discussion Any Exchange Specialists?

[Caldezar]

Hey gang, hoping to use the collective mind to see if something is possible...

I'm looking to create a unified contact list in Exchange that can then be broken up by region and distributed as a permanent list to staff. The kicker is that I'd like to 'pull' the contents of this list from current staff contact lists without them having to do anything.

Essentially, we want to end up with a unified contact list for all of our clients. At the moment, our staff all maintains their own lost of clients that they manage in their Outlook. We want to pull all of those lists, unify them, then break them back up by region and redistribute the contacts back to staff. This way, if someone quits, goes on vacation, is injured, etc... it's extremely easy to push their contact list over to someone else to maintain.

Before anyone asks; no we don't use CRM or Outlook Contact Manager yet. Although it's definitely something we're looking at. We just have a very unique way of doing things here due to the type of business we're in, so it's not as 'cut and dry' as most offices.

 

[Squeetard]

Simplest way would be to make public folders in exchange for each regions contacts. You can then set Active directory security so that only members of a specific group can see those contacts. Also users can add those folders to their favorites so it comes up along with their regular contacts folder.

 

[Caldezar]

Simplest way would be to make public folders in exchange for each regions contacts. You can then set Active directory security so that only members of a specific group can see those contacts. Also users can add those folders to their favorites so it comes up along with their regular contacts folder.

This is essentially how I was originally looking at configuring it. And I still may do this... I was just hoping for a better way. Also, I still need to figure out how to extract user's contact lists without having to go to each user's workstation and exporting it manually.

Additionally, any new contacts added to a user's contact menu would have to be re-added to the public folder, would it not? Meaning, the folder would not automatically update as users add/edit contacts, correct?

 

[10e]

What version of Exchange are you using? 2013 has some better contact management features (seemingly) versus 2010.

 

[Caldezar]

*EDIT* Server 2012 r2 / Exchange 2013

I don't think my original response was clear.

 

[Behemoth-]

I would avoid public folders. Microsoft has been saying forever that they're going away. I personally turned the feature off.

What you are trying to do is mostly the job of a CRM tool but you could do that easily with SharePoint. Create a contact list online with security groups as required, user can connect the lists to Outlook and edit them on-the-go directly in Outlook.

Obviously, that would require SharePoint..

Additionally, any new contacts added to a user's contact menu would have to be re-added to the public folder, would it not? Meaning, the folder would not automatically update as users add/edit contacts, correct?

That is correct. Though you can mark a public folder as a favorite (or something like that, can't remember) so it appears in your "contact" tab in Outlook. They could add the new contacts directly in there - although they would not have them on their phones.

Also, I still need to figure out how to extract user's contact lists without having to go to each user's workstation and exporting it manually.

New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox useraccount -IncludeFolders "#Contacts#" -ExcludeDumpster -FilePath \\server\share\useraccount.pst

 

[Caldezar]

New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox useraccount -IncludeFolders "#Contacts#" -ExcludeDumpster -FilePath \\server\share\useraccount.pst

You sir... are the man!

Sharepoint would be ideal, but can be very cost prohibitive. I've alternatively looked in to other CRM software, but most of them don't really do what we want them to. They focus on sales tracks, which isn't really how we function here.

 

[Behemoth-]

You sir... are the man!

Sharepoint would be ideal, but can be very cost prohibitive. I've alternatively looked in to other CRM software, but most of them don't really do what we want them to. They focus on sales tracks, which isn't really how we function here.

I'm not aware of your full setup here but if you want / need sharepoint, the Office 365 plans are literally impossible to beat price wise with the on-premise equivalents, unless you only upgrade every ~6-7 years. When you add in CALs, Enterprise CALs, Server licences, hardware costs, Office Pro suite, backup hardware...

Exchange alone is worth it IMO - unless you have management backing you up in enforcing a 500MB quota per mailbox..

The office pro suite alone is more expensive in an enterprise agreement than our Office 365 E4 plan (makes no sense...).

Anyway.. I'm going a bit off topic here -.-

 

[Caldezar]

I'd love to migrate to Office 365. Unfortunately, just before I was hired on here, the previous contractor did a completely unnecessary upgrade of the entire server infrastructure and licensing. Really wish tey had migrated them to cloud. But... long story short, it will be at LEAST 2 more years before I can justify that migration.

Can I run Sharepoint as a 365 plan with an on-premise exchange option?

 

[Behemoth-]

I'd love to migrate to Office 365. Unfortunately, just before I was hired on here, the previous contractor did a completely unnecessary upgrade of the entire server infrastructure and licensing. Really wish tey had migrated them to cloud. But... long story short, it will be at LEAST 2 more years before I can justify that migration.

Can I run Sharepoint as a 365 plan with an on-premise exchange option?

Yah that is unfortunate..
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Sharepoint cloud only? --> You can. It starts at ~5$ per user per month. Although, I do not know if you need to get that on a 3 years term only but I would not --> since you might end up going O365, You might not want to make a 3 years licencing deal on 1/4 of the actual suite just in case you might want to go O365 all the way in 2 years. If you do go with SharePoint, make sure you can go on a monthly basis.

Also, I'm not sure how big of a business you work for but look at providers like Bell / Telus. I personally hate the idea of getting stuck with Bell AND Microsoft, but just for the sake of negotiation, they will drive the price down and then you go back to Microsoft and ask for the same or a lower price. We went down from ~ 27 to 18$ per user this way. this was a while back and prices have gone up quite a bit but still...

Why wouldn't I go with let's say Bell for my O365 needs? If you want to quit (Let's say Bell) but stick with O365, you'll have to either do a cut-over migration to Microsoft's cloud or bring everything back on-premise and then migrate it all back online on the other provider.

Anyway, If you want to go with a hosted SharePoint solution, you'll need DirSync (pretty easy) + ADFS (not so complicated but make sure you get it right!). If you only have SharePoint online, you might not need an ADFS cluster but when everything is hosted online, a 2 servers ADFS cluster is bare minimum IMO (ADFS down = no e-mail, SharePoint or Skype).

Oh and if you want to get management on-board, make sure to show off Skype for Business (Lync..). For some reason, that seems to be the eye-catching feature.