best practices using email for small company

[sevenone]

Hi, I need some help with the following.

1. I need to share an info@ email address between 6 users and need to know the best way of doing this. Each user will have their own email address at the same domain. How can I setup an email account which all users can see, but also know which user is dealing with which email? I want to avoid 2 or more users replying to the same email.

2. When an email is replied to, should we create a rule that the email automatically moves to a replied to folder or should we use normal outlook archiving?

I currently use outlook 2000 without exchange and don't mind trying other clients etc.

 

[JohnOB]

I assume the people you bought your email address from have given you the option to setup other email accounts, that can be setup from different PCs, and each user will have their own PC. It is possible you could setup the info@ address on all machines, and it would mean that only the first person to connect to the account would download an email. So if onw person checked the info@account from the main client on their own PC in the morning, and another person in the afternoon, the second person would (or SHOULD) only get the emails sent since the first person checked them. So that may stop the duplication of people getting the same email, they could then reply to the email using their own email address. Though this method would only work if you were accessing the email accounts using an email client (like outlook), and not via the internet.

This is possibly one of the simpler options, but regardless of more expensive options out there I don't know that were would be an easy way of tracking who was dealing with each email, and making sure an email did not get ignored. As you are a small company I imagine you do not want to spend too much on this, the best approach may be to come up with a good manual practice, for example you could have one person whose job was to check the info@ account, who then forwarded the email on to whoever in your company should deal with it. You could then check the sent emails on that PC to see who had what emails, or the person forwarding the emails could move them into a folder with the name of the person dealing with them.

I think your cheapest option is to look at the best manual practice, instead of relying on technological answers which could be expensive.

 

[sevenone]

I just found a software pack online called workgroupshare. I downloaded the trial version and found that supports Shared folders. I have been tinkering around with it on a couple of laptops and find that it is quite slow in updating the folder.

I thought I would create a rule in Outlook to send any new info@ emails to the shared folder and have staff that deal with them, move them to their own shared subfolder which is viewable to all. That way the email no longer stays in the info@ inbox and we get to see who is dealing with it. I'm not sure how this will work out when 6 users are accessing the emails as the server syncronises 1 terminal at a time.

If there is a better way of sharing, please let me know. I am willing to spend about $400-$500 for a software solution. Hardware wise, I have access to many machines.