OMA on cell phones and Pocket PCs
About my previous post,
KC asked:
...What kind of mobile device are you accessing the server from? There are two types of mobile access in Exchange 2003, one is ActiveSync which can be used on devices like smartphones, and the other is Outlook Mobile Access which is an online-only browse experience.
Answer: Both. The company has a number of investigators that work primarily in the field so remote access to company data is important. There are some people who are using Pocket PCs that are configured to synchronize to the Exchange server using ActiveSync, but this only synchronizes your Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts-- all the other stuff like files, notes, etceteras, don't get copied to the device using this method (unless you do some complicated stuff with your desktop), so it's a little bit of "why bother?". We've found that if you're using a pocketPC, and you can get at a WiFi network (there are a surprising number of open networks in our city), OMA works beautifully on the Pocket PC. It's like OWA, but with all the sparkles and shine removed... just a simple text/link interface a' la Lynx...
Now this is nice on the PocketPC, but more of the investigators are using cell phones to access OMA and it works great! Even entering a little bit of text isn't too bad if the phone has T9 input. Our future plans are to negotiate a deal with a cellular provider for Smart Phones and then develop some custom apps that the investigators can use to access the corporate line of business apps remotely.
Cheers
PS... is anyone else missing Chris Pratley's excellent posts?