@ ...winston: This one of my wacky solutions does not really apply to
contact *sharing*. I have tried it in a minimal sort of way, and it does
work for a network share* as well, but I can imagine all sorts of problems
that might arise. I have no idea, for example, what would happen if two
different users accessed the same contact at the same time. Changes to
contacts are not written to the contacts.edb database immediately, but to a
log file that is read both by the sync mechanism and by the user during a
session - as a sort of appendix to the database. So as far as the user
making the change is concerned, it is immediate, but anyone else accessing
the same database will not see any change until the first user closes down
his WLMail prompting a write to the database. And any interruption to the
server connection would presumably cause an error which might prompt the
creation of a new local (empty!) contacts list. Not a wise solution, I
think, until we learn more about how the whole system works. I will point Eva
to another possibility, slightly less wacky...
@ Eva: I am not entirely sure what you mean by a 'separate login for
everyone in the group' followed by 'we should know who posts messages and
who receives emails'. Those two seem mutually exclusive to me. Still, you
could solve your 'common contacts' problem by setting up a Live ID for the
group. Then each member would sign in with this Live ID and the contacts
list would be the same for all of them. Changes made by one member would be
synchronized regularly and so become available to the others.
Signing in has nothing to do with sending and receiving mail. This will
still be governed by the account settings for the individual members of the
group. If you have a 'corporate email address', everyone would be able to
see all mail received by that account. Sent messages, though, would not be
available unless the account uses either IMAP or HTTP. Again, if your
'corporate email address' is a POP3 account, you could use Windows Live to
aggregate that account to the Live ID I mentioned above. If you did that,
everyone would be able to see all mail sent and received on that account.
You might need guidance to set that up - if so, just post back.
One other advantage of utilizing a Live ID that I can see in your case is
having a common calendar. The calendar is an integral part of WLMail, but
if you sign in with a Live ID, it will be synchronized with a copy
available on the web. (Just imagine - one of you is out of the office on a
call. So long as you have Internet access - borrowed from the place you are
calling on, for example - you can access the office calendar, contacts list
and emails if you know the Live ID and associated password.)
Windows Live is a great resource if you make the effort to exploit it!
* [If the Windows Live Contacts folder is shared on the network, the
shortcut is already there in the Nethood folder on other member computers.
It just needs copying to the appropriate place and renaming. Share
permissions might have to be tweaked.]
--
Noel