[ale] OT: Office 365

[Chris Fowler]

Hate to ask questions about Winders stuff. :P

The wife worked from home during the storm and I noticed she was running 
Outlook in a web browser via Office 365.  This really interested me.  My 
company is a small company so IT tasks fall on me and I'm looking at 
eliminating as much as possible.  Years back I implemented SugarCRM and 
eliminated ACT! because an employee's laptop died and he was unable to 
look up customer data.  He and I was sitting in an airport and I thought 
to myself that if I could just give him my laptop he could look stuff 
up.  When we got back I did the conversion.

Seeing this stuff run in a browser means I can eliminate office software 
on THEIR desktops.  One of my guys still runs Office 2003.  My #1 
problem is Outlook.  So many times I get people that have mail in the 
outbox that will not leave.  My latest problem is where meeting invites 
will not leave and I think the only fix is a reload of that machine.

If I can move Office from the computer and to a browser this means that 
I have eliminated my dependence on their laptops.  If they have problems 
they can simply go to their desktop or another laptop and log onto 365.  
Is my thinking correct?

I have them all using IMAPS.  My mail server runs CentOS and usese 
fetchmail to pull email via POP3 from our provider.  Everyone uses IMAPS 
to read their email from the CentOS system.  Is this compatible withe 
Outlook in the browser?

I would rather people run Libreoffice, but my main problem is Outllook.  
These guys love it and are old and change will cause me great pain.  
Converting to 365 in web form only means they can have the same version 
of Office as everyone else and they are not tied to a computer.

Anyone see a problem with this plan?

Chris

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