Outlook Contacts Question

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I have a large database of Contacts that we have imported from Act!. I would
like to seperate this database (by a territory custom field that I created)
into several other contact lists. I am using exchange 2003 in conjunction
with outlook 2003. My goal is to have a mail contacts that not everyone has
permissions to and several others that only the sales rep has access to. And
when the sales rep adds or changes a contact in their "filtered" contact list
it will also update the main contact database.
 
Phillip Long said:
I have a large database of Contacts that we have imported from Act!.
I would like to seperate this database (by a territory custom field
that I created) into several other contact lists. I am using exchange
2003 in conjunction with outlook 2003. My goal is to have a mail
contacts that not everyone has permissions to and several others that
only the sales rep has access to. And when the sales rep adds or
changes a contact in their "filtered" contact list it will also
update the main contact database.
Click to expand...

Since you're using Exchange, you can create as many contacts folders as you
choose and control access to them with permissions. I'm not familiar enough
with public folders to say whether or not they can hold those folders
(although I would think so), but certainly the GAL can or a shared mailbox
can.
 
Thanks!
I understand that but will the main contact databse be updated when one of
the other (smaller) databases are updated.
 
Phillip Long said:
I understand that but will the main contact databse be updated when
one of the other (smaller) databases are updated.
Click to expand...

I don't understand your references to "main", "smaller", and "database".
 
I have a client who wants his contacts broken down from a large list of
several thousand contacts by territory. We have done this and it works well.
He doesnt want his sales guys to have access to the total database only to
their territory. Again, we have that done. The problem is when the sales guy
adds a new contcat to his territory contact list it does not add to the main
contact database. Is there a way to have that happen??
 
Phillip Long said:
I have a client who wants his contacts broken down from a large list
of several thousand contacts by territory. We have done this and it
works well. He doesnt want his sales guys to have access to the total
database
Click to expand...

Do you mean folder?
only to their territory. Again, we have that done. The
problem is when the sales guy adds a new contcat to his territory
contact list it does not add to the main contact database. Is there a
way to have that happen??
Click to expand...

Are these folders nested within the person's default Contacts folder, nested
in a different folder, nested with each other, or not nested at all? In any
event, if they're separate folders, even if nested, of course changing one
won't have any effect on any of the others.
 
One thing that should really be remembered is that Exchange is not a
database and while you can sync folders between Outlook and Exch - there is
no update facility to update <between> folders (i.e. main contact folder,
salesrep#1 contact folder, salesrep2 contact folder etc).

That being said - it also sounds like you may have some other basic
"business rules" you need to decide on that can potentially cause you
headaches. Just as a for instance - some questions related to that are:

#1 - Will more then one salesrep have access to the same contact within a
territory? (or to put it another way - can there be more then one
salesperson working the same customer/contacts etc)?
#2 - Who actually owns a contact in terms of data priority? What happens if
2 salesreps add the same contact unknowingly?
#3 - Are there such types of users like "Sales Managers" managing a group of
sales reps who should have access to all the contacts within his/her group
but not across groups?
#4 - What rules do you want applied if a salesrep deletes in his/her contact
folder that may be shared by another rep? Is the contact to be deleted from
the main folder - if so at what point? If a contact is deleted in the main
folder - should it be deleted in the sub contact folders (for lack of a
better term)?
#5 - Is this intended to be a one-way update (salesrep to main contact base
or bi-directional)? Ergo - if a change is made in the main folder - is the
intent to have these changes "pushed down" to the salesreps?
#6 - Will any contact notes made by one salesrep be available to another?
#7 - Do you have a definition as to what constitutes an "absolutely unique"
contact within the main contact base?
.....................and the list of questions can go on and on depending on
the size and complexity of your organization.

Anyhow - just posing this purely as "food for thought" for you and none of
this may even apply to your environment (i.e. not looking for/expecting any
answers to this). Experience has proven that sometimes the simplest of
objectives can become an absolute nightmare once corporate
politics/structures/cultures come into play in terms of "data ownership"
which is totally outside of what can (or can't) be done "technically".

It does sound though, that you may be a prime candidate for one of the many
synchronization tools out there once you've settled on what business rules
you want to apply in your organization - a good place to start looking is
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/groupcontacts.htm

Karl
__________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - Importer 1.3 / DataPorter 2.0
"Power contact importers for MS Outlook '2000/2003"
http://www.contactgenie.com
 
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