mailbox don't show up in the autocomplete when you type into the "To:" field. We had to download a 3rd party app that syncs contacts between the shared mailbox and their local contacts folders to get that functionality.
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Jul 12, 2015 06:11
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| # ? May 6, 2024 23:58 |
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Thank you! I see now. O365 is Exchange-powered. I've only seen it used by businesses that set up IMAP clients and called it a day. I see now how I can create mailboxes and then how client Outlook will auto-discover the server and connect to Exchange. That's what I was going to with my RackSpace idea for lack of knowing how O365 could work. I followed your directions and also referenced this guide: http://www.codetwo.com/admins-blog/contacts-sharing-in-office-365/ I found that I did not have to do the Add Mailbox step, as it automatically appeared in Outlook. That was pretty cool. Now to work out shared calendaring.
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Jul 12, 2015 06:52
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