Advox E-mail for anyone

How does it all work?
Using e-mail is not that difficult today. As you might have noticed more and more people and companies are using e-mail these days. Either for their internal intranet e-mail among the employees or externaly via internet e-mail for customers and clients outside the company.

Note: We have tried to use as little technical jargon as possible, but sometimes it is inevitable not to. However, we have put together a glossary list with its meaning on our Technical Jargon page, where you can read more if you want to.

What do I need to do in order to give everyone at my company their own e-mail address and set up our own e-mail server?
As you will see it is not that complicated to start using e-mail and give everyone their own e-mail adres. Basically you need to take care of 5 sections, namly the following;

Hardware
First, everyone that will have their own e-mail address and e-mail inbox need their own computer. Although  it is possible to use many e-mail inboxes on one computer it sorts of defeats the purpose!??? Depending on the size of your company and its needs you are either using Windows 95/98 on each users computer without a dedicated server (a so called peer-to-peer network), all the software needed to run such a network is included with Windows 95 or 98. Or you are using Windows NT Server as your server and Windows 95/98 as your clients (a "normal" network). In both instances every computer needs to be connected via network cabling and through each computers network interface card. You also need one ordinary modem and a preferably dedicated ordinary phone line and a phone jack??.

A registered Domain
Then you need a domain registered for your company. This gives you the name to the right of the @ sign, like "@yourcompany.com" or "@yourcompany.se" depending on where you are located. This enables you to give every employee at your company an unique e-mail address. In other words, give each employee an address to the left of the @ sign, like "john.smith@yourcompany.com". All this Advox can help you with?? or For more information about this contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

An e-mail account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
Unless your company has a leased line and thus a constant open connection to the internet, you also need an e-mail account with an ISP. It is the ISP that receives all your incoming e-mail from outside the company and stores this e-mail on their servers. In order for you and your employees to receive their mail, Advox Omnigate needs to call the ISP and its server to get all incoming e-mail as well as send all outgoing e-mail from anyone within your company. How often this is to occur, depends on your needs. You can tell Advox Omnigate to call your ISP every hour, or whatever you prefer. It´s all up to you! This is called a Dial-up connection via a modem, and is less expensive than an constantly open leased line as well as much safer since it does not require any firewalls or equivalent. For those that have an open connection via a leased line, Advox Omnigate handles those connections as smoothly!

Software
Besides that every user needs a copy of either Windows 95 or Windows 98 installed on their computer. Every one with there own e-mail address also need an e-mail client software. This e-mail software has to be able to support an one of the most widely used e-mail protocol called POP3.  Which means that almost every major e-mail software can be used. Software like Outlook 97 or 98, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc, etc can be used for sending and receiving e-mail. Also included in the box with Advox Omnigate are WebMail which is an e-mail client that can be used with Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator??.

Advox Omnigate Messaging Server
And to handle it all and run and administer your incoming and outgoing e-mail plus a lots of extra functionality you need a copy of Advox Omnigate installed on one of the computers. This computer can be either one of the users own computer running Windows 95/98 or a dedicated computer with Windows 95/98 installed. It all matters on how much e-mail activity your company will have. If it will be a lot, you maybe should consider a dedicated computer so Advox Omnigate activities does not "steal" processor time and strength from the user!

That's it!