Outlook w/BCM and shared contacts

[Guest]

We are looking to share contacts with BCM (or some other product). We have a
new SBS 2003 and most of us run Office 2003. We would like to use BCM as a
CRM like product, where all emails and notes and history for any given
contact by any individual within our company can be seen by all individuals,
most of them in remote offices. Can we accomplish this with BCM? Do we need
to do VPN connections, or are there performance issues with this? Can we use
Share point Services for this, or am I barking up the wrong tree? We don't
want to run this offline, because we are concerned of the growing database on
each remote PC and the overheads with syncing. Also, is there anything
published that describes the improvements, etc. with BCM 2007? Thanks for
any guidance and assistance you can provide.

 

[Clinton Ford [MSFT]]

Yes, database can be hosted on SQL Server 2005 running on Small Business Server or Windows Server. For more information, refer to
the whitepaper:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...ee-9ad5-4be5-b888-c9a50ae395ca&DisplayLang=en

BCM comes with built-in offline capability so that you can take your contacts on the road on your laptop. But if you need a live
connection, VPN is currently the best solution.
--
Visit team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/bcm
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
We are looking to share contacts with BCM (or some other product). We have a
new SBS 2003 and most of us run Office 2003. We would like to use BCM as a
CRM like product, where all emails and notes and history for any given
contact by any individual within our company can be seen by all individuals,
most of them in remote offices. Can we accomplish this with BCM? Do we need
to do VPN connections, or are there performance issues with this? Can we use
Share point Services for this, or am I barking up the wrong tree? We don't
want to run this offline, because we are concerned of the growing database on
each remote PC and the overheads with syncing. Also, is there anything
published that describes the improvements, etc. with BCM 2007? Thanks for
any guidance and assistance you can provide.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply. I'm curious if we can set up sub folders for diferent
types of clients or not? If not, is this being considered by MS for a future
release, or is this beyond the scope of BCM and more for a CRM user? I know
that there are categories, but it would seem more in tune with how we
currently work inside of Outlook to have sub folders. Is there any
capability to only allow only certain users access to limited client
information or not? Again, this might be outside the scope of BCM, and more
of a CRM type product requirement. Thanks in advance for any further
assistance.

 

[Mukesh Agarwal [MSFT]]

You can't add subfolders. However, you can create Search Folders that might
provide you what you are looking for. We posted an article on our team blog
on how to create search folders.
On you second question, BCM doesn't have any permission model. All users can
see all data. The only restriction is normal user can't hard delete any item
from BCM folder. You will need database owner permission to hard delete the
items. Since BCM is designed for small business customers, the lack of
permssion model is an intentional design to keep the product's simplicity.