Hailing Plainsman

[i386]

It may be time to bite the Exchange Bullet...

So I've been sysadmin for a local orthopedic clinic for about 3 weeks now. One of the things on my plate is the doctor's schedule. Currently it's a total mess.

There are 4 doctors. 2 prefer to use a Palm Treo and two don't. There's a schedule in our electronic practice management application (epm) that has details of each patient to be seen. There's 4 other calendars, one for each doctor in Outlook that an administrative person maintains for each doctor. Then there's an excel spreadsheet that's made to look like a really f'd up calendar (imo) that has certain items from all the doctor's schedules that gets printed out and handed to the doctors. This is for an entire month.

I'm trying to eliminate as much redundancy as possible. The excel file was ceated because Outlook's month view with all 4 calendars on at the same time looks like a really big mess.

Can I use Exchange to eliminate some of this redundancy? Can I customize a calendar view to show 4 doctor's schedules for a month and actually make it comprehensible? I think the biggest problem is that if there's nothing in an appointment slot, Outlook still wants to show a blank space there. This blows the calendar up to huge proportions and makes the appointments tiny to read because it has to make room for all the blank spaces in the calendar.

It'll be expensive.... I'll need a new IBM xSeries server, Windows Server 2K3, Exchange 2K3, Backup Exec, Backup Exec Exchange option, tape drive, tapes (2 week rotation + 1 monthly), another UPS possible, not to mention CALs for Exchange and Outlook/Office licenses.

The docs want this improved and this is a good opportunity to score some points but MY agenda is currently to eliminate all my single points of failure and get some monitoring/notifications going so I don't get caught with my pants down and leave them wondering why they hired me in the first place.

BTW, I have Exchange 2000 with the shrink-wrap still on the box and a spare old server I can do some testing on.

 

[Laddies]

Re: Hailing Plainsman

Deleted per owner's request.

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Hailing Plainsman

So you want to have 1 calendar for all 4 doctors? What I would do is make make 4 public calenders under public folders. Then you can sync each doctors calender to their PDA's. Set permissions so that only the doctor and the secretary, who uses that calendar, can modify that calendar, but all others could view it.

Exchange 2000 would be good to get your feet wet setting up the information store and mounting it. But there is quite a difference between exchange 2k and 2k3.

IF you use backup exec, you won't have to unmount the stores for backups, which is nice.

Are they currently running on a windows domain with active directory?

 

[i386]

Re: Hailing Plainsman

Yes we have Active Directory. The DC is Windows 2003. All hardware is current IBM xSeries rack servers.

I have setup Exchange 5.5 on NT4 (Yikes!) and Exchange 2000 before. IIRC I have setup shared calendars and contacts too. I don't recall it being that difficult to do.

The 4 calendars are not a problem. The docs that will actually use the Treo are going to want the admin person to sync it for them. I've never tried to sync more than one device for 2 or more different people on the same PC before. I don't know if that'll be an issue or not. The biggest challenge is the month calendar. The doctors and other people also want a month calendar that has all 4 docs schedules on it. It's a very abbreviated version of their personal calendar. They didn't like the way Outlook displayed the month calendar when you check the box next to each doc and click on month view. So what they did was make the admin person create an excel spreadsheet that displays that data the way they want it. Can you imagine maintaining 4 doctors individual calendars and then trying to manually put parts of each in a spreadsheet? They make changes to their schedules all the time! PM me your email address and I'll send you the spreadsheet if you want a good laugh. I know Outlook has ways to make custom views, just not to what extent. It all looks pretty cryptic to me. It's hard to believe a dang calendar can be so complicated.

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Hailing Plainsman

I think as long as you have a profile for each person, and for each PDA, it should ask you which to sync. I don't see an issue with that.

I've set up calendars for 5 vehicles and it doesn't look to bad. It all depends on how much info they put into it. You need to teach them the KISS method on the calendar and it will look ok. Put the info in the appointment and not the subject.

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Hailing Plainsman

That is just scary!!! And how in the heck they followed it is beyond me!!!

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Hailing Plainsman

Have you tested it yet?