Keep Connected Kelowna - Home, work, smart phone - Microsoft Exchange Server

Don’t you wish your home PC, your work PC and your smart phone could all sync together, or your email on your laptop could just work from anywhere without having to change any settings? These are a few of the many benefits that Microsoft Exchange Server has to offer.

The software also allows us to work as a team by sharing our schedules, business contacts and tasks. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one central contact list that all of your staff could work from?

There are many tools that are specifically beneficial to businesses, large or small. One such tool is Microsoft Exchange Server (MES). Email is a part of almost every employees regular work day. We all need to communicate with co-workers and customers. Electronic mail has enabled us to do this efficiently with little or no delay. Exchange server builds upon the standard E-Mail Server. It is a centralized sever based product that allows businesses to collaborate with each other. This collaboration is made up of Sharing Calendars, Contacts, Tasks and Email Folders (Inboxes).

The key part to Microsoft Exchange server is the Email Client. Microsoft Outlook is the application used to connect to Exchange. It can be used as a standalone product or collaboratively. I am sure many of you sometimes travel for business with a laptop. If you do, there probably have been times when you have had issues sending email. It can be a painful process to change your outgoing mail server with Outlook to allow email delivery. When you deliver email through one mail server it may not work when you are connected to a different Internet Service Provider. If Outlook is connected to an Exchange server you will never have to worry about this again.

I have seen some customers configure a business email account on their home PC’s. There are certain times when the abilityto fire off a quick email is necessary. The problems come in when you are at the office looking for details about an email that you sent two weeks ago. You keep digging and digging for that email but just can’t find it. You now remember that you sent it from your home PC. This requires you to drive home if you need to address the concern immediately. If you were using a service called “Outlook Anywhere with Exchange,” you would have one central email, contact, calendar and task store. All of this data is stored in your own private secured mailbox within Exchange. You can have as many licensed PC’s as you like using Outlook with the same mailbox.

Do you have important emails that you would not want to lose? Backups and retention periods are made easy when using mailbox databases. MES stores all of the user mailboxes within a database. This central database allows us to easily backup all of your important data in your mailbox. In a standard POP3/SMTP email, environment the data that Outlook stores is kept on the local hard drive storage. If your PC was lost, stolen, or had a hardware failure, this data would not be recoverable.

If there are times where you don’t have access to Outlook, or Outlook is not connected to the Exchange server, you can always connect to your Outlook Web App site. Outlook Web App is Microsoft Outlook in a web browser. Yes again, you have access to that one central mailbox store with all of your important information.

There are many great features of working with Microsoft Exchange. One of the biggest features that customers enjoy is having their email, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks synchronized with that wonderful device called a smart phone. Yes, your iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone and many others can be connected to the server. The days are gone when you couldn’t remember if you had dealt with an email on your phone or on your computer. When you send an email from your smart phone it shows up in your sent items on the device and in Microsoft Outlook.

It is nice to keep a list of important business contacts and have that list available at any time. When you add contacts to your Microsoft Outlook you won’t have to worry about typing them in on your smart phone. The Exchange Server automatically exchanges the data with the mobile phone. My personal favorite feature is the reminders. We all lead very busy business and personal lives. If I have an item I need to remember it goes into my Calendar as soon as I think of it. I set the date, detail about the item, and set the reminder time. These actions can be completed on either you smart phone, in Outlook or via Outlook Web App. I can now throw away my desk calendar as I know Outlook or my smart phone will remind me.

You may ask, “Wow all of these features sound so great, how do we sign up and what is the cost?” In most client’s networks, Microsoft Exchange server may already exist. Microsoft bundles the product in their Small Business Server line up. The Exchange server does require some configuration and maintenance but there would not be any additional licensing costs if each user is licensed correctly for the SBS (Small Business Server).

If your organization does not have their own server or the server does not contain Microsoft Exchange don’t worry. Northern Computer can provide you with your own Exchange Server Connection for a small monthly fee. This would allow you to reap the benefits of using Exchange and Outlook without having to purchase the software, hardware or maintain the environment. There has been substantial growth in this type of service and many organizations are going this route. Please talk to us about Microsoft Hosted Exchange and other Hosted Offerings.

-Martin O, Network Support Technician

Northern Computer - Your Trusted Partner #1 - 495 Banks Road Kelowna, BC V1X 6A2 Phone: 250.762.7753 Fax: 250.861.1861 Toll-Free: 1.877.257.2896 Email: sales@northerncomputer.ca or service@northerncomputer.ca http://www.northerncomputer.ca/