Solution Suggestions wanted for email in an Office situation
What we have here are more computers than people. The machines are located in a couple of work areas, so anyone can access whatever is needed from each location.
In the past, we've had (my) main desktop machine pull in all the business specific accounts, along with my own email and run the necessary scripts on those.
However, individual accounts go to the individual machines/employees, and usually this is fine.
But, in recent months I've been spending 110% of my time in the SHOP, and my emails come in on the office machine I'm never at.We added an old machine to access the databases at the packing bench, and of course, can't access emails on our 'desk' machines from that location on the fly.
If I run email from my location before the "regular email dump" is done, I can see and respond from my location easily enough. (It's set to "leave messages on the server" so the main machine can pull them all in for archiving or whatever).
But, since I'm not pulling mail continually all day, I don't see a lot of my mail till I go to the office machine specifically... which after the time I'm putting in elsewhere, well... you know.
Anyway, I think what we're looking at presently is one of three possible solutions:
1. If we also set the main desktop machine to "leave on server" (even a couple hours would usually be sufficient) would each machine (using standard protocols for such) determine for itself which emails are "new" it hasn't downloaded yet?
Not elegant, but at least I can catch the stuff I personally need to see without having it forwarded back to the same account (and often just redownloaded on the office machine)
2. Establish a new "carrier" account, that the desktop machine can be scripted to auto-forward to, that I'll just get from the shop?
3. Should we be looking at some more sensible/robust office-emailing system that pulls email to a central location, and then the rest of us access the emails from THAT (mail server?). And if so, what software would that be?
(note in advance, MS products not welcome).
Email in this context has been a problem for the last 10 years. And "solutions" #1 and #2 above do nothing to keep related emails together for later archiving but most important stuff is generally printed, so we get by when it's an issue.
But "getting by" is not always the best way 🙂
Any suggestions, solutions? What do other people do?
We have 3 people (sometimes 4) about 5 email accounts to be managed and 7 to 8 machines. (I shudder to think of doing it this way for more machines/people)
We may not be able to take advantage of a mail server just now, as we've got about 5 or 6 different operating systems going... although we've got plans to migrate to all OS X over the next 12-18 months.
Current email clients are the archaic Claris Emailer and the new Mail.app.
Thanks in advance!
--K
In the past, we've had (my) main desktop machine pull in all the business specific accounts, along with my own email and run the necessary scripts on those.
However, individual accounts go to the individual machines/employees, and usually this is fine.
But, in recent months I've been spending 110% of my time in the SHOP, and my emails come in on the office machine I'm never at.We added an old machine to access the databases at the packing bench, and of course, can't access emails on our 'desk' machines from that location on the fly.
If I run email from my location before the "regular email dump" is done, I can see and respond from my location easily enough. (It's set to "leave messages on the server" so the main machine can pull them all in for archiving or whatever).
But, since I'm not pulling mail continually all day, I don't see a lot of my mail till I go to the office machine specifically... which after the time I'm putting in elsewhere, well... you know.
Anyway, I think what we're looking at presently is one of three possible solutions:
1. If we also set the main desktop machine to "leave on server" (even a couple hours would usually be sufficient) would each machine (using standard protocols for such) determine for itself which emails are "new" it hasn't downloaded yet?
Not elegant, but at least I can catch the stuff I personally need to see without having it forwarded back to the same account (and often just redownloaded on the office machine)
2. Establish a new "carrier" account, that the desktop machine can be scripted to auto-forward to, that I'll just get from the shop?
3. Should we be looking at some more sensible/robust office-emailing system that pulls email to a central location, and then the rest of us access the emails from THAT (mail server?). And if so, what software would that be?
(note in advance, MS products not welcome).
Email in this context has been a problem for the last 10 years. And "solutions" #1 and #2 above do nothing to keep related emails together for later archiving but most important stuff is generally printed, so we get by when it's an issue.
But "getting by" is not always the best way 🙂
Any suggestions, solutions? What do other people do?
We have 3 people (sometimes 4) about 5 email accounts to be managed and 7 to 8 machines. (I shudder to think of doing it this way for more machines/people)
We may not be able to take advantage of a mail server just now, as we've got about 5 or 6 different operating systems going... although we've got plans to migrate to all OS X over the next 12-18 months.
Current email clients are the archaic Claris Emailer and the new Mail.app.
Thanks in advance!
--K
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
