Multi-user mail for small business.

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Level 1

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Multi-user mail for small business.

A brief background:

Father-in-law's small business. 3 'office' employees each with our own mac workstation. (2-G3s and 2 even older iMacs, one of these being a 'server' for most of the programs). As it stands, each of the 3 users has his own company e-mail address, let's say sales@, info@ and office@. Sales@ gets 98% of the traffic and sends applicable mail to the other two as necessary. However, this seems very inefficient to me, as sometimes sales@ isn't in that day or is on vacation again and so the other two must get up and move to her desk in order to carry on with business matters. This essentially allows the ability for each of us to screw something up and/or double-work certain matters. So my question, at last, is this:

Is there any way to set up a "bucket" type e-mail system, in which, all incoming traffic is placed into the sales@ "bucket" on the "server" with the ability for everyone to be able to, in real time, access this bucket and work the emails as needed without having to switch workstations and that tomfoolery?

Between us, I understand that upgrading Macs and implementing a dedicated proprietary server would be the way to go, but boss man isn't all that keen on dropping a ton of money into this adventure. So cheap and easy is the way to go, preferably.

Any ideas?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jun 9, 2014 10:57 AM

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Answer 1

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rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Jun 9, 2014 3:57 PM in response to Mr...Carey

For a small office, this doesn't seem like a bad approach. KISS.

The more you try to simplify things the more the support burden will be. Walking the few feet will put the walker in a different frame of mind. Might lead to less mistake than trying to do all one one machine.

Check out if your server supports the imap protocol. This allows a number of email clients to logon to the same email account. All clients see what the other clients have done. If someone messes something up all others see the mess up.

You can set youself up a google mail account. You can access the account from multiple email clients & see how you like it.

I suspect there are apps around that do what you want, but they escape me now.

I would encourge buying one new computer a year. The increase in productivity may be worth it. With a new machine you may not be able to run your existing software. Need a plan.

Robert

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