I'm new to the whole PDAPhone thing, and am getting my new Title set-up. I was wondering what people use for getting corporate email on their phones? Is Xpress Mail any good? I can have my boss get me a Good Messaging license, do people like that? We have access to our corporate email (exchange) through OWA, and somehow I configured my phone to access exchange through that URL and somehow it just works. Everything syncs up and is delivered immediately, so this seems to be perfect. I just don't know what if anything these other options do for me.

I hated GoodLink when I was on it. It didn't keep a combined calendar/contacts database, so I couldn't use the built-in or 3rd party tools to work with them. That and it was sooooo unstable on my i730.

If you've got OWA, I'd just hit ActiveSync and "Configure Server" through the menu. No muss, no fuss, just use the OWA address and you should be up and running in no time.

Sounds like OWA is your best approach.

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Mike - Been Converged?

Its Exchange Direct Push and its pretty neat hu?! That's exactly how its suppose to work, enter in the OWA address and your good to go. You aren't going to find a more powerful solution out there (certainly not Xpress Mail) so I'd say your search is over. Have fun!

Thanks guys. This does work great, but I do have one other related issue I haven't solved yet. All the communication goes out over MediaNet instead of using my office WiFi connection because our OWA url is different internally versus externally. I guess its not a big deal since I have the unlimited data plan, but the Wifi would be quicker (in most cases doesn't matter really). I just can't figure out a way to have it go Wifi and internal url when at my office, and MeidaNet and external url when not. Might not be possible.

Related to that if I go to settings - Connections - Advanced - Select Networks, I get settings for Programs that automatically connect to the internet should connect using, set to MediaNet by default and the private network setting is set to My Work Network. Is there a way to have everything go WiFi when in the office and MediaNet when not?

You won't be able to get around using different URLs in terms of mail. But I doubt you're actually using Media Net instead of the WiFi. I just double-checked on mine, and when connected to WiFi and HSDPA (Media Net) all my traffic rolled across the WiFi connection. "Work" doesn't mean "No Internet," despite the fact that that's what it sounds like. You're probably just rolling out to the Internet side of the connection to get back in to the external URL.

I'm pretty sure but the Direct Push aspects of exchange syncing only takes place with the "phone" connection and not any kind of LAN or wireless connection. Tha's not to say that you can't sync using a WiFi connection but "Direct Push" uses a phone connection.

Direct Push doesn't care about the type of connection. All it really does is leave a connection to the server open so that the server has a path back to the device. It may not dynamically change connections due to this, but you could initiate it over WiFi and it would work.

Direct Push is more accurately described as "Direct Connection so you can pull e-mail when it shows up."

Hey the last thing I want to do is to get into a meaningless semantics discussion however i have quite a bit of experience around this issue.
according to Microsoft direct push is supposed to "require" a GPRS or 3G connection to work. I had complained about not getting direct push using a WiFi connection and I was told that the application did NOT support this!

Apparently there are ways to get it to work if you start a WiFi connection with a phone conection and you may be getting it to work otherwise but for many with battery management going on with thier wireless connection it may not work as it didn't for me.

This blog offers more info from someone who knows way more than I do. The only reason this has been so dear to me is that I have my own Exchange server and my own GoodLink server.

Henrik Walther Blog » Blog Archive » DirectPush and WIFI connections

Do you have a link to the MS article you're referring to? They may be doing something under the covers, but I was under the impression that it wasn't that smart.

I've been known to be wrong, though.

there are numerous places in the MS literature that make reference to this but my experience is from direct phone Conversation with MS while trying to get my Server working well over a year ago
the link to the MSExchange forum was the first link I came to

my only reason for posting is that I know for sure that with a previous device I couldn't get autd to work with a Wi Fi connection only and this was confirmed adamantly by MS tech Support over the phone

I'm glad it is working for others