Almost all of our customers and users have a need to synchronize data while they are out of the office. Not surprisingly, this is when the ability to have current data is usually the most valuable.

If you are network savy and already know how to configure your router and firewall for remote access, then read no more… but for those of you that are curious, read on…

The first thing that you are going to need is a “Static” IP address, that is to say, an IP address that will not be changing, otherwise known as a “Dynamic” IP address. Your Internet service provider will be able to tell you what class of service it is that you have.

The reason you want a “Static” IP address is so that when you are off site you will be able to reliably access the XCN Server without having to call the office and ask what the “IP address of the day” is.

Secondly, you will need to configure your router to “port forward” ports 80 and 10001 to the “internal” (LAN) IP address of the computer on which you have installed the XCN Server. Think of it this way: the router is acting sort of like your telephone switchboard. When you are remote and want to synchronize, XC Connect will be doing so using ports 80 and 10001, very similar to that of a phone extension. The router will recognize the incoming authentication request from your remote computer and will look to transfer that incoming request to ports 80 and/or 10001. And since you probably have more than one computer attached to this router, you will need to tell it where to send the request so that it gets responded to appropriately. In this particular case it will be the IP address of the computer on which the XCN Server is installed.

Thirdly, if you have any additional firewalls, you will need to allow access through those two ports (80 and 10001). The additional firewalls may exists as a separate “Firewall” box that is on your network, or more typically as a software firewall that might exist on the server itself.

Security: Data that is transmitted on port 10001 is 128 bit encrypted, as is the data on the XCN Server. Data on port 80, which is the port used for standard web-browser access, can be encrypted should you choose to have it so. If you do, just use “https” for full SSL encryption. In most cases you can do so without having to have a signed “certificate”. In addition, access to the XCN Server requires authentication by username and password. If the XCN server does not receive the proper authentication and if the data is not formatted along the anticipated encryption rules, the connection is dropped.

So the bottom line is that Yes, you can securely create, modify, and synchronize data between all of your users, remote or not so remote. You just need to 1) have a Static IP address, 2) port forward your router, 3) modify your firewall to allow the data. And that’s it!

If you have any questions, please let us know – contact us at info@xcnetwork.com. Thanks!

A recurring question that we are constantly being asked is “Is XC Connect an alternative to Microsoft Exchange?” The short answer is “yes, but no….”

To elaborate:

Yes, XC Connect is an alternative to Microsoft Exchange in that it enables group collaboration and allows users to create, modify, and share Calendar, Contacts, and/or Task information, from both “personal” and “public” folders.

But No, XC Connect is “not” an alternative to Microsoft Exchange in that it does not provide the email server capability that Microsoft Exchange does, and neither does it allow the sharing of other elements within Outlook, such as “Journal” and “Notes”.

Why didn’t Xchange Network go down that route and make XC Connect a true replacement for MS Exchange? The reasons are simple:

All of our users already have an email server/system in place… so there was no point in re-creating that wheel.
When polling users, we found that Journal and Notes sharing is a very low priority…. Calendars, Contacts, and finally Tasks data were at the very top.

However…. there are things that make XC Connect very unique, and things that that Microsoft Exchange does not even attempt to do. For example, XC Connect:

allows users to share data across virtually any desktop application (all you need is an XC ‘connector’ to that application).
allows users to install the software server component on almost any operating system (just has to support the Java Virtual Machine). We provide install packages for Windows, Linux, and OSX.
allows users to use whatever email server/system that they wish.
allows users on different email domains to still share data (for example users with an email domain “(name)@company.com” can still share data with other non-company users at for example, (name)@yahoo.com).
is simpler and way less expensive to install and manage….

There are more subtle differences, but those are the highlights….

The predominant element that users tend to want to share are Calendars! Which is not unusual, since it is human nature to want to either know, or tell others, what is going on. This has the natural expansion of dealing with both a “personal” calendar or diary and a “group” calendar. But wait, there’s more: because as soon as we discover that we can put people on a calendar and schedule events for them, we want to be able to schedule (and manage) physical resources, everything from conference rooms to the corporate airplane.

XC Connect manages this very nicely, allowing users to share their personal calendar with selected users or to participate in selected “group” calendars. To take it a step further, XC Connect enables a permission structure that provides for read-only, read/write, as well as read/write/delete privileges. In other words, you might have visibility into someone else’s calendar, but you may not have the privilege to create or modify their schedule. On the other hand, you might have, as an “administrator” full access to a user’s calendar, allowing you to fully manage another user’s schedule.

The above holds true for managing resources, where selected users might have “read” access to the status of, for example, a conference room, but there is a selected user that actually has control over booking the room itself.

Address Book and Contact sharing is the next most popular, particularly since in many cases, the desktop application is utilized as a mini-CRM tool, or even as a “company address book”.

XC Connect allows the creation of multiple “shared” address books/contact folders providing a lot of flexibility. There is no limit to how many different ones you can create.

The third most popular element that is shared are Tasks… We’ve found that organizations that deal with project management or process related events utilize the shared tasks capability extensively. Customers in the construction industry in particular seem to leverage this feature the most. Legal offices also utilize the Task structure to delegate and track case events.

Again, XC Connect facilitates the ability to manage a complicated task management situation by providing for a flexible permissions model and the ability to create multiple shared task folders with access by desired users.