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Question on Outlook at a big corporation

8letters

8letters

Writing
Joined
May 27, 2013
Posts
2,108
I'm writing a story where a woman wants to track down someone named "Jack" at her work. She works for a big corporation with multiple locations in both the US and in other countries. How difficult would it be for her pull from Outlook all of the people with a first name of Jack in her building and their location in the building?
 
8letters said:
I'm writing a story where a woman wants to track down someone named "Jack" at her work. She works for a big corporation with multiple locations in both the US and in other countries. How difficult would it be for her pull from Outlook all of the people with a first name of Jack in her building and their location in the building?
Click to expand...

It's been a while since I had to use it, but here goes:-

A lot will depend upon HOW the departments are organised; it's unlikely that everyone is on the same Out look.
But help can be obtained [a friend in some departments ?]
 
Use your imagination and your writer's license. It can be as doable as you write it to be for your particular fictitious corporation.
 
It's in a single building. We have outlook and it includes everyone in multiple buildings, departments and floors. Go to outlook help and see, otherwise just post it as a genuine question on an it help board somewhere- and you could even write that into the story.
 
The organization is probably broken down into subgroups, either by department (HR, Marketing, Sales, etc) or possibly by location (U.S., Canada, Japan, etc).

Using your example, it would be trivial to find all men with a first name of Jack. In Outlook, click the Address Book button on the top ribbon. On the screen which appears, click Advanced Find.

On this screen you can input Jack into the First Name field then hit OK. This should do a company-wide search and show you everyone who has the name of Jack. When you find that person, right-click and select Properties. The next screen, if properly set up by IT, will show you the person's name, address, phone number, what part of the organization they are in and some other assorted information.
 
My current organisation is global, 10k plus employees. We have a universal address book, first name last name - if there are 100 Jack Smiths, each will be shown by country, division, branch order. With minimal locational clues, I can find the right person in seconds. Your Jack would be easy to find.

Same in my previous government agency - a government-wide single address book. I discovered there are four other "me's" across the state - we just got numbered 1,2,3,4 in our email addys. How dare they use my name! Still, I was there first.
 
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If she wants to make it interesting, she could make "Jack" the CEO, and find her way into a tryst with him....
 
By default, all email accounts for a given domain in Exchange are included in the GAL (Global Address List), So, yes all Jack's would show up in a search on Outlook.

Other email accounts from different domains\locations (.co.uk, .com.au, etc.) are not automatically included by default, and have to be manually added (at least in the version of Exchange we were running).

I'm not aware of how she would be able to track down Jack's physical location via Outlook, so I can't comment on that. This information could be available in the user account, but generally this info is only available to System Administrators, not end users.
 
Problem: “Jack” is often a nickname. If HR assigned the usernames, odds are they assigned it to “John.”
 
8letters said:
I'm writing a story where a woman wants to track down someone named "Jack" at her work. She works for a big corporation with multiple locations in both the US and in other countries. How difficult would it be for her pull from Outlook all of the people with a first name of Jack in her building and their location in the building?
Click to expand...

There are something over 500,000 people named Jack in the U.S. So, about 1.6 per thousand. If a large corporation had 10,000 workers, you would expect it to have 16 Jacks or so. That wouldn't be too hard a list to use to track down the right one, assuming y ou could get such a list.

But having Outlook on your computer station wouldn't automatically give you access to the database of all people at the company using Outlook. I suppose the company could set it up that way, but that wouldn't be an automatic thing. Lots of firms do, however, have searchable employee listings with office emails or phone numbers, so that might be a more probable scenario.
 
It'd be easier to find the person by last name. It'd be only slightly more difficult for first name. The complexity comes from the fact that "Jack" is frequently a nickname. At large companies, people often go by nicknames because of name duplication or name diminution by superiors that somehow stick.
-MM
 
8letters said:
I'm writing a story where a woman wants to track down someone named "Jack" at her work. She works for a big corporation with multiple locations in both the US and in other countries. How difficult would it be for her pull from Outlook all of the people with a first name of Jack in her building and their location in the building?
Click to expand...

My org has a staff directory, structured both by org hierarchy and by location. Unfortunately, we've moved offices and restructured since it was set up, so lots of people are listed under an entity/location that bears no resemblance to reality. Like KoH said, you can make this as hard or as easy as the story requires.
 
KindofHere said:
You know, they really might be you. Tell me, any strange occurrences since you worked there? Blood samples taken under 'government policy'? Vivid dreams of being in some kind of laboratory? Did someone just fucking clone you 4 times?
Click to expand...

Lol. No, I've actually spoken to two of them - I kept getting their work emails until I said, mate, I'm numero uno in the system here. Get in line, sunshine!
 
MindsMirror said:
It'd be easier to find the person by last name. It'd be only slightly more difficult for first name. The complexity comes from the fact that "Jack" is frequently a nickname. At large companies, people often go by nicknames because of name duplication or name diminution by superiors that somehow stick.
-MM
Click to expand...
^^^^^ This

Nicknames are tricky. One cow-orker was widely known as Willie but his name was Dan Williams. A step-relative universally called Jack was born Eli Jackson Curtis. A Dave I knew had nothing Dave-like in his name; buds just tagged him Magic Dave and it stuck. Of course Karen Clark is called Casey (KC). Et cetera.

A 'Jack' could have John(son) or Jack(son) or Jacques as a first, middle, or last name, or be a butch Jacqueline, or a shortening of Jack-Off or Jack-Ass. The possibilities are many. But OP might want to choose a less ambiguous name.
 
MindsMirror said:
It'd be easier to find the person by last name. It'd be only slightly more difficult for first name. The complexity comes from the fact that "Jack" is frequently a nickname. At large companies, people often go by nicknames because of name duplication or name diminution by superiors that somehow stick.
-MM
Click to expand...

My first job was at a gas station. The first day, they handed me a uniform shirt with the name "Mac" embroidered on it. I worked there all through college. I finally got uniform shirts with my real name, but nobody ever called me anything but Mac. Nobody outside school knew my real name. To people all over town, I was Mac.

rj
 
In OUTLOOK - you can do this with 1 keystroke:

Type "Jack" into the "To..." box

Press Control-k.

It will automatically return all of the people named Jack, Jacks, Jackson, etc. in the company's directory.

You're welcome ;)
 
Haulover said:
In OUTLOOK - you can do this with 1 keystroke:

Type "Jack" into the "To..." box

Press Control-k.

It will automatically return all of the people named Jack, Jacks, Jackson, etc. in the company's directory.

You're welcome ;)
Click to expand...

There you go. As author of the piece, you have the literary power to define in a short phrase that the corporation has this feature in its online directory and just move on to some element that has more importance in your story.
 
someoneyouknow said:
The organization is probably broken down into subgroups, either by department (HR, Marketing, Sales, etc) or possibly by location (U.S., Canada, Japan, etc).

Using your example, it would be trivial to find all men with a first name of Jack. In Outlook, click the Address Book button on the top ribbon. On the screen which appears, click Advanced Find.

On this screen you can input Jack into the First Name field then hit OK. This should do a company-wide search and show you everyone who has the name of Jack. When you find that person, right-click and select Properties. The next screen, if properly set up by IT, will show you the person's name, address, phone number, what part of the organization they are in and some other assorted information.
Click to expand...

Assuming that whoever wrote the first entry spelled the name properly and used "Jack" correctly.

Voboy said:
Problem: “Jack” is often a nickname. If HR assigned the usernames, odds are they assigned it to “John.”
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
Again, none of this need have anything to do with the story being written. All possibilities are in the hand of the author to use as/if she/he wants. This is needless wheels spinning.
 
someoneyouknow said:
The organization is probably broken down into subgroups, either by department (HR, Marketing, Sales, etc) or possibly by location (U.S., Canada, Japan, etc).

Using your example, it would be trivial to find all men with a first name of Jack. In Outlook, click the Address Book button on the top ribbon. On the screen which appears, click Advanced Find.

On this screen you can input Jack into the First Name field then hit OK. This should do a company-wide search and show you everyone who has the name of Jack. When you find that person, right-click and select Properties. The next screen, if properly set up by IT, will show you the person's name, address, phone number, what part of the organization they are in and some other assorted information.
Click to expand...
I had forgotten I had posted this as I'm now thinking about writing another story.

Is the office the person is in listed? Let's say there are 10 Jack's in the building. She's not going to want to email or call them and say, "Hey, were you the guy I saw in the meeting the other day? I thought you looked hot and I'd like to talk to you." She wants to figure out where he's at and then work out a method of "accidentally" meeting him again. So she wants to go to the office of each Jack to see if he is "her Jack".

And of course, the search for Jack is a complete waste of time as the guy she is looking for goes by his middle name Jackson. The road to true love should never be quick and easy.
 
Easy

Get the company phone list and download it to Excel, then use sort based on the first name column.
 
pillum said:
Get the company phone list and download it to Excel, then use sort based on the first name column.
Click to expand...
That gets me the phone number. But does that get me the location in the building? Some sort of office number?
 
8letters said:
That gets me the phone number. But does that get me the location in the building? Some sort of office number?
Click to expand...

It depends what data is linked. As I mentioned, I currently work for a global corporation, with more than 10,000 employees worldwide - we have a single Outlook database with every employee listed, their email addy, phone number, group, division, branch, location, title. With one or two other clues, it would be possible to find a specific Jack in about ten minutes, anywhere in the company's global reach. If I contacted the wrong Jack, two or three more phone calls would probably find the right Jack.

It used to be six degrees of separation. Nowadays, with data linked the way it is, I reckon it's more like three or four degrees.

But with fiction, as noted several times above, you're the author - just write whatever fidelity you need into your corporate scenario to suit your literary purpose. You don't to spell every thing out to the nth degree....
 
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