Christian and Beccy

iTrader: (14)

From a business point-of-view, I am looking to get our email processing sorted out. Until now, we have used a disjointed and poorly setup combination of Outlook and Exchange Server. This has never worked as intended.

What we want is the ability to receive emails on either one of 2 PC's and deal with them respectively, so I assume the mails need to be kind of server or centrally based somehow.

Is this something that is possible? If so, can I do it just with Outlook 2003 or do I need Exchange Server too??

Spiky

iTrader: (1)

you can do that with outlook express,

as long as you have clicked the icon in the advance tag, to "leave messages on server"

thuis, it will not remove them from the server, and any other pc that looks for mails will get them

or

run an exchange server, and use m/s outlook, to veiw your messages


option 1 is farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr cheaper

ballin

iTrader: (1)

As Spiky says, just leave them on your ISP server (but not forever!)

pa_sjo

If you already have Exchange Server then that's all you need...... You configure the Exchange Server to receive emails and then the clients just 'talk' to it.. you can share mailboxes or set up public folders..

JohnnyB

use exchange server, dont piss about with pop accounts

JohnnyB

i must admit exchange server is over kill for two pc's but if you have use it

ballin

iTrader: (1)

not just overkill, its pointless for what he needs. pop is plenty good enough.

Christian and Beccy

iTrader: (14)

So, looking at it in a real-time scenario. If a customer sends us a mail and Gary reads it and answers it on his PC, I really need to be able to see if it has been replied to and ideally what the reply was.

Does that make sense?

We did have a Server machine, but I am simplifying our setup so that we have 2 individual machines, but they communicate with each other over a network. This is only to share network printers and also a couple of directories that need to be accessible from all machines. There are actually 2 other machines in the network, but these don't need as much capability.

I would also like, ideally, to be able to remotely access our network and emails eventually.

Jonzy

exchange is the answer ... or a hosted imap server

Spiky

iTrader: (1)

the process

you email gets sent to the mail server of ya isp

if you do as i said on first post

when he reads it, it shows as read on server, but stays there

then when you log on from home and check mail, you get the mails just like he did


and you can keep doing this from every single pc in the world if you want


the only stuff that WONT be saved every time (depending on ISP)

is your SENT items,

unless they use imap (aol does)

JohnnyB

see exchange server works great for that.

you can have your own mail box and share one, if the other guy reads it. it will be marked as read when you read it.

pa_sjo

Exchange does whatever you want..... you could also set up web outlook so you can also check it from home/anywhere if you so wish to.... Outlook is handy for scheduling stuff too (booking in?).... let me know if you want some exchange consultancy

tsutton

Then Exchange server is what you need as it will keep all e-mails including sent items. You can access it using Outlook or via web client.

Or if you have PDA/phone, you can sync it over the Internet (via GPRS or 3G) or WiFi to the exchange server.

Jamz

You might want to look at a renting a couple of mailboxes in a hosted Exchange environment.

tsutton

Why should he pay more money when he already have an Exchange server?

It make sense (and save money) to use existing server than spending more money.

Jamz

kinda implies he doesn't have it anymore

Also for a few quid per mailbox per month he doesn't have to worry about the server dying, backups, spam, viruses etc etc.

Makes sense to me.