Thursday, June 16, 2005 - Posts

The "Customer" view of SBS

Over and over again when I talk to fellow SBS owners [you know the ones that pay your bills to install SBS] they complain that they'd like to know better how to share calendars, how to use Sharepoint, how to better utililize what they have and currently they can not find any book that helps them with the 'customer' view of SBS.  Some of this info is actually inside the help files.

 

You know...the help files inside of software?  There's a really good one inside the Remote Web Workplace.  Have you shown your clients/customers of SBS where this help file is?  You haven't?

 

Open up RWW and it's the last icon at the bottom...open it up...poke around.... it might help you to help your clients/customers understand and use what they have a bit better.   In the meantime, ask your clients.... have you truly shown them, given them information on how they and really USE SBS?

 

Using e-mail

Microsoft® Windows® Small Business Server 2003 includes an e-mail system, which you can use to send e-mail both inside and outside of your company.

 

Your e-mail is stored on the server, which means that you do not have to be connected to the Internet to exchange e-mail with co-workers. Another benefit is that when sending e-mail to other people in your company, you can use their name as the e-mail address instead of the standard Internet e-mail address (someone@example.com).

 

Your mailbox

Your mailbox is a set of folders that stores your e-mail messages and other items, such as calendar information, contacts, and task lists. You can create personal folders (called PSTs) on your computer, which are similar to the folders stored on the server.

 

By default, your mailbox on the server can store up to 200 megabytes (MB) of data--large enough for several thousand e-mail messages. However, your mailbox also stores calendar informaton, task lists, and attachments to e-mail, which can quickly use up space. You receive a notice if your mailbox reaches 175 MB.

 

Accessing e-mail

You have two ways to read and send e-mail: using Microsoft Office Outlook®  2003 or a Web-based version of Outlook called Outlook Web Access. You can access your mailbox in the office, at home, or while traveling by opening Outlook Web Access in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

 

Computer viruses sent in e-mail

Computer viruses can be sent as attachments to e-mail messages. Usually these attachments come in the form of programs (.exe files) or scripts (.vbs or .js files).

 

Viruses typically do the following:

 

Replicate themselves. Viruses attempt to move from one computer to another. Some virus programs are written to send themselves to everyone in your address book or contact list.

Do some level of harm, from displaying annoying messages to erasing data on your hard disk.

Do not open e-mail attachments from persons you do not know. You should also be wary of opening attachments that you receive unexpectedly from people you do know, especially program or script attachments. Because viruses can sometimes send themselves in e-mail, you may receive an e-mail with a virus attached from a person who does not yet know that he or she has a computer virus.

 

E-mail size and attachments

E-mail attachments that are 2 to 10 MB or larger, such as lengthy documents, photographs, songs, movie clips, and picture files, can quickly use up disk space. If you receive large attachments, consider saving the attached file to your hard disk and deleting the e-mail message. You can also store the entire message in a Microsoft Outlook personal folder file on your hard disk.

 

  Important

 

Save attachments only from people you trust and only when these attachments are expected. If you receive an attachment from a person you do not know, or a message with a suspicious subject line, delete the message without opening the attachment.

If you are sending an e-mail message to someone who is not on your computer network, note that:

 

Many e-mail systems place restrictions on the size of incoming e-mail messages; sometimes they must be as small as 1 MB.

If your company connects to the Internet over a dial-up connection, large e-mail messages and attachments can take a long time to send.