Email choices

[justme]

What do you use in the workplace for email? Do you like it? Any suggestions for something better than Outlook? We have approx 400 employees.

 

[lenze]

When I worked for the state, Outlook was used state wide by several thousand employees and really did an excellent job. The problem seemed to be training, because there are several pitfalls in Outlook. The state, however, began to give a one day course on Outlook to all new employees(mandatory) and that seemed to solve most issues.

lenze

 

[justme]

Our employees know how to use the system, but the problems seems to be with the storage? Sometimes it is just sooo sloooow it is driving us crazy. I do not know what hardware IS is using for this. I imagine that is the million dollar question now. What to use?!

 

[NateO]

Not sure, but Lotus Notes would be one of the last load's of balderdash to consider, on my list...

Isn't storage limited by your IT group, vs. Microsoft (I don't deal with this at the office)? Do you use the archive functionality?

 

[justme]

Yes the IT gurus take care of all that. We are getting a new server installed. I hope that was the problem. I do not know exactly what a server is or does, but it can sure wreak havok in the office when they decide to go down.

Hopefully this will take care of our woes. At least now I know that it isn't a limitation with Outlook.

And to answer your question Nate, they do have an archive system set up. Some love it, others hate it. I generally have no problems with it.

Thanks alot.

 

[NateO]

You are welcome.

The server is basically the disk you're reading and writing to, as Outlook messages, unless you download them (as you can) are not stored locally, e.g., your hard-drive. The server's performance is critical in terms of your email's performance and capacity.

I'm not crazy about auto-archiving, but it keeps me out of trouble in terms of my account's capacity, so, so be it. And I like Outlook's end-user interface better than Notes, whether it's the GUI or programmatic...

Hopefully the new server helps! Let us know how it goes.

 

[lenze]

One thing to do is to train people to move their emails into personal folders to get them out of Outlook. They can create these folders from Outlook and move meesages to them. These are normally located on a shared drive or even a local PC.

lenze

 

[Lewiy]

I have heard that Thunderbird is better than Outlook whilst maintaining a similar appearance.

Never used it myself but have heard great things.

 

[litrelord]

for personal use I use The Bat! but for office use with windows it has to be outlook for me. Easy enough to use for anyone to pick up the basics in a day but with slightly more advanced tools to make your life eaiser and, of course, the addition of VBA so I can automate from the rest of the ms office apps.