Outlook 2003 AND Sharing Distribution Lists with Many People

[SkyEyes]

We are in need of some data that we had when we first moved to Outlook 2003,
so I'm looking for assistance. This was the reason we started moving these
lists to the GAL and maintaining them at one central point. Now mgmt wants
to move this process back to people, but here is our story.

Many people tried to create their own distribution lists in Outlook 2003 and
share to many people throughout the company. It is not unheard of to have
people sharing with 300-500 people. Many share with around 100. When we
first moved to Outlook 2003, we had so many support calls every week about
the following:
1) Jane Doe got married Jane Farmer now and had 50 distribution lists set up
and not when she tried to update and have everyone sync, everyone is not
receiving her new listing (we had her remove, re-add, people re-add--of
course you can see the mess with over 300 people, etc). This happens a lot
between divorces/marriages.
2) Distribution lists became corrupted and were no longer able to be shared.
3) People would call in all the time that they never received the updates
from the last distribution list update.
4) Web client issues with shared distribution lists.
5) Having several distribution lists and including all people within.
6) People unable to expand the distribution lists
7) Permission issues
8) Someone left the company and someone new would have to rebuild all their
distribution lists (this seems to happen often enough).

We are looking for data supporting lists (large lists and shared to large
amounts of people) are a problem and better off in the GAL. Any ideas or
links for us to prove our point (we have over 5000 people in our company).
Thanks!

2)

 

[Russ Valentine]

Might want to crosspost to an Exchange group where there would be more
likely to be some ideas of options for the GAL. You're quite correct that
DL's are a horrible choice for grouping contacts in this scenario. Those of
us in this end user group have given up on them completely in favor of
Categories, which obviously won't work for your scenario.

 

[Judy Gleeson \(MVP Outlook\)]

Have you considered Public Folders and Categorising each Contact? They can
be in more than one Category. You can do email merges to Categories of
Contacts, set permissions for user access to them etc. You can insert
hyperlinks to documents that relate to each person etc. You can get to any
Contact in approx. 4 seconds by tying their name in the Contact Lookup
Window in the Standard Toolbar. (if you configure correctly).

What does you company use the people's contact data for? I'm sure I can
give you more ideas about using Public Folders if you explain your
application(s).

Regards

Judy Gleeson
MVP Outlook

in Canberra, Australia

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