Category: Outlook Support
Maybe you do, maybe you don’t? Many of my clients have told me over and over that when they book an appointment with me, they feel like they are booking a therapy appointment. I am guessing it’s because of the calming methods I use to get information out of them and how they manage their inbox. Or because they feel they went through a minor exorcism. Either way, at the end of our appointments, I have you thinking completely different about how you manage your email and more importantly, your email life.
I have written many blogs about Outlook and helping. If you’re not sure you’re ready to book an appointment yet, please go to our search function at the top of the page and type in “Outlook” and you will find many more blogs I have done on the subject to help. Are you ready right now? Please call 612-865-4475 and ask to get on Lisa’s calendar. I’m here to help!
Ah just let me tell you all how many happy clients I have been seeing lately. Now is a good time for many people, business is good and people are ready to get their business technical needs in order. Sometimes things take time, the right time, the right budget…or just the last time you wanted a headache over technology.
So you may be asking, what is Hosted Exchange? In a quick sentence, it’s a simple way to manage your email, contacts, calendar and tasks “in the cloud” and everything just synchs.. I moved our company to this platform about a year ago (after having struggles of sharing my calendar with my employees) and would never go back to IMAP or POP for managing mail and just having Outlook standalone manage my other work. Sure, it costs a few bucks a year to do, but once you’re on it and see it working, it’s a valuable business tool and great asset for your company. Just one person can enjoy hosted exchange or those that really enjoy it are larger teams of staff who need access to each others inboxes/email, calendar, contacts, tasks and public folders.
#5 Everything just synchs! Are you the type who has 3-5 devices and nothing synchs? This solves that problem. iPads, iPhones, Androids, Windows phones, tablets, computers and the online web version all work great.
#4 Out of office messages work (finally!)
#3 Share your calendar with your team flawlessly, allows permissions levels of others to view your calendar, edit and manage. Get rid of back door or 3rd party applications.
#2 Free Outlook 2010 upgrade ($130 value)
#1 You can share all of your company’s contacts and update with ease instantly with other team members.
Here is a bonus, assign tasks to other team members. This feature is not like Microsoft Project, but if you have delegation needs, assigning tasks works great. The other member can update the task and it stays in the to do bar in Outlook nicely.
With that all said, I could probably rattle off another 5 awesome things about hosted exchange. I mostly just love the feel of having the corporate environment back in my life, even though I don’t want to go back there 🙂
If your business is interested, please contact me at 612-865-4475 or email Lisa@callthatgirl.biz
Don’t forget to share this post with your social media if you liked it! Thank you for supporting small business!
Sometimes when you work with larger companies such as Google, they may change a policy on the use of their free software, and many times they are not exactly clear on what is going on. Here is what I know about Google calendar syncing…
Google calendar sync was a nifty little tool to allow Outlook users to sync those calendars with their Google calendars. From my research, this tool is not available on the Google websites anywhere to download and use for free anymore.
Also I have learned that if you had it installed at one point, you can continue to use it…but any new users need to sign up for their Google Apps plan to be able to sync.
This is the paragraph I read…
Starting January 30, 2013, users, other than paid Google Apps users, won’t be able to set up new devices using Google Sync and should see our sync site for instructions. You can also consult with your device carrier or manufacturer for how they recommend to sync with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Contacts. Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government customers can continue to set up new devices with Google Sync after this date.
To read the full article…
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2716936
So how this technician reads it, Google is not allowing free calendar syncing. If you have found a solution to this and know where the tool is, feel free to let me know and I’ll update this blog article!
If you want to get on board with their Google Apps plan, we can help. If you want to move to a Microsoft solution, hosted exchange in my opinion just works better overall for business needs. Everyone will have their own opinion though on this!
Here is the Microsoft Explanation
But here is my simple explanation:
Outlook’s Suggested Contacts do a few things
Con’s
Pro’s
For a great story on how to disable this, I found this article. How to disable Suggested Contacts in Outlook 2010 by Black.
If you have questions about suggested contacts, synching, etc… please call me for an appt! 612-865-4475
If you learned from this blog, please share it!
If you found this post via a Google search, you are probably having issues and need help now. If you are a business, call me at 612-865-4475 and let’s get this figured out now. If you want to continue reading, see if this helps!
As an Outlook “expert”, I deal with many clients on a daily basis with Outlook issues–oh yea, it’s awesome and very robust but she can break but it’s not always her fault. I fix Outlook for a living… I configure new apps, show users shortcuts, help them clean up their 1000’s of emails, repair broken files, etc. I’m busy! Well, sometimes new apps show up and I have to do the “On Demand Learning Technique” (which is learn while I troubleshoot) and figure stuff out fast. These apps all have different ways of working and with so many different types of computers & devices (Mac,Windows, iPhones, iPads, Tablets, etc)…it’s a job just keeping up.
One thing I have learned in the past 2 weeks is that my business clients are not so happy with the iCloud and Outlook, not so much. They are thrilled to figure out that iCloud does some amazing synchronizing and they are in love with their wolf pack of technology, but after they have let the giddiness settle….then comes the realization that the Outlook calendar trumps iCloud. And unfortunately, it sends clients to me to help with alternative synchronizing methods. iCloud just doesn’t deliver with calendaring options for business. Fortunately I am extremely talented with the Outlook program and am catching these issues more quickly for the clients.
Examples of problems you may encounter (and just Google this, you will find many more)
iCloud may also select a random default calendar for you. Depending on how many emails accounts you have and PST files, depends on which one it picks. You may be inviting people or recieving calendar invites from and for the wrong accounts (If you manage many) If you don’t know how to manage it, it will be messy to clean up.
iCloud is free, the good tools that allow you to continue to manage Outlook in the manner you have for years, is not. I guess it comes down to how robust you are with Outlook and how many changes you are willing to make, sacrifice or have to learn.
If you want to learn about an alternative way to synchronize your world, you can try these tips I found from Geek in the Forest.
If you want help now with your Apple and Outlook synching, call us and get on my calendar. 612-865-4475
Is your company living in the 1990’s in regards to technology? It might be if you are reading this and if you are…you are not alone. We see this almost on a daily basis with our clients. Once a client calls in for a minor computer issue, we insure to interview all business clients and find out that most if not all are missing the boat on what they could be doing in regards to getting onboard with new technology. Let’s review the big list and you can see where your company is falling short.
Professional email account (Not Susiescookies@yahoo.com). If you are living off of free email accounts for your business, it’s time to put down a few bucks and get that website as well and get your company into the land of other companies. Comcast accounts don’t count either, those are about just as bad. From a technical point of view, you are paying for that account, but it doesn’t count. Put up the money and get your business aligned right in email and website branding. Buying domains (the company name.com) is super cheap and it usually comes with an email account, so the cost at this point is mute. To find out if your company name is available and get pricing click here.
Company Email Ok, so let’s say you’re in the clear and have your own domain and you’re all set with company email. But…you are finding you’re having issues in a few other ways. Your smartphone isn’t synching right or you’re having problems with your contacts and calendar not working, or even worse…you’re still on Pop3 (very old). You have 2-3 choices on how to change up how your email works, some are fairly cheap and some are a bit more costly, but worth the money.
File Sharing One of the biggest headaches for any small company. Stop the emailing of documents back and forth to each other and stop worrying about what version of the document is recent, start using Dropbox for your team. The free version is a great tester for you to see if you can utilize it well, but most people and companies can…so you will want to upgrade to the large space and use it for everything, like we do at Call That Girl. Click here to try Dropbox for free. It’s definately a game changer!
Company chat & communications If your company is now texting each other on their personal cell phones to talk faster, it’s a sign you need Google Chat. This tool from Google is nice, and you can install it on your smartphones for those that do need to chat on their phones. You can also send files and keep up on who’s doing what. Simply put, you can control what your employees are chatting about with this over texting. Creating company accounts on Google or using Google apps are just two ways to set it up.
Online backup we saved the best for last of course! Those little scary words “backup” usually catch a client stopping short. If you do not have a backup plan in place, please call us. We can help you make affordable choices here. If you have one, but are not sure if it’s working, please call us, we can help verify that those boxes you had intalled years ago are working still or how they are backing up. Worse…if you have nothing in place, now is the time!
If you would like a free consultation, please email me at lisa@callthatgirl.biz or call in 612-865-4475 to get on my calendar. I can create a simple proposal for you or your team for a one time setup. The only reoccuring costs you will have is the products on a yearly basis.
Lisa
