Thank you very much for all the info - it really is much appreciated . As
mentioned originally, the questions were primarily for background info for
something coming up in the relatively not too distant future (certainly not
something in the <immediate horizon>). In any event, the numbers you
provided easily fall within the lower end of the spectrum but our upcoming
solution does not include support for updating the AD itself (users,
contacts or distribution groups).
All that said, and strictly as a side note which really is outside the scope
of your original request, having your contacts in the PF group would easily
allow de-centralized updating contact info by all users (whereas the GAL/AD
is managed by an admin). However, having multiple people update the same
contacts at any given time without a central point of ownership can make for
an interesting "bi-directiional sync" challenge for items that go beyond
just "basic" info (i.e. notes updated by multiple people for the same
contact in between "sync" sessions, how is a "contact deletion" ultimately
handled locally (as in mailbox) vs central store etc etc).
Karl
___________________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - Importer 1.3 / DataPorter 2.0 / Exporter
"Power contact importers/exporters for MS Outlook '2000/2007"
http://www.contactgenie.com
Eric P. said:
Karl,
As a little background, the purpose of attempting to do this is to fulfil
two objectives:
1)Centralize contacts lists which are now individually managed by each
user.
2)Create DL's (preferrably Query based DL's) that can contain a large
number
of contacts (exchange DL's are limited to 8k or aproximately 125 users
while
AD DL's do not have this limit).
So far, i have found the tool add2exchange enterprise which would
potentiall
allow 2 way sync to AD contacts via GAL sync. QDL's can then be used to
auto
create DL's based on contact field criteria. If this doesn't work (or if
we
decide otherwise) my developer may end up coding a custom solution which
may
or may not be based on the Microsoft Sync Framework that I just
discovered.
In answer to your questions:
1) 6 sales people with 250-500 contacts each, plus any number of an
additional 12 users.
2) it is not centralized currently, but would end up being somewhere
around
1500-2500 contacts.
3) Probably around 350 that need to be synced, plus maybe another 100 that
are truly personal and dont need to sync for the sales people, much less
for
non sales except for maketing and admin which will need access to all DL's
but maybe not the contacts.
4) Hmm. Not exactly sure, but probably once per day; maybe only once per
week, but then the liklihood of sync conflicts due to two users editing
the
same contact becomes a problem.
5) right now the plan is for bi-directional since multiple users will need
to update the same set of contacts and there isnt a single point of
contact
management to have someone do it all at the GAL or PF level and contacts
are
sometimes edited using mobile devices.
6) not likely for the reasons indicated above, but we will end up having
to
deal with whatever solution we can find and our client is willing to pay
for.
7)this is a single server environment.
Let me know if you have any ideas or would like additional info.
Eric
