Microsoft Exchange

[little-linguist]

Right, excuse my ignorance on this topic!

I often work out of the office or from home and am looking for a way to sync my emails / calendar etc. more easily. A friend suggested looking into Microsoft Exchange and although it's all a bit gobbledegook to me this does sound quite appealing - especially with the activesync for this on the new iphone!

So my question is how exactly does MS Exchange work? I've found some hosting companies that offer hosted Exchange packages and the pricing seems reasonable but you appear to need to register a new domain name for it. So how could I have MS Exchange hosted using the same domain as our website? I assume that I can't but don't really understand it.

Does anyone else use it or could tell me more about it?

[Dave]

Right, excuse my ignorance on this topic!

I often work out of the office or from home and am looking for a way to sync my emails / calendar etc. more easily. A friend suggested looking into Microsoft Exchange and although it's all a bit gobbledegook to me this does sound quite appealing - especially with the activesync for this on the new iphone!

So my question is how exactly does MS Exchange work? I've found some hosting companies that offer hosted Exchange packages and the pricing seems reasonable but you appear to need to register a new domain name for it. So how could I have MS Exchange hosted using the same domain as our website? I assume that I can't but don't really understand it.

Does anyone else use it or could tell me more about it?

You would NOT be able to use Microsoft Exchange on your existing domain and would have to register and a new domain and e-mail address with one of the companies that offer this service. You would then have to configure your existing site/e-mail to send copies of e-mails received to the new e-mail address.

My personal opinion on the above is that it is not worth doing unless you will need access to historical information.

I use Microsoft Outlook 2003 for receiving/sending e-mails. I also have an iphone which was very easy to setup for e-mails.

When I am away from the office for short holidays, weekends and even in the evenings I can check my e-mails on the iphone, respond to e-mails and process orders.

The e-mails remain on the Bluepark server so next time you open Microsoft Outlook it will download the e-mails you have received on the iphone since you last opened Outlook.

I use the autosync so all my contacts and calendar appointments are always upto date on the iphone.

Hope this helps?

[little-linguist]

Thanks Dave. I think the appeal of Exchange is the fact that all my folders etc. will be exactly the same wherever I am (home, web, work etc). Or at least that's my understanding of how it works!
Currently, I organise all my email into folders etc. at work (my main computer) but if I access the mail at home, I have to start sorting it all out again and it drives me mad trying to find everything. If it was just to answer customer queries etc., then the existing webmail would be fine but I need to keep hold of older emails for reference etc.

Perhaps I could purchase a new domain name for mail and have the email forwarders set up from within Bluepark? Not sure if this would work though.

[Dave]

Thanks Dave. I think the appeal of Exchange is the fact that all my folders etc. will be exactly the same wherever I am (home, web, work etc). Or at least that's my understanding of how it works!
Currently, I organise all my email into folders etc. at work (my main computer) but if I access the mail at home, I have to start sorting it all out again and it drives me mad trying to find everything. If it was just to answer customer queries etc., then the existing webmail would be fine but I need to keep hold of older emails for reference etc.

Perhaps I could purchase a new domain name for mail and have the email forwarders set up from within Bluepark? Not sure if this would work though.

I know you can access your e-mail using Blueparks Webmail but are not sure if it will retain historical information so perhaps a call to Rich would be worth while before you go down the route of purchasing a new domain & exchange.

Yes, you can set forwarders in Bluepark to any valid e-mail address

[Adva Trading]

If emails all you need, why not open a GoogleMail account?

The benefits:
1. It has unlimited storage space (The more you use, the more space they allocate to you).

2. You can access it from anywhere.

3. Instead of folders, it uses the system of tags: You allocate a Tag to each email and archive them. That means that you can have one email in more than one 'folder'.

4. It is the fasted sender of emails I have ever used.

5. You can configure it to pull your emails from other emails account you allready have, so you do not need to change any of your emails address.

6. In the year I have been using it (Daily, hour each day), it was down only once, for planned maintanance.

7. They keep adding new features.

Takes time to get used to, but the best thing since sliced bread (or since the Loyalty Points here).