Sharing Calendars and Contacts on a Tight Budget Hosted and Network-Based Alternatives Abound Ron Pachianno
A few years ago, I had received a call from one of my oldest clients. Apparently, he had been away on a business trip this and saw something that he just had to have. The man he was meeting with had been using Microsoft Outlook as his e-mail client and had it configured in a way that allowed his assistant to review and modify his calendar from her desk.
Also through Outlook, they had a company address book accessible to everyone on the network. So he not only had access to all of his personal contacts, but to the entire company directory. Considering how often my client is running around and meeting people, giving his assistant the capability to update his schedule would be invaluable. Best of all, since they where already using Microsoft Outlook as the company's default e-mail client, he assumed that the software was already on the machine and just needed to be configured. Regrettably, there was more to it than that, and it broke my heart to tell him that we wouldn't be able to accomplish that without having to make major changes to the e-mail infrastructure – expensive changes.
The reason this other company had this capability was because they were using Microsoft Exchange Server as the core of their messaging infrastructure. My client was not. All of those cool features that he was so excited about were actually a function of Microsoft Exchange. Without an Exchange server, none of that would be possible. However, the cost associated with deploying a Microsoft Exchange solution can be large, and many smaller businesses won't have the funds or qualified personal necessary to take on such an endeavor. The cost associated for the licenses and software alone could send you into cardiac arrest.
For many offices, the most frustrating experience related to Microsoft Outlook is finding out that unless you are using Microsoft Exchange Server, there is no simple, built-in, reliable method for sharing your Contact and Calendar information among multiple users. Microsoft in its infinite wisdom (and never-ending quest for more money) decided that if you didn't purchase an Exchange server, you shouldn't need this type of functionality. As a former IT director, I can tell you that these features can be incredibly useful and once you have access to them, it is very hard to live without them.
The primary reason that sharing Outlook data is so elusive is because standalone Outlook users store data in Personal Folders or PST files. However, two people cannot work with the same PST file at the same time, because these files are not designed for shared access.
Fortunately, though, there are options available to you that would give you this level of functionality without breaking your bank account. Let's take a look at some of the choices currently available.
Go Hosted
One way for small organizations to share information without installing Exchange Server themselves is to lease space on a hosted Exchange server, which is shared among other companies. The benefit to this approach is that you get all of the advantages of a full-blown Exchange server, but without all of the overhead that goes with it — no hardware or software to purchase, no ongoing support issues, and no backups to contend with. All of this is performed by the hosting service. The only thing you'll need to have in order to access your e-mail and collaboration services is an Internet connection via either the standard Microsoft Outlook client software or through the browser-based Outlook Web Access (OWA) portal.
Exchange Hosted Services provides small offices with a cost-effective messaging solution capable of maintaining the security and availability of your messaging environments, and in many cases can also satisfy internal policy and regulatory compliance requirements. We've seen prices for this type of service range from $10 -$15 per month/per user, which when compared to the time and expense of implementing your own Exchange solution, is quite a bargain.
A number of companies offer this service and you should be able to locate them simply by performing a search on "Hosted Exchange Services." Just to get you started, though, I can point you in the direction of a company called ASP-ONE. Their Exchange Hosting program offers everything we discussed here.
Compared to implementing an in-house Microsoft Exchange solution, this is a far more economical solution. Unfortunately, it still might be too expensive for some small businesses. Depending on the size of your staff, this could run into a few hundred dollars a month and several thousand dollars a year. Let's say for example that you have 15 employees. At $15 per user the cost is $225 per month or $2700 per year. And this will be a recurring bill.
While this might not seem like a huge amount of money, many small businesses (like my client) run on a shoe-string budget and can't afford this type of recurring expenditure. Not to mention the fact that it would require them to literally abandon their existing e-mail platform. For some users, that's just not an option, especially those companies that would just like to be able to accomplish simple tasks like sharing a Contact list or Calendar.
Keeping Collaboration on Your Network
For those users, there is another alternative. In recent years a few products have surfaced that are capable of bypassing the shared access limitations of PST files. One of the best ones I've seen is called OfficeCalendar.
OfficeCalendar allows you to share your Outlook calendar, contact and task information without the complexity, expense, and hardware requirements of Microsoft Exchange Server. Plus it's compatible with all versions of Outlook from 2000 on. OfficeCalendar's Admin/Server component can run on any 32-bit Windows operating system, including both workstation and server versions, making it very accessible to small business owners.
The way it works is simple: you'll need to designate one of the computers on your network as the database and administrative host to install the OfficeCalendar Server component. Then the OfficeCalendar add-in will need to be installed on each computer with Microsoft Outlook that wishes to share Outlook calendar, contact and task information.
OfficeCalendar allows you to establish which users can see and do what to any person's Outlook calendar and contacts in its security setup. So, for instance, you could allow one person to view and edit appointments on your personal calendar, while others could only see your calendar or even be totally restrict from viewing it at all. You also have the capability to mark entries as private in order to hide them from everyone but yourself.
Once set up, OfficeCalendar allows you to share and interact with Microsoft Outlook calendars, contacts and tasks that are stored in your colleague's Outlook Personal Folders right from within your own copy of Outlook. It even creates an Outlook group calendar, which shows all users appointments on a single, consolidated calendar.
With OfficeCalendar you can also share Outlook information while working remotely over an Internet connection. OfficeCalendar's.NET technology makes it easy for employees working from home, remote offices, or traveling out of town to connect to your office's central OfficeCalendar server to send and receive updates as often as they like.
And the best part is the price. Using our previous example of 15 employees, the license for each OfficeCalendar user is $80. That means that it would be a one-time cost of only $1200. So right off the top you're saving $1,500 the first year over the hosted solution and $2,700 for each year thereafter.
Ultimately, this was the solution I ended up implementing for my client and his company has been very happy with it. However, this might not be the best solution for your organization. My recommendation would be to give OfficeCalendar a try and judge for yourself. They offer a 30-day free trial so you have nothing to lose. Worst case scenario, you always have the various Hosted Exchange Services to fall back on.
