Project sharing stories

B

Bruce McL

Hello there,

I'm looking for stories about sharing projects over a small network.

I have one client with around 10 computers, several G3 slot loading iMacs
and some newer G4 iMacs. They have a 10BaseT network and I'd like to get
them sharing contacts and calendars. I'm worried that this will slow down
Entourage 2004 too much for them. They use email a lot and need Entourage be
responsive. I tried some sharing on their network using an old G3 Powerbook
running OS 9 to store the files. That seemed very slow. I'm hoping to
replace that with a new Ethernet hard drive from LaCie that is supposed to
be out soon. I wonder if it will be fast enough.

So that's my situation. Is there anybody in a small office using project
sharing in Entourage? How fast is it running and what are your impressions?

Thanks in advance, -Bruce.
 
C

Clark Korb

I have only 2 clients, a dual-G5 desktop and a G4 Powerbook, sharing a
single project. For the raw info, everything seems to be shared and
re-synchronized reasonably well with no noticeable performance degradation
(including "offline" re-synching required when I have my Pbook away from the
house and come back to add changes), EXCEPT for CATEGORIES!!! Nothing
related to categories (e.g. those used individually in Contacts, Tasks,
Calendar, etc.) is synchronized, nor is the master category list itself.
What a HUGE oversight/bug by Microsoft in this implementation--practically
rendering useless the idea of a shared project, IMHO (I am VERY
category-dependent with my organizing system).

- Clark
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

I believe the idea is that different people like to keep their own
Categories and would not want someone else to overwrite theirs.

You could do your own "poor man's version" but putting the name of the
category into square brackets or curly brackets at the end of beginning of
the name of every item.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
C

Clark Korb

I believe the idea is that different people like to keep their own
Categories and would not want someone else to overwrite theirs.
Click to expand...

That's one reasonable application, but I'm guessing there are several folks
with > 1 Mac (e.g. desktop + laptop + home media server) who would simply
like to have one "global" version of their Entourage database synchronized
across all clients. 'Seems like this should have been accommodated in the
product development stages.
You could do your own "poor man's version" but putting the name of the
category into square brackets or curly brackets at the end of beginning of
the name of every item.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the idea, but it's still a functionally non-workable solution for
me. It adds unnecessary clutter, obviates the original intent for having
categories represented in colors on my calendar, renders useless custom
views based on category, and completely wreaks havoc with my PDA
synchronization (which is category dependent).

BTW, this is using Entourage 2004, being the first to implement project
sharing.
 
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