But what else can we do with this new capability? Small Business Server 2003 mobile access isn’t just for e-mail. You can access all the major portions of Outlook. If you keep your schedule and contacts in Outlook, you sync those up when you sync up your e-mail. Let’s look at a couple of hypothetical cases where this might come in handy. Let’s say that you are a salesperson on the road all day, or even all week. Maybe you travel a territory. You have a support staff (or perhaps a boss) back at the office. As you make your sales calls, you can enter notes in Pocket Outlook Calendar about your visits. You can enter new contacts or update existing information in Pocket Outlook Contacts. When you find a WiFi hot spot, that information is updated on the server. Now the folks back at the office can access that information without having to wait for you to return to the office. The boss can see what a wonderful job you are doing, real time, and how you’ve impressed your clients. Conversely, the folks back in the office may need to update contact information in Outlook. Those updates would then be available to you on the road when you sync. Perhaps your secretary is responsible for keeping track of your calendar and scheduling your visits. When he enters a new appointment in Outlook, that appointment will show up on your Pocket PC calendar. And of course you can use e-mail to send in all those orders you are taking.

Now let’s say you are a small business services company with a number of service teams out all day taking care of customers. Clients call into your main office and make requests for service. Your office staff then schedules the service calls. Using SBS 2003, they can enter the appointments in Outlook and the service technicians can download that information into their schedule in Pocket Outlook. Client information can be entered into the Outlook calendar as well. The field technicians can then enter the information about the service call at the time of the call and have it synced back to the main office. The office staff can then use that information to bill the customer, all before the service tech returns to the office.

Some organizations use Outlook Tasks to delegate activities. These tasks can then be synced into the Task feature of your Pocket PC. When they are completed, they can be synced back to let the requester know it’s been accomplished.

Can’t find a hot spot? If you have a cell phone with Internet access like Sprint PCS, you can do the same thing using Outlook Mobile Access as described last month. It’s a little more cumbersome but it will work. A SmartPhone would give you such capabilities as well. Or you could subscribe to a WiFi service. T-mobile offers WiFi hot spots all over town and all over the country. These are easy to find. They are in most Starbucks and Kinkos. If you don’t have time for a leisurely cup of coffee, you can just sync up in the parking lot. Time Warner Cable is setting up hot spots as well called SpeedZone. You can subscribe directly to this service or use your user name and password from your RoadRunner cable broadband account for ‘free’ access.

Mobile access isn’t limited to just Outlook. Several CRM (Customer Relation Management) systems are beginning to come out with mobile versions. GoldMine is coming out with GoldMine Mobile Edition to run on a Pocket PC or SmartPhone. Microsoft has also announced that its CRM 1.2 is slated to have a Pocket PC module. These will allow us to have even more detailed information, instantly, anywhere.

Ah! Cell phones and PDAs. What would lunch be without them?