Home Forums MS Exchange Question to the Gurus

Ok, so right now I have two ladies up front that work on different days. They each have their own email address, but they also each receive the email that comes in from the generic address on my website: info@myoffice.com. The problem occurs when someone emails to that address and then they reply because then it comes from their personal email address and not the generic one. So if the patient replies back the next day and the other worker is there, she doesn't get it. How can I keep it that the "reply to" address is always the generic info@myoffice.com on email leaving the office but keep the personal address for in office messaging?

Hope that is clear. lol

What you're referring to is the Send As feature of Exchange, I believe. Here is how to set it up: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998291%28EXCHG.80%29.aspx

Are you using Outlook or Outlook Web Access? Also, you could set up a rule so that all outgoing email is from that address but then to override that, you would need to disable the rule. So the Send As feature is probably your best bet, unless your pretty sure that all outgoing email needs to be sent from the generic email.

Another way to do this is to have a shared mailbox that is accessible by staff. You can load each of the staff's signatures into the mailbox and just have them attach it when they reply. This will make tracking who's helping who more difficult though. Each person could tag the email with a category/color for each person.

I believe you could do this. Make a new user "info" which would make the email address info@myoffice.com.

On each computer or the same if it is set up that way, make a new profile using Mail in Control Panel. Set up Outlook with the "info" profile. When each person logs into their email, it would ask them for the profile. They would normally choose their own, which they can use to send Internet and Intranet, or they could choose "info" to go into that email account.

Admittedly low-tech, but you can change their Reply-To <staff@myoffice.com>, set all their outbound to BCC to that account, and set the Delete to 15-30 days old.

Each user has their own account, accountability, and they have a shared queue.

If you are using Updox, you can have the Reply-To go to one of those accounts so that there is a true shared queue.

FYI-the technique above works for POP3/SMTP servers as well.

We have several clients who use this to keep their mobile email & desktop clients in-sync.

Ok, so this is what I did:
Set up a new user email box called info@myoffice.com
Used the "Manage Full Access Permission" on it and added the two gals to it.
Logged on to their machines and added that account in the control panel mail section
Now it shows up on Outlook, but they don't sync, aka if one girl delete's an email, when the other girl logs on it's still there on her machine so she thinks it hasn't been handled.

Any Help on how to sync them?

I guess that is a modification of both of Sandeep's solutions. Unless there is a slicker way to do a shared mailbox.

Scott,

Everyone is answering your questions. All good ideas. I think we are making this much too difficult. First, and I may be misinterpreting Sandeep's suggestion, but the Send As feature is designed so that one can send from another person's account and appear to look like them. But, email will come back to the original account.

I think I need to know more info. What server are you using? Are you using Outlook or Outlook Mail or Express? I, and I think others, are assuming you are using Exchange Server.

Please update your info.

OK, if you have Exchange and you make a new account simply from Mail 32-bit in Control Panel called info@myoffice.com and set it where each user would have to select a profile each time she opened Outlook, then when they opened the info Outlook, they would send and receive from the email account. If you used Exchange, the mail would be saved as an .ost file and not a .pst file so anyone with that account would see the same email. The simplest way would be to simply drag and drop the email to a folder. Plus, if the email were read, you could assume the person took care of it. You could also add the button to make the email editable and write quickly in the subject line or body what each of them did.

If you wanted to get fancy, you could set up a custom category as below. The other PNG file is probably not necessary, but shows how the email would show on the other person's email, once they opened Outlook. This would also allow that person to see what was done so they would be in the loop.

So, there are two files and an avi to demonstrate. Again, this would work with Exchange. If they just both had Outlook connected to your ISP with POP3, then anything done on one Outlook isn't going to show up on the other. Of course, if you have it set to download from a POP3 account, it could be deleted from that ISP anyway.

http://www.box.com/s/lny96b9azt9oqzvq31q3

Bert, my server is SBS 2008 so I'm setting it up with Exchange. The clients are on win7 64bit and they are using Outlook.

Sandeep or Bert, how about I pay you to remote in and fix it. lol I'm tired, this seems like this would be easy, but it has stumped me so far. This was one of my projects for the weekend..fail! At least I got my taxes done.

Obviously you can use Exchange with either Standard or Premium, but if you installed standard, it will set itself up. All users made will get their own account, and you can set up mailboxes like the one you are talking about.

The only place it can get tricky is when you set it up so it uses SMTP inbound and outbound and not POP3. That means having a domain name and changing your MX and AREC. With POP3, the quickest you can get mail is five minutes, which isn't a big deal until you are trading emails. With 2003 it was 15 minutes. With SMTP, it is instantaeous.

But, of course, this will be much easier when all of your mail resides on your server on Exchange Server, so that each client's email gets its email across the network from the server. For instance, I have Outlook up in my office and in all of my exam rooms. Anything done on any of the clients is reflected in Exchange and, therefore, in the other Outlooks.

If they are using a shared mailbox, if one person deletes the email/reads the email it should be reflected in the other's mailbox. There 's a slight delay of 15 seconds before it is updated on the Exchange Server. Then once the Exchange Server is updated with the change. It will take 30 seconds before the client downloads this change. Using Categories/Color Codes is still much better for tracking and sorting purposes as Bert so nicely demonstrated in his video. These are the registry keys to change the update interval. (Not recommended)As Bert and I mentioned earlier, categories is the best way to do it.
Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Outlook\Cached Mode

Value name: Download
Value type: REG_DWORD
Default value: 0000001e (30 seconds)

Value name: Upload
Value type: REG_DWORD
Default value: 0000000f (15 seconds)

Value name: Maximum
Value type: REG_DWORD
Default value: 0000003c (60 seconds)

Got it fixed guys! Thanks so much!

That's great. Good to hear it.

Excellent.