Small Business - Need Bes?

[BlueGazoo]

I'm coming from a company that bought us blackberry's, but their setup was sooo frustrating (see below points). I've quit, and now I'm off on my own, and I'm actually thinking about getting rid of the BB to save a grand a year but before I do I'm wondering if there is an easy way to take care of the below list (without having to manually sync all the time)

1. My work emails (outlook exchange server) were forwarded to our BBs so I ended up with duplicated emails.
   
2. If I sent an email from my BB, i would NOT have a record of it on my desktop computer.
   
3. I could forward my work phone to my BB, but only if i was in the office. (If not, I'd have to get someone else to do it for me.)

I know the Bis is a good solution; my boss wouldn't go for it because of the expense. Is there a simpler way to set this up? Is there a less expensive way (considering I'm on my own now, working from home, and if I'm honest with my inner-demons I realize I don't need the extra expense...)

My current situation (off on my own):
I have a yahoo account; this was added to my blackberry list to get emails from; all was working fine. Then I installed MS Office Outlook 2007 at home and setup Outlook to retrieve from Yahoo. I was expecting my incoming emails to be sent to my BB (as usual), and also to my Outlook (creating the frustrating duplicates thing but never-the-less...) but now they are not going to my BB at all (just outlook).

I'm tempted to come up with my own version of the Blackberry... it would be a magical world where everything could be automatically synced without duplicate emails, without the restriction of having to physically be in the office to transfer a phone, without having to physically plug my BB into my computer to Sync... etc... or did someone invent this already?

[perigeetom]

Outlook's mailbox delivery is possibly set to a PST archive instead of the Exchange Mailbox - meaning store the email in the local computer running outlook instead of the exchange server - which would result in that email essentially passing straight through the exchange server to your desktop instead of being retrievable on your BB

Regarding the Phone setup, guess it entirely depends on what's in place for work - personally I use a FreeSwitch IP PBX with a cisco ip phone, and then use blackvoib on my BB to connect on the go.

The e-mail syncing I believe is 'only' available via BES I believe, but I could be wrong on that one! :-)

[BlueGazoo]

Originally Posted by perigeetom

Regarding the Phone setup, guess it entirely depends on what's in place for work - personally I use a FreeSwitch IP PBX with a cisco ip phone, and then use blackvoib on my BB to connect on the go.

This sounds interesting... i looked at the FreeSwitch web site, but can you describe to me in layman terms what exactly this can do for me and for how much $?

[FireCracker37]

If you are still using a basic land line telephone for your office phone, there is a feature you can get (it might be called call following, I'm not sure) that will let you dial a number from your BB, and it will forward the calls to the number you dialed in from. There is a password you enter when you dial in, so others can't hijack your calls.

For your email issues, I would suggest using gMail instead. The BB can interact with their mail system in a more advanced way, and using IMAP, it will sync both sent and received mails with the server. Honestly, unless there is a real good reason you are using outlook, I would just ditch it. Don't limit your email to a single computer, use web based and you have your email not just on the berry, but anywhere there is a web browser and the internet.

If you do need all that MS exchange functionality, you can find places that will host exchange and BES for you, but it costs some real money, and the added functionality isn't worth the price IMHO. Not to mention that Google offers many of the same features as web based applications that can be synced with the Blackberry.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[erikholtman]

Originally Posted by BlueGazoo

This sounds interesting... i looked at the FreeSwitch web site, but can you describe to me in layman terms what exactly this can do for me and for how much $?

Why not Asterisk for that reason?