BlackFoxx3000
May 8th, 2008, 03:39 PM
I have searched the forums extensively and could not find an answer to this. So if there is a post already about, please allow me to apologize in advance and point me to it. That being said, here is the problem:
The company I work for has recently moved their email from an in-house MS Exchange server to a third-party POP/SMTP server. This has wrecked havoc on the users in reference to the contacts/address book. These simple country folk want things to be the same as they were before; the way they are used to. They want to be able to click the "To" button and choose addresses from a list.
As it stands, if an employee leaves the company, or an employee comes in, I have to go around to every single individual station and update the contacts in Outlook for the user(s) of that computer. Originally, I could add/delete the employee on the exchange server, and every contact list would update automatically. All things considered, I seriously do not have time to go to everyone and update contacts one computer at a time.
I have tried the following:
- First, I tried to have a contacts.pst file in a central location on a shared drive that every user can access. I connected the address book with Outlook's "Mail" properties from Control Panel. This worked. But only for one person at a time - if another user tries to load up their email client, it says file is in use.
- Looked into a LDAP server. It is easily set up, but users still must submit a search query for their recipients. "This is unacceptable."
- Wrote a tutorial. Well, two, actually. One was for how to import a new contacts list and the other was a simple step-by-step "how to" on adding and/or deleting contacts within the contacts list on Outlook. Neither one seems to have had any effect.
So, now that all that information is given, is there anything I can do to allow users to feel like they've gone back to the way things were at first?
Will I have to resort to a shared Contacts folder and have Emp1Contact.pst, Emp2Contacts.pst, Emp3Contacts.pst, etc and just change each individual file with my own client? Of course, I couldn't change it while the users' clients are running (which is all the time); I'd have to slyly kill their processes and quickly switch the old .pst with a new one. But then, that would erase the individual contacts, which is something else I don't care to suffer a wrath from.
Surely there must be a better long-term solution. Any ideas?
The company I work for has recently moved their email from an in-house MS Exchange server to a third-party POP/SMTP server. This has wrecked havoc on the users in reference to the contacts/address book. These simple country folk want things to be the same as they were before; the way they are used to. They want to be able to click the "To" button and choose addresses from a list.
As it stands, if an employee leaves the company, or an employee comes in, I have to go around to every single individual station and update the contacts in Outlook for the user(s) of that computer. Originally, I could add/delete the employee on the exchange server, and every contact list would update automatically. All things considered, I seriously do not have time to go to everyone and update contacts one computer at a time.
I have tried the following:
- First, I tried to have a contacts.pst file in a central location on a shared drive that every user can access. I connected the address book with Outlook's "Mail" properties from Control Panel. This worked. But only for one person at a time - if another user tries to load up their email client, it says file is in use.
- Looked into a LDAP server. It is easily set up, but users still must submit a search query for their recipients. "This is unacceptable."
- Wrote a tutorial. Well, two, actually. One was for how to import a new contacts list and the other was a simple step-by-step "how to" on adding and/or deleting contacts within the contacts list on Outlook. Neither one seems to have had any effect.
So, now that all that information is given, is there anything I can do to allow users to feel like they've gone back to the way things were at first?
Will I have to resort to a shared Contacts folder and have Emp1Contact.pst, Emp2Contacts.pst, Emp3Contacts.pst, etc and just change each individual file with my own client? Of course, I couldn't change it while the users' clients are running (which is all the time); I'd have to slyly kill their processes and quickly switch the old .pst with a new one. But then, that would erase the individual contacts, which is something else I don't care to suffer a wrath from.
Surely there must be a better long-term solution. Any ideas?