Okay so normally I come on here once every month or two and beg for information which you guys are always kind enough to help me with. Today I come with some perhaps, helpfull information.
As a small business owner money is tight and I have multiple work stations which I needed to be able to utilize all my Contacts in Outlook. Short of emailing each one and importing it ( We are also taking paper rolodexes and importing them in this process) I didnt want to have to spend a bunch ( or any ) money but wanted it to be smooth and minimal effort. In looking around I was able to find a free piece of software which gets me started at the minimal and has the option for a seemingly reasonable pay version to go to the extreme
Osasync is the name of the program. It is an add on for outlook and integrates right into the menu bar. I found it on tucows. The free version allows you to share and synchronize the outlook contacts of up to four seperate machines. There are settings and permissions which you can play with that allow everyone to edit or just one person and everyone else synchs to them. The PRO version which is priced based on licensing numbers allows for the sharing and / or synching of all the rest of outlooks info such as Calanders. The calander feature even offers the option of compressing everyones calander into one with names on events ( for a VERY small office) or it will create seperate calanders for each person synched and will allow editing and updating. In essence my Customer Service rep can update my calander for all the local business meetings I want to attend and it will just update my personal calander automatically.
Now I know most of you hate outlook and with good reason. Fact is it still has a large foothold in office spaces around the world. In the case of small offices who need to share this info but do not want to spend a butload on exchange server ( and you dont want to support it ) This program may be a decent option. Hopefully this comes up in a search for the next poor soul who needs this kind of thing and it helps them. I have to try and balance the Karma here after all the help I have gotten from you guys.
As a small business owner money is tight and I have multiple work stations which I needed to be able to utilize all my Contacts in Outlook. Short of emailing each one and importing it ( We are also taking paper rolodexes and importing them in this process) I didnt want to have to spend a bunch ( or any ) money but wanted it to be smooth and minimal effort. In looking around I was able to find a free piece of software which gets me started at the minimal and has the option for a seemingly reasonable pay version to go to the extreme
Osasync is the name of the program. It is an add on for outlook and integrates right into the menu bar. I found it on tucows. The free version allows you to share and synchronize the outlook contacts of up to four seperate machines. There are settings and permissions which you can play with that allow everyone to edit or just one person and everyone else synchs to them. The PRO version which is priced based on licensing numbers allows for the sharing and / or synching of all the rest of outlooks info such as Calanders. The calander feature even offers the option of compressing everyones calander into one with names on events ( for a VERY small office) or it will create seperate calanders for each person synched and will allow editing and updating. In essence my Customer Service rep can update my calander for all the local business meetings I want to attend and it will just update my personal calander automatically.
Now I know most of you hate outlook and with good reason. Fact is it still has a large foothold in office spaces around the world. In the case of small offices who need to share this info but do not want to spend a butload on exchange server ( and you dont want to support it ) This program may be a decent option. Hopefully this comes up in a search for the next poor soul who needs this kind of thing and it helps them. I have to try and balance the Karma here after all the help I have gotten from you guys.
I was going to suggest Server 2003 Small Business Server if you wanted the full outlook integration. I even have a copy with 5 client licenses I could have given to you. I didn't have time to elaborate before you posted this. Your solution sounds a lot less complicated and far less expensive to maintain, so you're still better off with that over Server 2003 SBS.