Help us rebuild our office Email/management setup.

July 21, 2009 2:38 PM

Small Office/Outlook Filter: I'm part of a small, family-run non-profit organization and we're attempting to drag ourselves, screaming, into the 21st century. Right now the main email is AOL and has been for years. (I know, I know.) We want to transition to a setup that allows us to have our own emails, yet share calendars and tasks. With our setup, what advice can you give on our setup? (more inside)

Our office is split. 3 of us are in one city and the 4 is in another. We would like to maintain an address book, calendar and task/to-do setup that can be shared by all of us, while still keeping personal things private. Because of securty, it looks like to forgo Google Apps and go with a hosted Exchange server. We all have decent experience with Outlook and everyone already has 2007 on their machines. The problem with all this is that, 2 of the us (the "bosses") currently share an email on AOL which they monitor together. It can be confusing because our main office email is there and then they also get their personal emails on it, which makes it difficult to separate for each person.

What is the best way to handle that? Should we create one address for the office that is the catchall that we can all access and give them their own personal address? What other options are there and what pitfalls should we be wary of?

posted by damiano99 to computers & internet (9 comments total)

I'd think that Google Apps as well as hosted Exchange is fine, in particular for a small non-profit. But then again I think that making this decision is more of a irrational thing.

From my experience Exchange is a good way to go in terms of requirements, but it does require some configuration and tweaking which I would not expect you can do based on the statement of "moving into the 21st century slowly". Which again suggests Google Apps :-)

Everything else I think is even more configuration and maintenance work.
posted by oxit at 2:48 PM on July 21

Google Apps are not intrinsically insecure. Sharing an email account is.

It's always better for everyone to have their own email. If you have an Exchange Server, you can set up more than enough email accounts for everyone. Security can be whatever you choose it to be.

We use Thunderbird/Lightning with Google Calendar and it works very well. It is much less expensive than setting up an Exchange Server. We used to have one.

Even if you do decide to create a general address that everyone shares, it's better that one person be assigned the responsibility of monitoring it. Once everyone gets their own addresses, you'll find they never use the "office" address again.

If you have security issues, Exchange has a host of security options you can set up per user or group.

That being said, Exchange can be persnickety. You really need to have someone who knows what they are doing set it up. I am pretty sharp IT-wise, and our old IT guy was brilliant, but we could not fix the arcane issues with Exchange. We hired a professional MSCE network guy and he was totally stumped. I eventually had to bring in my super-geek friend and he fixed things up in about 5 minutes.
posted by Xoebe at 2:53 PM on July 21

The bosses have to stop what they're doing. The existing email address should funnel into one place and someone will have the deal with those emails. You could always try to configure some sort of setup where the emails are automatically forwarded to each of them, but basically:

Should we create one address for the office that is the catchall that we can all access and give them their own personal address?

Yes.
posted by GuyZero at 3:09 PM on July 21

Perhaps I am missing something, but wouldn't Gmail as an email account per person, and then sharing the Calendar and DOCS work?

You can keep your single AOL account, and then forward any email to it to your new google accounts.

you can also keep your documents and share them this way.
posted by fox_terrier_guy at 3:10 PM on July 21

Also, the security concerns with Google Apps is the same as with hosted Exchange. I each case someone else is holding the data. Also, Google Apps syncs with Outlook.
posted by GuyZero at 3:14 PM on July 21

I would second the Google Apps suggestion. I find it very refreshing as it has evolved to a stage where you are no longer tied to any client side software platform. So you can use Thunderbird (I prefer Postboxes) for email and even integrate your calendar, email etc into Blackberry (if and when people want to get mobile).

You may want to consider ways of smoothening the transition for them:

1. Have you considered getting the AOL email polled into the google account via POP so they start using the interface and features which will lower the hurdle for them to transition.

2. Another option might be to set them up with the new email address as well as the AOL address on outlook or thunderbird via imap so the two bosses have all sent and received emails in one place helping them keep track and gradually moving work emails to the new address (Postboxes 'learns' contracts you communicate with and autofills across identities)

Hope I have been able to add something to the already excellent suggestions above
posted by london302 at 3:25 PM on July 21

All this is good advice, but I guess one thing I should have mentioned at the outset is that the main reason we really wanted to do Exchange and not Google is that Google doesn't have as robust a task system as Outlook.

Don't know if that matters, but just wanted to throw that out there.
posted by damiano99 at 4:18 PM on July 21

Let me just throw in that you might want to look at Salesforce for nonprofits. I believe the first 10 licenses are free. Use that your your tasks and workflow, then your email/calendar is free of that constraint.
posted by IndigoSkye at 5:38 PM on July 21

One more thing to point out: Google has outages from time to time.
A larger initial investment that could also allow more flexibility down the road would be hiring a consultant to install a dedicated server with Microsoft Small Business Server 03/08 with Exchange built in. It could also provide VPN and file sharing services.
You would need to get a fast Internet connection where the server is located (it could even be placed in a datacenter if it would be cheaper than more expensive internet). You'd also have to manage anti-spam/anti-virus which would be paid for in 1 or 2 year increments for the 'service' of it. TrendMicro is good for that (and it also provides client PCs anti-virus as well).
The much cheaper way to go is an Exchange alternative such as Zimbra or Scalix which would run on Linux and have a lower cost, but may require additional maintenance and support.
posted by ijoyner at 8:06 PM on July 21