I am looking for a good way to be able to have a shared company-wide category system for my contacts to be able to generate contact lists (like "clients" or "volunteers) for specific e/mailing campaigns. Often our contacts fit into more than one category, so I can't just have them reside in different places. I need more of a tagging system. In outlook, you can assign a multiple categories to a contact record...but those categories aren't shared across the entire company. The right solution would have to integrate into Outlook, as it is our primary, day-to-day email solution. Is there a good solution out there for this?
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Jen Udan
Posted 9 months ago #Hi,
I don't have any personal experience with setting this up, as we all use Gmail accounts here at ChooseWhat, but this Microsoft Office article should help you:
It goes through the following:
What is contact sharing?
Share your default Contacts folder with specific people
Share your default Contacts folder with everyone
Share a custom contacts folder with specific people
Share a custom contacts folder with everyone
Revoke or change other people's access to your contacts foldersHope this helps! Let us know if you have any other questions.
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Leo Welder
Posted 9 months ago #I looked a the article, and it looks like it would address the issue if ADF99 has a Microsoft Exchange Server. I'll spend some more time looking for a solution that doesn't require Exchange (which is expensive and difficult to maintain) to see if there might be another way.
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Jason Huie
Posted 9 months ago #We've used Google Apps to achieve this goal. By creating a generic user and adding company contacts to that user's account, you can effectively share contacts with other users. Here are the steps:
1. Create a google apps account (https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new)
NOTE: If you already have a google apps account, you can skip this step.2. Login to your google apps account as an administrator (http://www.google.com/a/YOUR DOMAIN HERE]).
3. Once you've logged in you'll see a blue navigation bar near the top of the screen. Click on "Organization & Users"
4. Click on "Create a new user" and fill out the info for your generic account. Here are the settings I used:
First name: Company
Last name: Contacts
Primary email address: contact
5. Don't forget to set a new password -- choose one what you are willing to distribute to your entire company. That doesn't mean you should use an easy one, but don't use one of your personal ones.6. Once you've saved your user, you can sign out of your administrator account.
7. Now log in as your new user
8. Read the terms of service and accept if you agree to the terms.
9. If you chose to use the temporary password, you will have to set a new one now.
10. Now you're all ready to add some contacts. Click on the "Contacts" link on the right part of the screen.
11. You add contacts by clicking the "single person" button in the upper left. To add a group use the "two person" button. Add all your company contacts.
12. Now you can click on "Export" on the upper right to export your Contacts as a CSV. This is useful for importing into your personal Gmail account or other account.
In the next post, I will list the steps for syncing your Contacts directly to your iPhone.
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Jason Huie
Posted 9 months ago #Now that you've setup a Google Apps account to house your shared contact list, you can have everyone sync this contact list to their phones. Here, I will outline how to do it in an iPhone, because that's the phone I have....
1. Go into your "Settings" screen
2. Select "Mail, Contacts, Calendars"
3. Select "Add Account"
4. Select "Microsoft Exchange"
5. Use the email address you setup for your shared list
6. The domain can be left blank
7. The username is the full email address you setup for your shared list
8. The password is the password you setup for your shared list (this is why you shouldn't use one of your personal passwords)
9. I put the description as "Work Contacts"
10. Click on "Next" and you will see that you now have to provide the "Server"
11. Use "m.google.com" for the server and click "Next"
12. Turn off Mail, Turn on Contacts, and Leave Calendars as off - Make sure you choose "Keep on My iPhone" for your existing contacts
13. Now click Save
14. You've now added your shared contact list to your phone. You may need to give it a few seconds to sync up, but when you're ready, go to your "Contacts" app. This usually defaults to "All Contacts". You should now see your shared contacts in there.
15. For more fun and excitement, Click on the "Groups" button in the top left, and you will see that there is a special section for "Work Contacts" if you want to look at only your work contacts.
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