Sharing Capabilities in Office 2004

[contact]

We're looking to have everyone in the office (all Macs) have access to
a shared contact management system. Basically we want to be able to see
the contacts we all share, post notes to each, see each others
calendars, etc.

Will getting everyone on office 2004 do the trick? As long as we're on
a LAN will we be able to share this info, or do we also need a server
to serve this up?

Rich

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

You should ask on the Entourage newsgroup, as that would be the program
handling something like this.
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Rich,

Microsoft Entourage sounds like just the thing you are looking for.

To jump in and get started open Entourage. Click on the Projects button and
go through the Create Project wizard.

Everyone will need to have access to the same folder on a shared volume in
order to read and write files to it.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

We're looking to have everyone in the office (all Macs) have access to
a shared contact management system. Basically we want to be able to see
the contacts we all share, post notes to each, see each others
calendars, etc.

Will getting everyone on office 2004 do the trick? As long as we're on
a LAN will we be able to share this info, or do we also need a server
to serve this up?

Rich

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Rich:

Somewhere you will need a server to make a good job of this.

The others are quite correct, you can share files and projects using the
Project Centre. However, you can only share calendars by saving them as web
pages then going to look at each other's calendars. Without a server, you
can't "share" your calendar so that others can see your free/busy time and
add appointments.

Entourage offers full calendar sharing only if you connect to an Exchange
Server. You could install a Microsoft Small Business Server somewhere on
your network to provide very rich functionality. The SBS server is an "out
of the box" solution for small business that provides an Exchange server,
File server, Web server, Messenger server, and SharePoint server that gives
you the ability to share almost everything except your wife!

An SBS box is small and cheap (basically, it's a PC, and unless you have a
lot of concurrent users it can be a "cheap" PC). Even though it's a
"server", it doesn't need powerful hardware until the number of users starts
to climb

See here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/default.mspx

You can buy one as a plug'n'go solution for $1,365 here:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/rec_server_networksol?c=u
s&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

You "could" run this up on an Intel Mac.

You might even be able to get it running in the background on one of your
desktop machines, using Parallels. If you want to try that, we'll put you
in touch with a specialist SBS MVP to help you get it going: it can be
tricky to install SBS if it is not the operating system in control of the
hardware.

Hope this helps

We're looking to have everyone in the office (all Macs) have access to
a shared contact management system. Basically we want to be able to see
the contacts we all share, post notes to each, see each others
calendars, etc.

Will getting everyone on office 2004 do the trick? As long as we're on
a LAN will we be able to share this info, or do we also need a server
to serve this up?

Rich

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi again,

An alternative to using a server to share calendars I think it's just as
efficient to use Google Calendar.
http://www.google.com/calendar

Google calendar uses standard W3C calendar events, so you can send calendar
events from Entourage to your Google account so they can be posted for
others to view and share. You can also synch various devices to the Google
Calendar. I tried my Google calendar as a "slave" by inviting my gmail
account to events that I want to share, but not inviting the gmail account
to events I don't want to share.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP


Quoting from "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]"

Hi Rich:

Somewhere you will need a server to make a good job of this.

The others are quite correct, you can share files and projects using the
Project Centre. However, you can only share calendars by saving them as web
pages then going to look at each other's calendars. Without a server, you
can't "share" your calendar so that others can see your free/busy time and
add appointments.

Entourage offers full calendar sharing only if you connect to an Exchange
Server. You could install a Microsoft Small Business Server somewhere on
your network to provide very rich functionality. The SBS server is an "out
of the box" solution for small business that provides an Exchange server,
File server, Web server, Messenger server, and SharePoint server that gives
you the ability to share almost everything except your wife!

An SBS box is small and cheap (basically, it's a PC, and unless you have a
lot of concurrent users it can be a "cheap" PC). Even though it's a
"server", it doesn't need powerful hardware until the number of users starts
to climb

See here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/default.mspx

You can buy one as a plug'n'go solution for $1,365 here:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/rec_server_networksol?c=u
s&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

You "could" run this up on an Intel Mac.

You might even be able to get it running in the background on one of your
desktop machines, using Parallels. If you want to try that, we'll put you
in touch with a specialist SBS MVP to help you get it going: it can be
tricky to install SBS if it is not the operating system in control of the
hardware.

Hope this helps

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info