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Paragon Title & Escrow Uses Riva to Push Shared Calendar Appointments to GroupWise Mobile Server Users

"Our attorneys needed access to our shared Settlements calendar on their mobile devices," said Rob Rothstein, MIS Director at Paragon Title & Escrow Company. "Since GroupWise Mobile Server does not support shared calendar support or proxy access, we use Omni's Riva Common Calendar module to push the Settlements calendar items to our attorneys' private accounts. These calendar entries then synchronize to their mobile devices normally with GMS."

Overview

Since 1981, Paragon Title & Escrow Company has worked closely with home buyers, sellers and real estate professionals in Maryland and the District of Columbia to review and negotiate real estate contracts and resolve settlement disputes.

To satisfy their attorneys' growing need for GroupWise wireless access, Paragon Title deployed Novell GroupWise Mobile Server in June 2007. GroupWise Mobile Server has worked flawlessly, except for one critical missing feature - proxy access to shared calendars. Attorneys are not able to proxy into the office's shared Settlements calendar on their Palm or Windows Mobile devices.

The solution - Omni's Common Calendar Update (CCU) module, powered by Riva. Paragon Title now uses Riva CCU to push out public Settlements calendar data to attorneys' private calendars. The attorneys then synchronize their devices normally using GroupWise Mobile Server.

The Challenge

"When we deployed GroupWise Mobile Server, our attorneys were not able to proxy into our public Settlements calendar," said Rob Rothstein, MIS Director at Paragon Title & Escrow Company. "Proxy access is available in GroupWise and WebAccess, but not from the PIM calendar on our users' mobile devices. Making sure our attorneys and senior executives had mobile access to our public Settlements calendar was critical to our business processes."

"To overcome this limitation, we were looking for a solution that would push the Settlements calendar data to our attorneys' private accounts. Then we could use GMS to synchronize the data to their Palm Treo and Windows Mobile devices," continued Rothstein.

The Solution

"After searching high and low for a solution that would enable us to push calendar items to our users' GroupWise accounts, we discovered Omni's Riva Common Calendar module," said Rothstein.

Common Calendar Update is one of the modules in Omni's new Riva Collaboration Integration Suite for GroupWise. Riva leverages the GroupWise Trusted Application architecture and eDirectory connectors to allow administrators to create and push GroupWise and eDirectory policies to user accounts from a single workstation. Riva modules include Common Calendar Update, Common Proxy Access, Internet Address Clean-up, Dynamic GroupWise Distribution Lists, Create Folder, Common Address Book and a number of reports.

"Riva is very intuitive and easy to install and use," said Rothstein. "We set up our Common Calendar policy within minutes and were impressed by the advanced filtering options, custom categories and ability to override category colors."

The Results

"We have set Windows Task Scheduler to run our scheduled Riva Common Calendar policy twice a day," said Rothstein. "The Riva CCU policy automatically pushes out any changes or new events, tasks and notes in our Settlements calendar to our attorneys' private GroupWise accounts. Their GroupWise calendars are then automatically synchronized to their mobile devices using GroupWise Mobile Server."

"Riva CCU has helped increase the value of our GroupWise investment by allowing us to implement the business-critical shared calendar functionality on our mobile devices. Shared calendar synchronization is working perfectly.  Any changes are automatically synchronized.  We are very satisfied. I would recommend CCU to other law firms and organizations that need to push common calendar items to their users - for standard or GroupWise Mobile Server access."

"What has impressed me the most about my experience dealing with Omni is their outstanding customer service. It's such a pleasure to work with technical support people who really know what they're talking about."

Riva Modules and Reports Include:

• Common Calendar Utility »
• Common Proxy Access »
• Common Address Book »
• Create Folder »
• Common Address Book »
• Internet Address Clean-up »
• GroupWise Dynamic Distribution Lists »
• Birthday Reminder »
• Password Reminder Expiry Email »
• GroupWise Archive Path Report »
• GroupWise Proxy Report »

More Information

• Riva
  Overview»


• Riva Modules and Reports»


• Evaluate Common Calendar Update»


• Riva Price Information»

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