Public folders provide an easy way for effective data management in organizations. They make it possible for people to organize, store and share information within a business setup. While this is true, there are three main limitations of using public folders.
First and foremost, public folders do not provide a way to notify users in case of an update. Yes, you can use email notifications, but they won’t reach everyone. People with stuffed inboxes are more likely to miss these updates.
Secondly, public folders are easy and flexible to use for businesses with small amounts of data. However, they get complicated to use for large business organizations, with large amounts of data.
Last but not least, public folders are not available on smartphones and other mobile devices. In a world where almost everyone can afford a smartphone, users should be able to access public folders on their smartphones and other mobile devices. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not provide that option for you. They left it up to you to sync public folders to iPhones or any other mobile devices to make that possible.
So, how can you synchronize public folders to mobile devices? Read on to the end to find out.
- By Manually Dragging Info into the Individual User Mailboxes
Using this method, you will need to drag and drop data to the mailboxes of all the relevant users one by one. But this will only work for small businesses, not large organizations. For them, this task is both time and energy-intensive because they have more users to handle.
Remember, users come and go all the time, and contact information changes every now and then. You need to update this information all the time as well as notify the users when you do, which is cumbersome. The worst part about it is that not all users will receive updates on time, which is also frustrating. The damage is worse for large businesses than it is for small organizations.
- Using the itrezzo Unified Contact Management (UCM) Platform
The itrezzo UCM platform is the simplest and fastest way to synchronize public folders to smartphones, iPhones, and any other mobile devices. In just a few seconds, you can sync your public folders to all your users (regardless of the number), and the best part is that you do not need any professional training to do so.
There are three things you need to do to complete this process;
- Name a data source. In this case, it’s the public contact folder.
- Make the data source a mandatory contact list.
- Set an Active Directory Group as the target
In this case, you can use” all iPhone users” as your AD group. Other AD group examples include” all blackberry users” or even “all smartphone users depending on the mobile devices you want to sync the public folders to. Use the itrezzoActiveSync AutoDL feature to maintain these groups.
Once the process is complete, all the connected iPhones can now receive the incremental changes made to your public folder instantly. For example, if you have 600 iPhone users and ten changes in your public folder, you will have a total of 6000 updated contacts. And if a new iPhone user joins in, all the 600 contacts in your public folder will update to their device. This process is automated for all the iPhones and mobile devices connected to Microsoft Exchange Server.
Apart from that, the itrezzo UCM platform is also:
- Flexible; this is key to successful contact management.
- Can handle multiple public folders
- Lets you synchronize deletions; this is very important to deal with obsolete data.
- Allows selective syncing; not every information needs to be seen by everyone. You may want to limit some of it to a privileged group.
- Lets you delete contacts you already have in your iPhone after synchronization to avoid duplication.
- Syncing is not limited to the default folders only. You can sync subfolders too. Although not all devices can sync subfolders, this feature comes in handy for those that do. It allows users to separate their personal info from the company info.
- Allows you to use GAL groups as target
- Is future-proof; provides solutions that you can use now and the days to come
- Does all the heavy lifting for you; things can get messy pretty fast when it comes to data management. Itrezzo UCM provides an instant solution to duplicated, outdated information, and any other mess you may have in your business.
- It is user-friendly
- What if you are on Office 365?
The solutions above are for businesses using Microsoft Exchange Server. But if you are on Office 365, it is recommended that you use itrezzo to sync your public folders to smartphones and other mobile devices. The process will only take five minutes or less to complete.
Conclusion
Unlike before, mobile devices have become so popular, and all businesses need to take advantage of that. Syncing your public folder to these devices will ensure that users can access information at any time and from anywhere. And this is one of the most important things you need to gain a competitive advantage against your business rivals.
