Telephone answering and on-line diary system?

[piglet]

A bit similar to the virtual office question the other day.

My OH is a driving instructor and might be in need of a phone answering service - it's early days so we don't have any idea how many calls it will be - in reality it will be very few calls for the next few months. Does anyone have any suggestions for services where you pay based on the number of calls taken rather than on a contract price?

Secondly, we could do with an online calender that can be linked with IPAQ's and outlook so that both he and I can access an updated calender during the day? Any thoughts?

Cheers

Piglet.

[Plotloss]

On the second question, if you use an iPaq and a mobile you could sync remotely over the mobile phone network, this would allow access to emails (using IMAP rather than POP3) and would allow appointments etc to be downloaded to Pocket Outlook.

All you would pay for would be the data and if you went for a new TMobile contract for the phone this would be £7.50 per month for all the data you can eat.

[Fatboy]

Alternatively for an online calendar, we use www.teamspace.co.uk , which is nice to use, and about £25 per month for up to 10 users.

Edited by Fatboy on Tuesday 19th September 11:34

[Piglet]

Cheers guys, Plotloss that's a good suggestion and probably by far the easiest to achieve. We have both phones on Orange at the moment so probably need to investigate although last time I tried to work out how to combine the mobile and the Ipaq I gave up in frustration!

Any thoughts on the telephone answering?

[simond001]

touchdown office services offer very inexpensive call managing services. They take calls for me, answer them and email and text the contact details. you can even forward your existing home/ work number and he answers that when you cannot!

www.touchdownoffices.com ask for Dean Parsons, he is a great guy and easy to work with (tell him Simond sent you!)

Any other advice email me.

Simond

[Piglet]

Cheers Simon I'm just looking at them, looks quite reasonable.

[simond001]

no worries.