Here's my problem. My office is running Outlook 2007 and using a Microsoft Exchange Server. This is working swimmingly, no issues there. However, by boss would like to use some customized fields to help us with our marketing. Basically, we want to be able to use our own fields to determine who gets particular forms of marketing and who doesn't.
Now, here are the fragmented issues I have run into in my quest to solve this seemingly simple problem. If I am wrong about any of these, please let me know:
1. User-defined fields in Outlook's regular Contact interface cannot be exported and are not searchable.
2. There are four fields called "User Defined Field 1, 2..." that ARE exportable, but you cannot change the name of those fields.
3. You can use Business Contact Manager to create user-defined fields that are exportable and you can change the name of these fields AND where they show up. However, you cannot sync contacts in BCM through an Exchange Server, it must be done over a LAN connection. This would cause problems for us, as our office's infrastructure is heavily dependant on the lovely syncing capabilities of our Exchange Server.
4. There are limited resource for third-party add-ons. The only one I found that supports syncing over Exchange is Avidian's Prophet Business Contact Manager for Outlook, but they want to charge our small business of 14 people $11K to do it. Not going to happen.
So, here I am. I am looking for any way around this problem. We either need to find a way around it in Outlook's Contacts (finding a way to export customized, user-defined fields to Excel mailing lists), find a way to happily marry BCM and our Exchange Server, or find a third-party system that allows us to customize our fields, sync with our Outlook Contacts and our Exchange Server. Is that too much to ask? Any insight would be much appreciated. Cheers!
Now, here are the fragmented issues I have run into in my quest to solve this seemingly simple problem. If I am wrong about any of these, please let me know:
1. User-defined fields in Outlook's regular Contact interface cannot be exported and are not searchable.
2. There are four fields called "User Defined Field 1, 2..." that ARE exportable, but you cannot change the name of those fields.
3. You can use Business Contact Manager to create user-defined fields that are exportable and you can change the name of these fields AND where they show up. However, you cannot sync contacts in BCM through an Exchange Server, it must be done over a LAN connection. This would cause problems for us, as our office's infrastructure is heavily dependant on the lovely syncing capabilities of our Exchange Server.
4. There are limited resource for third-party add-ons. The only one I found that supports syncing over Exchange is Avidian's Prophet Business Contact Manager for Outlook, but they want to charge our small business of 14 people $11K to do it. Not going to happen.
So, here I am. I am looking for any way around this problem. We either need to find a way around it in Outlook's Contacts (finding a way to export customized, user-defined fields to Excel mailing lists), find a way to happily marry BCM and our Exchange Server, or find a third-party system that allows us to customize our fields, sync with our Outlook Contacts and our Exchange Server. Is that too much to ask? Any insight would be much appreciated. Cheers!
