Exchange server question

[scargill]

I work for a small company with 8 people and I've been asked to sort out their calander systems because I'm the most IT minded.
Although I know most things about exchange that I need too, I'm slightly confused on one small point.

2 of the people within the company require shared calanders, shared e-mails don't matter at all. Although only 2 people require calanders (or Journals should I say?) everyone within the company needs to be able to update these calanders from their own machines.
Does this mean that I need 2 user licenses or 8?

And the reason its PPC related is that the 2 members of staff both have PPCs, the idea is one of the 6 members of staff can make appointments for the other 2, and the 2 don't even have to bother, when they come to leave they hit "sync" then look at their PPC to see where they have to go.

[KimVette]

If you have eight mailboxes/user accounts in Exchange, you need 8 CALs, whether or not the users use calendaring.

[scargill]

No, sorry
I want 2 mailboxes/user acounts but I want 8 people to be able to access them at the same time.

[JimPAQ]

Correct me if I'm wrong; it's been about five years since I did Exchange Server support, but maybe you can link the two mailboxes to all eight of the users on the server in the Exchange Mailbox Manager? If you can't do that, maybe you create two public NT accounts, associate them with the two public mailboxes, and then allow the users to connect using the two public accounts. Of course, this means no NTLM when logging in, since the accounts will not be the same as the local accounts, but at least every one would be able to open the accounts. I think creating only two NT accounts/mailboxes would mean only two licenses, but I wouldn’t put that in writing (oops, guess I just did). If Microsoft comes asking, you never read this. :wink:

Or....
You could set up two mailboxes plus eight additional mailboxes for each user. Then login to the two public mailboxes using Outlook and give each of the eight users access to the calendar for that mailbox. Then each user (logged in to his/her own mailbox) would be able to open the other mailboxes. However, I don't think this would allow you to sync. the data with a Pocket PC. Also, I’m sure you would need ten licenses at that point but you may already have that, since I don’t think you can get only one or two licenses but I’m not sure, since I did primer support (companies with thousands of licenses).

Of course this is all just my suggestion, and even I don't trust my suggestions.

--Jim

[JimPAQ]

OK, I also thought of something else. If all eight people have mailboxes, and two of the people need public mailboxes that every one else can update, then those two people (logged in through Outlook) should be able to share out their calendars to the other 6 or 7 people (if they include each other). This would allow all the other people in the company to add appointments to the two user’s calendars.

--Jim

[KimVette]

The onlu way you can do that and remain legal with only two CALs is for those two people to log out and others log into that same account to access those calendars - but with only 8 users, the required number of CALs is so cheap that it's be a boneheaded decision to not just make eight legal accounts. Heck, most Exchange packages come with either five or twenty CALs right out of the box, depending on which package you ordered.

[ketchup]

You need 8 client licenses.

Do this:

- Create a "mailbox" for each user.
- On each user, give permissions ("Editor") to the [Calendar] for all of the other people.
- Enjoy.


Let me know if you need more info.

BC

[szamot]

Well there is always Lotus Notes, cheaper and most likely more effective for simple email, calendar function.