How can contacts be shared within a small company (desktop/mobile) and also be usable in office apps

Question

!Hi everyone

I would like to ask you guys for advice. Currently I am helping a small organization (4 PC's) to improve their IT system a bit. The main problem is, that each of them is having their own 'address book' in:

• Outlook
• some contacts in Excel (which they need for publishing address lists,..)
• some in Microsoft Access (for label-printing and work-hour/project measurement/billing)

Therefore almost nothing is shared with the others. This requires everyone to keep track of their contacts by themselves, causing a lot of work. It would be nice to find one place to store all contacts.

The infrastructure:

• 4 PC's, Windows 7, 3xOffice 2010, 1xOffice 2013
• iPhone, Android phones
• 1 installation using Microsoft Access

Needs:

• address book synchronization across all four computers
  • contacts
  • contact-groups
  • wish: store additional information to each contact such as education, visited courses (however if a database could be hooked on the contact system it could be outsourced into a DB)
• Excel
  • import/link contacts (export/copy from Outlook?)
• Word
  • Mailing feature for letters (using contacts from Excel, maybe in the future Outlook?)
• Access
  • could it be hooked up with the Contact-Management-'System'

What I did

I looked at outlook.com, Google and Office 365 E1/E3 (including Exchange Server). Reasons almost all of them disqualified are:

• LDAP - for a small business very difficult to maintain (unless there is a simple solution I have not found?)
• Outlook.com, Google - no contact group support (at least not across clients)
• Office 365 E1/E3
  • management really difficult (at least once I won't be around there's noone who could keep an eye on all the configurations)
  • Global address list seemed perfect to me, but is, as far as I understand only modifiable by the Administrator (online or via PowerShell) and for 'normal' users hard to maintain
  • Public Folders nor Shared Mailboxes sync to mobile devices
  • otherwise this seems like the most viable solution

Alternatives

I started checking if my approach was wrong and if there are any alternatives, such as

• synchronisation-tools (Osa-Sync)
• maybe an alternative E-Mail client.
• or simply use a shared Exchange Account b/c that would support contacts, also on mobile devices - (I am confident I will find viable compromises for the remaining problems)

Wrong approach?

I am wondering if my approach is completely wrong and larger companies use other solutions to manage their contacts or if a simple database behind all this would make more sense (if it integrates well with office)...

I am honestly surprised, that I have such a hard time finding a good solution and would be more than happy if anyone of you could share their experience if they had similar problems or make suggestions towards possible solutions.

Answer 1

I forgot to "close" this question.

We ended up using Office 365 for Business.

• Contacts: I created a separate account, just to share the accounts, which every user has added. (So every user has their own and the shared Exchange account).
• Advantages:
  • Group support & Mailing lists synchronized
  • Office 365 offers a lot more features that may be used in the future
  • Integration with Office apps
• Disadvantages:
  • Every user needs to have two accounts (their own plus the shared)
  • Outlook shows 'contact-address-books' for every account and doesn't allow hiding all unnecessary ones (only a some can be hidden/removed, at least one per account has to be there..)
  • Complex setup of Office for business
  • Integration with Office apps (could be better, e.g. integration with Excel)

- Please let me know if you have better ideas / suggestions / feedback / questions / ...

Answer 2

address book synchronization across all four computers contacts contact-groups wish: store additional information to each contact such as education, visited courses (however if a database could be hooked on the contact system it could be outsourced into a DB)

If I understand your needs correctly, you may be able to do this using a single Google account that all 4 PCs synchronize with.

1. Set up a Gmail account. This gives you access to Gmail Contacts and Calendar.
2. Install CompanionLink for Google on each of the 4 PCs running Outlook. CompanionLink is free for 14 days; $49.95/user (one-time) after that.
3. Configure CompanionLink to sync each PC's Outlook Contacts the Gmail account in #1.

This establishes a two-way sync system between each PC and the common Gmail account for Contacts.

For your need of Contact Groups, CompanionLink can be configured so each of the 4 PCs syncs their Outlook Contacts to a specific Gmail Contacts Group (ie - PC1 syncs to Group1 in Gmail Contacts, PC2 syncs to Group2, etc). All 4 PCs will get Contacts for all four Groups.

Disclosure: I work for CompanionLink. Shared Outlook setups is a common configuration we offer solutions for.

References

CompanionLink's website: http://www.companionlink.com/google/outlook/

Setup guide (scroll to Sharing Outlook Contacts section): http://www.companionlink.com/support/kb/How_to_Share_Outlook_Calendar_and_Contacts