Communication is key within the modern-day NHS and yet contact details, a fundamental requirement, have historically been difficult to locate and are often incomplete.
Traditionally email administrators would periodically receive address books from the NHS ABS service and would expose these address books to end users by importing into the local email system. Unfortunately the NHS ABS download service was retired last September and to-date has not been replaced, resulting in the majority of "external" address book entries being incomplete or not relevant.
BDS Solutions has addressed this issue with the development of the Download Manager suite which can be utilised to enable email administrators to define, download and install customised address books from the National Directory to their local email servers, effectively replacing the retired ABS service.
The diagram below provides an overview of the process:
Software Products
The following software products comprise the Download Manager Suite:
- Enquiry Agent
Enquiry Agent allows the user to define the required address book criteria. - Download Manager
Download Manager stores the address book criteria and automatically creates and downloads the address books from the National Directory. - Contact Manager
Once downloaded these address books will be automatically imported into Active Directory via Contact Manager using specific import rules.