Microsoft Small Business Live & Outlook Connector

Last week, we explored enhancements Microsoft made to their Small Business Live Suite of products and offerings. Now, we’ll look at the relatively new Outlook Connector and the benefits of using this tool either with our business or personal lives and accounts.

If you are a *current live-mail or hotmail account holder and use either Outlook 2003 or 2007, you can bring your web-based email, calendar and contacts into your desktop Outlook client with Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta 2. From what I’ve read, this functionality (with the email accounts), is not new. The highly-touted feature is the new ability to bring multiple hotmail calendars into Outlook and either look at them side by side, or overlay them. So, if you have a work, personal, kid’s activity and other group calendar, you can overlay them to find open slots or conflicts.

I must confess here that so far I’ve not set up a Microsoft web-mail account. Never liked or wanted ‘hotmail’ in any of my email addresses. However, I will probably set up an account with Microsoft ‘live’. I have signed up for the Microsoft Small Business Account and have a Sky Drive and Shared Documents space already set up.

Here is a snapshot of how your E-Mail Live account would look in your Outlook:

Below is an excerpt from Microsoft you should read:

“Essentially, Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta 2 will synchronize email, contacts and calendars from accounts with the *latest versions of Windows Live Hotmail and Office Live Mail with Office Outlook 2003 and the 2007 Office System. One aspect has indeed evolved since version 12.0 of the Outlook Connector to 12.1 Beta 2, namely using the free Windows Live Calendar service instead of the MSN Calendaring service previously available only to MSN Premium accounts.
“In order to make sure that all of your calendar items on the MSN Calendar service are correctly migrated to the Windows Live Calendar, you should follow these steps: with Outlook Connector 12.0 installed, synchronize your calendar with the MSN Calendar service one last time. After synchronization is complete, do not create new items on the MSN Calendar site. If you do, you will have to synchronize again using Outlook Connector 12.0 before migrating to 12.1 Beta. Install Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta,” Roic added.
Microsoft Office Outlook Connector version 12.1 Beta 2 is available for download here. “

I’ve written previously on how I moved my Gmail account into my Outlook, so if I eventually added a live account, I wonder if this would crash my Outlook 2007? There would be a lot of activity in Outlook!

Contact Syncing With Office Life Small Business

If you use the Small Business Live features on-line, here’s a way to have your business contacts right in your Outlook client. They won’t inter-mingle with your other Outlook contacts, they will show up as business contacts in ‘Other Contacts’.

Below is a great excerpt from Microsoft on how to do this complete with snapshots:

If Outlook 2007 is installed on the computer that you use to access Office Live Small Business, you can find the option to connect Contact Manager to Outlook on the Actions menu on the actions bar in Contact Manager. When you connect Contact Manager to Outlook 2007, your customer, vendor, partner, and other key business contact information is always on hand.

After you click Connect to Outlook, you see an Outlook message box prompting you to connect this SharePoint contacts list to Outlook. Your Contact Manager database (in addition to other Office Live Small Business lists and libraries discussed in this article) is designed to sync effortlessly with Outlook 2007.

After you connect Contact Manager to Outlook, you can access the Contact Manager list in Outlook by clicking Contacts on the Navigation Pane. Contact Manager appears in the Navigation Pane under the heading Other Contacts, and is separate from your personal contacts, as shown here.

Notes

• If you do not see the Navigation Pane in Outlook, on the View menu, point to Navigation Pane, and then click Normal.
• By default, changes that you make to Contact Manager information in Outlook are updated in your Office Live Small Business account the next time Outlook performs an automatic Send/Receive.
• If you do not already use the Contact Manager tools in your Office Live Small Business account, see Focus your sales and marketing efforts using Contact Manager to learn more about what you can do with Contact Manager.
• To determine whether the version of Outlook that you use is Outlook 2007, do the following: In Outlook, on the Help menu, click About Microsoft Office Outlook. The dialog box that opens indicates which version of Outlook you are using.

Calendar Syncing with Outlook Connector:

The ability to bring your single or multiple live or hotmail calendars into your Outlook client was discussed above. Here’s a screenshot of how calendars can be displayed. If you have multiple calendars, just click the check-box next to the one(s) you want to display and you’ll have it! You can also share these calendars with others.

So-What Will Having This Do for Me?

• Ability to work off-line with your live or hotmail e-mail accounts. Write and read emails. The next time you’re on-line, everything should sync up and be up to date – on the web and on your desktop
• Same thing with calendars and contacts. Make updates and changes – they should all sync up upon re-connecting
• You can be more productive having your regular Outlook account and your web e-mail accounts in one place. No switching back and forth
• You can use the familiar and comforting Outlook interface
• If you installed the Business Connector application discussed in last week’s blog article, then you can also have off-line access to your business documents

Other Posts You Might Like

• August 15, 2008 -- How I Moved A Client from Outlook email to Gmail–and did it remotely
• August 8, 2008 -- How I Moved My Outlook email to Gmail and Retained the Best of Both Worlds
• July 2, 2010 -- Windows Live Mail – Wave 4
• April 7, 2010 -- Consolidate Email With Windows Live or Gmail