S
Sean Doherty
Hi there, folks, and thanks for reading.
We are using Outlook 2003 and have MS Exchange Server that allows sharing of folders.
What we are trying to do is create a centralized, read-only shared list of contacts that pulls only certain contacts from a group of individual users.
To put it another way, our users each maintain their own Outlook Contact folders. Within those indepentdently located user Contact folders are our customers. The users also have non-customer contacts in their Contact folders, such as friends, family, vendors, professional contacts, etc.
We would like to get a centralized Outlook Contact folder of all their customers only, and exclude their other non-Customer contacts. This project is not for the use or particular benefit of our users (compliance stuff), so our users are not likely to take detailed steps in maintaining this process on their own, so an "easy to them" solution is required on our part.
This centralized Outlook folder would also be used on an ongoing basis, meaning as the users add new customers to their individual Outlook contacts, the users should need only check a particular field or select a particular Category in Outlook, and the result would be that it automatically would appear in that centralized folder.
To date, I cannot seem to find a solution within Outlook that meets our particular needs.
The users do not want to maintain two separate contact folders (one shareable and one not) if it can be avoided.
One of our end products would be an Export to *.csv of all the Customer data on a regular basis.
As it stands now, our solution is going to be going to the client's desks for periodic Exports of the data into Excel, filtering out records that are not flagged with the category "Customer", and then re-importing the filtered data back into a shared Contacts folder on one of our machines. This is a very imperfect solution that will no doubt result in stale data. However, it is the only solution at this point that least inconveniences our userbase, which is one of our concerns.
I hope that a more elegant solution to our problem can be found.
Any thoughts?
I apologize for the length of the post, as I was hoping to fully explain what we need, and what we can and cannot do at this point.
Thanks in advance for any and all replies.
EggHeadCafe - Software Developer Portal of Choice
A Brief Review of Generic Collection Classes
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorial...5-40421048a450/a-brief-review-of-generic.aspx
We are using Outlook 2003 and have MS Exchange Server that allows sharing of folders.
What we are trying to do is create a centralized, read-only shared list of contacts that pulls only certain contacts from a group of individual users.
To put it another way, our users each maintain their own Outlook Contact folders. Within those indepentdently located user Contact folders are our customers. The users also have non-customer contacts in their Contact folders, such as friends, family, vendors, professional contacts, etc.
We would like to get a centralized Outlook Contact folder of all their customers only, and exclude their other non-Customer contacts. This project is not for the use or particular benefit of our users (compliance stuff), so our users are not likely to take detailed steps in maintaining this process on their own, so an "easy to them" solution is required on our part.
This centralized Outlook folder would also be used on an ongoing basis, meaning as the users add new customers to their individual Outlook contacts, the users should need only check a particular field or select a particular Category in Outlook, and the result would be that it automatically would appear in that centralized folder.
To date, I cannot seem to find a solution within Outlook that meets our particular needs.
The users do not want to maintain two separate contact folders (one shareable and one not) if it can be avoided.
One of our end products would be an Export to *.csv of all the Customer data on a regular basis.
As it stands now, our solution is going to be going to the client's desks for periodic Exports of the data into Excel, filtering out records that are not flagged with the category "Customer", and then re-importing the filtered data back into a shared Contacts folder on one of our machines. This is a very imperfect solution that will no doubt result in stale data. However, it is the only solution at this point that least inconveniences our userbase, which is one of our concerns.
I hope that a more elegant solution to our problem can be found.
Any thoughts?
I apologize for the length of the post, as I was hoping to fully explain what we need, and what we can and cannot do at this point.
Thanks in advance for any and all replies.
EggHeadCafe - Software Developer Portal of Choice
A Brief Review of Generic Collection Classes
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorial...5-40421048a450/a-brief-review-of-generic.aspx