need to export firmwide contacts to access or any db

  • Thread starter Thread starter sammyl
  • Start date Start date
S

sammyl

I am looking for a way to export **all** of the firm's user's contacts
to an access database and also have some sort of synchronization where
the Database gets updated with changes in the user's contacts for our
marketing dept ... I have seen many products that do this for an
individual mailbox but not for collecting firmwide contacts. I would
appreciate any help in terms of product or code

Thanks!
 
The first thing you may want to do is clarify/define what you mean by
"**all**" the firm's contacts". Multiple Exch folders? GAL? etc

Depending on your definition - our ContactGenie Exporter product (Premium
edition) may do what you're looking for -
http://www.contactgenie.com/cgxfeatures.htm

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
 
I would like to export every individual user's contacts and merge them
into a database so we have a complete list of contacts from all of our
firm members. I would also like to synchronize with the database to
keep the db list up to date
 
Unfortunately you still haven't identified where the individual user
contact's reside - "local PST file" or in a personal Exch folder
(assume you're not using a global contacts folder at this point).
Makes a big difference in how things get implemented.

There are various potential 3rd party solutions to this as well
which you can find and may want to look at on
http://www.slipstick.com.

From our experience, the term "sync" can identify a great many
issues within an organization when there are no firm rules in
place for such things as duplicates, master data ownership and
the like. As for CG, we only have one-way products that will
update either contact folders (on import) or databases (on
export) but currently haven't released a "two way multi-contact
folder" sync product as of yet. "Syncing" between any two single
data sources is a lot easier then when dealing with an equation
that includes a one-to-many scenario (such as mutiple contact
folders where there are no firm rules for "uniqueness" or "ultimate"
data ownership). Have seen very few solutions that actually work
long term beyond the most simplistic of environments.

Generally, a true an full "sync" needs to address things like:
#1 - Can each contact be absolutely uniquely identified by some
data field(s) to avoid duplicates?
#2 - When duplicates are found - how will these be handled at the
contact folder level and DB level?
#3 - If a contact is deleted from the master database - does it in
turn get deleted from the contact folders?
#4 - Which data source has priority? If a change is made to a
contact in a folder but deleted from the DB the same day -
does it get re-added?
#5 - When does a contact get deleted from the DB? When the
first person deletes it from their folder or when no one
references the contact or by the DB Admin?
#5 - What's the priority of changes? Those made to the DB or
"last in"?
....................list of questions can goe on and on but all depends
on actual requirements/objective and importance of info.


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
 
we would like to export each user's contacts from our exchange server
and we are not using a global contacts folder. the requirements are
pretty simple. a mere export to a fresh database daily would suffice. 2
way sync is not necessary... and can't the owner attribute of the
contact be enough in case of duplicates?
 
Your requirements are then simple enough and easily do-able -
just need to be able to export the custom fields. Either of our
Exporter versions (Adv or Premium) could do exactly what you
need http://www.contactgenie.com/cgxfeatures.htm
You may also find other alternatives on http://www.slipstick.com

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
 
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