Sunday, October 16, 2005

Checking 2 Exchange servers on the SmartPhone


I appologize that it's been a while since my last post, I've been busy. There is this thing called SBS that apparently Microsoft wants to ship another version of. Since this decision was made, I've been typing like a mad man into Microsoft Word, building specifications for the new version. Let me tell you, once you've been typing non-stop for about 5 to 6 hours, the absolutely last thing you want to do, is open up IE, point it to your bloggosphere and start typing again. Plus it wouldn't be prudent to type half my spec in the blog would it?

We call that type of mistake a CLM.... Career Limiting Move. I kind of like my Career thank-you... so, no secrets for you ... just yet anyways.

Now onto the task at hand. I'm a geek, although some non-geeks probably consider me an "ultra-geek", I only think I am at the geek level. I don't have the API set for ISA in my head for one thing, I have no idea how many lines of code are in CEICW, and I don't build new dyndns clients in my spare time. :) (Geez, I hope none of those people read this post. )

But... I do run SBS 2003 SP1 at my house! This leaves me in an interesting delema. Which server do I synch my phone against?

Well, naturally, since the calendar gets updated WAY more often at work, I chose that one. Since I have the Unlimited Data Plan, I tend to use the data way more than I actually need, just to look up or get useless things on my phone.

I'm already setup via ActiveSync against the work server and it works great. But I've been using OMA Browse to my home server simply by going to https://homeserver.com/oma . It's ok, but not ideal.

I decided to switch it to IMAP4. I first enabled IMAP4 on my Home Exchange server. The on the phone, I went into my ActiveSync inbox and did the following:
  1. Clicked on Menu, and then Options

  2. Clicked on New Account and followed the little wizard on the screen

Now every hour, the phone *also* checks my home email account and downloads the message. It seems to drop off the schedule if you run out of cell signal though, that's a little frustrating.

But the beauty is, the new messages show up on the home screen when they arrive, and you get the notification (which on my phone just happens to be "Woo hoo").

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The trick is to actually do it on company time, and try to get them to ship it. Alas, you can't win 'em all. :)

Anonymous said...

Freakin awesome. I would have never even thought to try and set this up. Now I am happily checking both my Exchange accounts. Thanks man!