Preparing your office router

The first task is to configure your office router so that it can receive incoming traffic on port 8100 and redirect it through to the WorkgroupShare host computer within your LAN. You will need to consult your routers manual for this. Look under "Port forwarding" or "NAT" (Network Address Translation).

You will need to know the external IP address of the router. You can find your IP address by visiting http://whatismyipaddress.com

If you have a dynamic IP address you may like to consider using a third party service such as DynDNS which provides a domain name that tracks your IP address.

Please visit http://www.dyndns.com/ for further information.

Your router may even directly support such services.

You can test if your configuration has worked by attempting to connect to the WorkgroupShare from outside your LAN using a windows command line application called "Telnet". If you are using Vista you may need to install it from Programs and Features.

Once installed, you can bring up the run dialog by clicking on the Start button and selecting "Run…". Type "cmd" and click OK. This displays a command window.

Use the command "telnet your_ip 8100" replacing "your_ip" with the actual IP address of the router. Notice that there is a space either side of the IP address. The example here is using a fictitious IP address.

Press the return key when you are ready. You may see a message saying it is trying to connect as in the example to the right.

Once connected, you will see a message that reads something like "OK WorkgroupShare 2.3.1 server ready".

This means that you can successfully connect to the server from outside your LAN.

If you get a message such as "Connection failed" as in the example below. Then you will need to investigate further.

It will either be the IP address you are trying to use or the router configuration. You may have a firewall that is blocking the connection on port 8100.

Assuming you can connect to WorkgroupShare you can now install the client at the remote user's location.

The client software setup can be found under the WorkgroupShare installation folder in a folder called ClientSetup.

This folder and all the files within should be compressed to a single file using Winzip or a similar compression tool and emailed or sent to the remote user.

The remote user should unzip the file on their computer in an appropriate folder and then run the file called ClientSetup.exe which starts the client installer.

Install the client in the normal way. When the remote user opens Outlook for the first time after installing the client the installation will continue.

The installer will ask for the address of where the server can be found. The external IP address of the office router should be entered.

You can either use fully qualified domain name or an IP address.

If you have a domain that points to your router you can use it instead of an IP address. It would be of the form "example.com"

If a connection is successfully made setup will ask for a user name. Be sure to choose the correct user.

Notice the check-box on the bottom left asking if you want to select which folders you want to synchronize and share.

If you are not sharing any of your own personal folders you do not need to choose any folders so you can un-check it before you continue.

Performance of transferring data over the Internet is difficult to estimate. It will depend on the amount of data, the upload speed and the reliability of the connection.

If you have an "ADSL" broadband connection, bear in mind that the upload speed will be considerably less than the download speed. This may also be true for cable connections.

Assuming you do want to share one or more of your personal folders and the connection is sufficient, just click Next and the folder selection page appears.

Choose the folders you want to share and click Next.

The next page tells you that the installer is ready to complete the setup process.

Click Finish and the first synchronization will start.

You will see a yellow icon appear in the system notification area which shows this.

If you double click on this icon you will see the Synchronization Progress page which shows the current task progress.

Once the synchronization is complete you will see a new folder, in Outlook, called Shared Information which contains copies of any folders that has been shared to you.

Others, with appropriate permissions, will now see folders that you have shared.

More Information is available in a separate FAQ