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I work in a non-profit office that has about 10-15 employees. We use the Microsoft Office 2003 suite and Microsoft Small Business Server 2003. Our problem is that we have 3 main overlapping contact lists in different programs (and 2 or 3 more based on those ones). We want to find a way to have only 1 main contact list that all of our other lists feed from, but do not know how to do it.
Specifically, we have over 500 contacts in Outlook and about 50 distribution lists (both saved in a Public Folder accessible by the entire office, but only editable by 1 person). We also have a portion of that list in a file saved in Publisher (with pretty formatting for print purposes). An almost identical list in Excel so it can be sorted any way necessary. A different Excel list with some overlapping data, but not entirely. We have a couple different Access DB’s with some overlapping information as well.
So ultimately, is there ANY possible way to have all of those documents be set up to pull information from one central source so we only have to update 1 list, rather than 7? Of course a free solution is best, but it is an important enough issue that we are willing to purchase extra software if needed (if there is anything that will do this for us). It seems like every business would run into this issue eventually, but I can’t find a solution. Any ideas???
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Jason,
You are describing the need for a Directory Server. A typical solution is to use an LDAP server as your central identity source and have your applications exchange information "put" and "get" and reconcile via standard interchange formats such as LDIF and protocols/Web Services. However, while an LDAP sever is out of the box, in your scenario you would still require a developer to write the interfaces for each of your systems, not very difficult but work nonetheless, and code that will have to be supported over time as your commercial applications are upgraded. Using a COTS solution, like a grander contact management system to be the central contact source is a possibility but it still limits what you can do, you have to work within the confines of the COTS solution. Your environment sounds Windows centric so you can consider staying in your environment and deploying a MS SQL database structure that fits for your needs (custom) but still not very difficult [or] since you are already using Exchange consider using Active Directory as your main store for contact information. If the contact info is not appropriate for an AD structure, then deploying a MS SQL application as the central database is an easy way to go – there are lots of Microsoft centric developers who can do this pretty easily. If your environment was large hundreds of thousands of identities and thousands of source systems then an elegant solution is LDAP, but you fit into the smaller than a breadbox so its over kill for your needs.
Good Luck,
Peter
June 2009