Share Outlook Folders

E-mail, contact information, calendar schedules, notes and tasks are all part

of your enterprise's knowledge base and are more efficiently used when shared

amongst users working on the same project or for the same client. And, it is not

necessary to share all the information either. Enterprise class messaging

servers (such as Domino or Exchange), let you create 'public' folders that

everyone with an account on that server can access and use. But, what if you use

an external service provider for your messaging needs and still want to be able

to share such information? This is where products like WorkgroupShare come in

handy. It is recommended for scenarios where people frequently use clients such

as Outlook and Eudora but do not require an expensive messaging solution like

Exchange or Domino (let's say they are using a vanilla Linux mail server or

the default POP3/SMTP servers in Windows). So, they have all the 'workgroup'

functionality at the desktop level. This way they can share this information

with each other easily without requiring costly software.

Pre-requisites



WorkgroupShare can be installed on any kind of a system, be it a workstation or
desktop, and it works through a database (either Access or SQL Server). Do note

that SQL Server or MSDE versions do not ship with the product and you need to

have these installed separately. You let it run by itself or integrate it with

an Active Directory, or even run it in a mixed environment with both. All your

users need not be within your firewall. They can be anywhere as long as you open

five ports in your firewall, both TCP and UDP. The product is priced according

to the number of licenses (users) you require. For a 100 users license, it will

cost USD 1,795 (that's about INR 82.6 K). When using this software, we found

two small 'missing' features. One, it does not integrate the shared

calendars with your own when you're looking at the calendar in Outlook. This

may be good or bad depending on whether you're looking at the added

convenience if this could be done and the confusion that might result if it were

there. Two, there was no way to select a subset of contacts or e-mail without

having to share out an entire folder. As of now, if you want to share a set of

data, put them into a folder that's completely separate from the folders you

don't want to share.

You can look at and make changes, if permitted by the Administrator, to other people's shared items

Configuration



The application comes as a server/client package. The file you download is the
server application. Once you set that up, you must launch the Administrator

module to add users and folders. To make management easier, remember to create

groups of those users from the Groups sub-tree. There is actually no need to

create a 'Public Folder' if you are not planning to have your users move

shared information to these folders.



If you do create such public folders, they will appear directly under the 'Shared
Information' tree node.

The final bit of configuration (optional, since default settings are fine) is

in the Settings box-you can get there by double-clicking on the



Settings node and setting up the following:

Synchronization: The more frequent, the more the load on your

bandwidth. The first sync operation is a full copy, but after that clients will

synchronize only incrementally.

Server: On this tab, set up if you want to use secure ports. Select

the secure option if your users will access it from the outside.

Advanced: The parameters on this tab govern what happens to file

attachments in e-mail and appointment information. Both these may cause

duplication of information on your WorkgroupShare server.To have WorkgroupShare

authenticate users against the Active Directory domain you have, right-click

each such user under the User folder and select 'Associate with Active

Directory User'. To disengage, right-click later and select



'Unassociate with Active Directory User'. There is nothing further to be
done in that direction. 

On the server administrator console, after a client has synced up, you can view a list of folders to set up access permissions for other users

Even if you have more than one ADS domain in your network, WorkgroupShare

server automatically selects the domain/LDAP directory that the user ID is on

and even attempts to decipher your user account and pre-select it on the next

screen. Make sure that before attempting this operation you are logged on to the

current system or the ADS domain (somehow) using a 'Domain Administrator'

account. Otherwise, you will be denied



access to ADS.

Firewall ports to open (server and client)



For TCP


    8100: WorkgroupShare (Non-SSL)


    8101: WorkgroupShare (SSL)


    8109: Free/Busy


For UDP


    8102 & 8104: WorkgroupShare (Monitor)

The WorkgroupShare server machine has a new shared folder called 'WorkgroupShare

Client Setup'. For every workstation that you want to use it on, you need to

shut down Outlook if it is running and then start 'ClientSetup.exe' from

this shared folder. There is nothing to configure on the client. 

Using it



When you fire up Outlook for the first time after running the setup on the
client system, it will trigger a dialog to let you synchronize your data with

the WorkgroupShare server. Here, you can select what folders to export as well.

It will take a bit of time to export the first time if you have a lot of data to

transfer. Subsequently, you can get Outlook to sync up by going to

Tools>Share>'Synchronize with WorkgroupShare'.

To change login information (WorkgroupShare server), or to reselect your

folders, select the Settings option from the Tools>Share menu.You can view

other people's calendars and other information by going into the 'Shared

Information' folder in the Outlook folder list view. You can enable this view

from View>Folder List or by clicking the closed-folder icon from the list of

icons at the bottom. If you have been provided access to do so, you can also

edit or add items to other peoples' schedules and contacts. To avoid this,

give the correct permissions for each folder on the WorkgroupShare server, after

the client has synced up at least once. The default is 'Read/Create/Edit/Delete'

which gives other users full access to that folder.

The price tag of 83K (for a 100 user license) is quite a lot, given that you

could have a proper messaging server (WorkgroupShare does not feature any

messaging capabilities) running that would provide you with these facilities.

You would get better value for money elsewhere.

Sujay V Sarma