Softalk Share Server Quick Start Guide Micro-business scenario

Transcription

1 Softalk Share Server Quick Start Guide Micro-business scenario Introduction Softalk Share Server lets Outlook users share personal and/or public folders with one another. This scenario assumes you have little to no technical knowledge of using Softalk Share Server. Its purpose is to get you up and running with the product as quickly as possible. For more detailed information about the product please refer to the Softalk Share Server user guide, which can be downloaded from the Softalk website; or if you would like to know how the more complex features of Softalk Share Server can be applied please read the small business and mid-size business scenarios. Micro-business Scenario This scenario focuses on a company named Eggs Ample, a small dairy company with 5 employees, each employee with his or her own computer. Four of the computers used in the office are workstations used by Isabella, Alice, Josiah and Stephen; and one laptop used by the manager, Sarah. All of the computers have Windows XP installed with Microsoft Office 2003, except for Sarah who runs Office The four workstations are connected to the network by cable, but Sarah s laptop uses a wireless connection. The diagram (figure 1) illustrates the computer setup at Eggs Ample. As the business has grown the company has realized they would be more productive if each employee shared the information they held with their colleagues. Presently, they all maintain their own Outlook contacts, s, and calendars, and none of this information is shared among the group. Eggs Ample s requirement is: That each employee shares his or her list of contacts with all other employees to review and update. That Sarah s calendar is shared to everyone with read-only access, except for her secretary, Alice, who will need to update it. That a public folder holding a staff holiday calendar be made available to all employees. Only Alice should have write access. Everyone else should have read access.

2 It is not a pre-requisite of Softalk Share Server to have a Windows Server. As Alice has been designated to administer Softalk Share Server, it is decided that the Softalk Share Server should be installed on her Windows XP workstation. Alice creates a folder in her C: drive called SoftalkShareServerSetup and into this folder she places the installation file, sss.exe that she had downloaded from the Softalk website. She double-clicks sss.exe to begin the Softalk Share Server installation. Softalk Share Server Installation Alice is firstly presented with the Welcome Screen. She clicks Next. The next window presents her with the License agreement. It is very important this document is read carefully before accepting it. She is then presented with the Installation Choice page. She sets this to install Softalk Share Server as a Windows service and leaves the radio button selection as Local System account. (See figure 2) Note: The difference between a Windows Service and an Executable is that a Windows Service will run in the background regardless of whether a person is logged in or not and starts automatically with no user intervention, whereas an Executable always requires that a user is logged in and executes the program. Figure 2

3 She clicks Next. A dialog box appears warning her that she will not be able to use the Active Directory. This is fine, since Alice is not running on a Windows server. She presses OK on this dialog. The next page allows her to select the folder where the program files will be copied to. It also lets her choose the location for the data folder. Alice accepts the suggested locations and presses Next. Note: The best location for the data folder is on the local C: drive. It is not a good idea to put this folder on a shared drive since this will just slow things down. The next page shown is the Client Installation Folder page. This lets Alice choose the location where the client software will be installed. Each Outlook user, including Alice, will need to install the client software on their computer, once this server installation has completed. They will need to run the clientsetup.exe program which will be located in this folder. Alice is then asked for information about her organization (Eggs Ample), her name (Alice) and her address ([email protected]). She fills in the required information as depicted in Figure 3 and presses Next. Figure 3

4 Alice is now presented with the choice of which database to use. Alice accepts the default choice to use a SQL Server Express database. (See figure 4) Note: Although JET is slightly quicker to install, SQL Server Express has a greater capacity and so can hold more information. Figure 4 When Alice presses next, another screen is displayed asking her to confirm that she wants to install SQL Server on this computer (See figure 5).

5 Figure 5 She ensures the Install SQL Server on this computer radio button is selected and presses next. The final window is the Summary page. Alice clicks Finish and Softalk Share Server is installed on her PC. When the process is complete, the Installation Succeeded window is shown. (Figure 6) Figure 6

6 Alice reads this to discover now that she must install the client software on each Outlook user s computer. When she presses Next, she is presented with another window that gives her the opportunity to install the client software on this computer. Since Alice s computer will also be used to run Outlook, she selects the Install the Softalk Share Server client for Outlook locally now radio button and presses the Finish button. Doing this automatically runs the client setup program. Read the next section to understand how to install the client software. Client Installation Once the main server installation has completed, Alice must now install the client software on each of the computers that runs Outlook, including her own computer. The main installation automatically created a share on Alice s computer, which means that she can easily access the client software from any of the other computers. Alice s computer is called WONDERLAND. She simply needs to go to each of the other computers and from within Windows Explorer, she can browse to the following folder: \\WONDERLAND\Softalk Share Server Client Setup Within this folder (see figure 7), Alice can double click on ClientSetup.exe and run this on each of the client computers. Figure 7 This is the same program that ran when Alice chose to install the client software at the end of the main Softalk Share Server setup on her computer. Before Alice installs the client software on each of the other users computer, she must add those users in the Softalk Share Server administrator. The main setup program automatically ran up the administrator program when it completed. Note: If you closed the administrator program, you can run it again by selecting Start > All Programs > Softalk Share Server > Softalk Share Server Administrator on the computer that you installed the main Softalk Share Server software. Alice presses the New User button, located in the toolbar of the administrator. She chooses the Create user manually radio button and presses next. The next page shown lets Alice enter the name of the user and their address. (Figures 8 & 9)

7 Figure 8 Figure 9 Note: It is important to enter an address if you wish to be able to search for a user s free/busy information when inviting them to meetings in Outlook. Alice enters Sarah s name and address and presses Next. In the next page, she can specify Sarah s login credentials for Softalk Share Server. The New User wizard creates a suggested login name, based on the name Alice entered in the previous page. Alice accepts this login name (in this case simply Sarah ). She leaves the password blank, since there are no real security concerns in Eggs Sample and presses Next. In the next page Alice chooses not to get the administrator to try and remotely install the software, since she is going to do this manually on Sarah s computer, so she selects Do not install the client software and presses Finish. Alice is now ready to run the client software on Sarah s computer. She does this by browsing to \\WONDERLAND\Softalk Share Server Client Setup in Windows Explorer on Sarah s computer and then double clicks on clientsetup.exe.

8 The first page shown is the Welcome screen. When Alice presses next, she is presented with a license agreement, which she reads prior to pressing Accept. The next page lets Alice choose the folder to which the client program files will be copied. Alice accepts the suggested location and presses Next. The next page lets Alice select Sarah s name from a drop down list of users that have already been added to the administrator program. Alice selects Sarah s name and leaves the password blank (because she did not specify a password when creating the user Sarah in the administrator). When Alice presses Next she is presented with a page that lets her choose what type of store to configure in Sarah s Outlook. She has the choice of either Default store or Public folders only. Because Sarah s personal contacts and calendar folder must be shared to other users, Alice chooses the Default store option. (Figure 10) Figure 10 Note: Installing as a default store will replace the Personal Folders store (PST) with a Softalk Share Server store and will migrate the data from the PST store to the Softalk Share Server store, making it available for sharing. If your organization only needs to share public folders, Softalk Share Server can reside as a secondary store underneath the PST store. The next page lets Alice choose whether or not data from the Personal Folders store should be migrated to the Softalk Share Server store. Sarah wants to keep all the data that she currently has and so Alice chooses to migrate the data. When she presses Finish, client setup starts to copy the data from the old PST store to the new Softalk Share Server store. Depending upon how much data Sarah has, this can take some time. When the migration is complete, Alice runs up the Outlook on Sarah s computer and notices that everything looks just as it did before. All Sarah s folders are there, however the top node of the folder list no longer says Personal Folders. Instead it shows the name of the server and Sarah s login name (Figure 11).

9 Figure 11 Alice now performs the client installation on every other user s computer, including her own computer (which also runs the server software). Once this is done, the only remaining thing to do is to create a public holiday calendar and grant access permissions so that everyone can see the calendar and each other s contacts folder. Creating the public holiday calendar To create the public holiday calendar, Alice opens the Softalk Share Server administrator and presses the New Public Folder located in the toolbar. The new folder wizard appears, showing her the Details page. Alice enters Holidays into the Name field and selects the folder type as Calendar. The next page lets Alice choose who will have access to the Holidays calendar. She simply selects each person in turn and presses the Add button. By default, each user is given read access, but Alice needs to give herself full access so that she can update the calendar. She does this by selecting herself from the list and then selecting Read/Create/Edit/Delete access from the Access level drop down list. Sharing each user s contacts One of the company s requirements is that each user s personal contacts folder should be made available for every other user to access in a read only fashion. Alice opens the Softalk Share Server

10 Administrator and expands each user in turn in the left hand list and clicks on the Contacts folder. In the right hand window, she presses the Administer access to this folder button. Again, Alice selects each user from the drop down list and presses the Add button. She then presses OK. (Figure 12) Figure 12 After having granted each user with access to the Holiday public folder and to each user s personal Contacts folder, Alice notices that in each user s Outlook, there is a Shared folders entry and a Public folders entry in the folder list. Alice must view Outlook in Folder List view in order to see this. She does this by clicking on the Go menu item in Outlook and selecting Folder List. If she expands the Shared folders entry, she sees a folder for each user. Expanding one of those user folders reveals that user s personal contacts folder, which she can then select. (Figures 13 & 14) Figure 13

11 Figure 14 However most of the users in Eggs Sample don t use the Folder List view. They use the Contacts view if they want to access contacts. Alice notices that if she selects the Contacts view, she sees a number of Contacts folders in the My Contacts area. Each one has appended the initials of the owner of the contacts folder. This makes it easy for Alice to see whose folder she is selecting. However, Alice wants to see the users first name appended to the folder, rather than the users initials. So she selects Tools Options from within Outlook and selects the Folder Style page. From here, Alice can change the appearance of shared folders by selecting the appropriate radio button and pressing OK.