Synchronica's Exchange Email Support for iPhone

Any luck with this?

I would like to try this but it says that they are updating/upgrading their servers. was anyone able to take advantage of it?

sounds too good to be true

am curious if it really works as advertized.

pchalasani said:

am curious if it really works as advertized.

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I agree. It sounds too good. No program to install and no involvment of your exchange admin. We will have to wait and see I guess

Synchronica's Exchange Email Support for iPhone

They have finally finished upgrading there systems. I have no problem with receiving and reading my email. If I read it on my iPhone it marks it read on Outlook.

Having trouble sending but might be the way I have it setup. Will play around with it to see if I can get it to work.

Was able to get it to send as well.

Hmm, their site says they are unavailable for me. They asked to leave you email to be notified when they become available.

ctakim said:

Hmm, their site says they are unavailable for me. They asked to leave you email to be notified when they become available.

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same here. I have been checking since last night with no luck. is this some scam?

Re: Synchronica's Exchange Email Support for iPhone

Well I actually signed up yesterday but didn't actually get it to work until around 4pm this afternoon.

There system was overwhelmed on the first day so maybe they are holding off on letting new people sign up until they get there system upgraded.

I signed up last nite for email notification but havent heard from them since. I really want this thing. I hope it works as advertized. Do you know how much it costs after trial period? I would be more than happy to pay for it and get rid of yahoo "push" which is completely unreliable.

Morons

Why the hell did these guys have to make such a flashy announcement when their servers aren't even read yet?

I have it - Service Is Spotty at best

Signed up for the trial and have been using for a few days. The service works at times and there are long stretches where it stops working all togehter. I am actually in touch with them, they are very responsive and understand they have capacity issues.

I think they are more focused on being the first to market then doing it right the first time. Big mistake in my opinion, especially if they are trying to get ATT to pic them up..


My bet is that activsync will be available which would make this a moot point.

pugnut said:

My bet is that activsync will be available which would make this a moot point.

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So this product (Synchronica's) is basically just like freepops or (if really generous) BIS adapted to OWA, right? I wonder if it's getting overwhelmed with the fact that new users are signing up with many messages in their OWA inbox. With freepops, function is very cloggy for a few days until it's gotten through all your old mail, and then after that, it works quite well.

But activsync? Do you mean Microsoft's ActiveSync / Windows Mobile Device Center? How do you see that getting iPhone support?

Still updating their servers, can't download...

Sounds like a similar concept as Verizon's Wireless Sync PC Monitor program. Basically in Verizon's free product, you install a PC application that runs locally that uses API's locally to log into your installed version of Outlook under the covers and pulls and pushes email up to Verizon's Web Email space that's synced to your phone.

This worked "OK" with my old Treo 650, but had issues since you have to run it 24/7 and it you changed your lan password (that's required by my company every 30 days) then you have to change it on the PC Monitor setup screen or it quit working.

It's a pain to use, but it did work.

I think the big difference is that, unlike that service, and more like BIS, the software doesn't run on your local computer. You give your login credentials to the trusted outsider (BIS in my case, Synchronica if you're using an iPhone), and then the software runs on their server. So you don't have to keep your computer on constantly.

Signed up day one of Synchronica's announcement (Aug 2nd). It took until late in the evening to start working. They shut down registration after noon on the 2nd... Sounds like they're way overwhelmed and had to stop more poeple from signing up.

Setup was not straight forward - the instructions were poor - felt like a hack job to get it running on my iPhone. The service only synchs your inbox - not contacts or calendar.

The service is sporadic and I'm getting a lot of duplicates (inbox and sent).

I would not call it functional or useful at this time... Sadly - it's probably the best option available for synching with an Exchange server at this time.

Oh - you're Organization has to be using OWA - Outlook Web Access for it to work.

To give them credit - they're close....

Lumpy

Using Synchronica!!!!

I love my iphone. I have been a PDA/phone fanatic since they first came out. I NEED my email, calendar, contacts and the iphone adds so much more. Well, up until now I have LOVED my iphone, NOW I cannot live without it!!

I finally got my work email to work on it using Synchronica. My work uses Microsoft Exchange and was not going to change their security settings to IMAP for me. It is just the trial run and I have no idea how much they will finally charge, but so far its works great!!

The iphone is now my official all in one device. It is not without its flaws, but no phone/pda is.

Got it working

I got it working today for my iPhone (actually I just set it up in Apple Mail and then synced the account to the iPhone).

It tags each message with an obnoxious "This message was sent via Synchronica Mobile Gateway." In addition to being annoying, I worry that someone at my company will see it and realize that I have given my username and password to a third party and that won't be looked upon with favor. So maybe no sending email from the iPhone at this point. Though that will suck.

I really just think of this as a stop-gap measure until Jobs & Co. come down from their ivory tower and license Exchange, but I'm not holding my breath.

I have no idea what to make of Jobs statement to USA Today that "they were working on it" in response to the question of corporate email and what those "pilot programs" are? Did he mean he was testing Exchange with big companies, or did he mean there were companies like Synchronica that were filling the void?

Edit: In the end I turned it off. It doesn't support SSL for either incoming or outgoing, which, I am not too worried about security (I don't email trade secrets) but it seems a little cavalier considering I use SSL for all my personal accounts. Plus, the annoying "This message was sent via Synchronica Mobile Gateway" stamp was really getting to me.

Hokey way to do it, but effective no doubt. It seems like a screen scraper in effect, no?

Unless it supports push sync I have zero interest in the iPhone, and I doubt ón the periphery'services like this can offer that... and I'm certainly not going to provide my login credentials to a third party. I wonder how the sysadmins of the trial users would feel about that. I have a feeling that's probably a sackable thing if you work for a large corporate with more draconian rules. Given the interest in the iPhone and the probable cluelessness of the majority of their users, it'd be a great way to harvest a whole bunch of passwords.

Can't Get It Working (Completely) . . .

I was pleased to be able to register today, and I attempted to follow the (less than perfectely clear) instructions on setting up the account. The good news - I can send email. The bad news - I don't seem to be receiving email on the phone. All I get in the inbox is the message "Load 25 More Messages . . . 161 messages total, 0 unread"

I have at least one new, unread email in my email box, so it's not that there aren't new emails to see.

I re-checked the account settings on the phone and things look OK. I did notice in that process that Synchronica has apparently changed the mobile gateway host server name from http://www.syncml.biz to http://www.trymobilegateway.com. Not sure if that has anything to do with this.

Any tips from anyone who has actually gotten this to work?

Thanks,

Sesshi said:

Hokey way to do it, but effective no doubt. It seems like a screen scraper in effect, no?

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Yes, by metaphor, but accurately it just acts as an intermediary using the HTTP API of OWA. It collects your mail and then lets you access via IMAP

Sesshi said:

Unless it supports push sync I have zero interest in the iPhone, and I doubt ón the periphery'services like this can offer that...

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Yep, the iPhone doesn't offer that – Though my personal work-style I don't use PUSH as I find the constant "ding-You have a new mail message" to be as annoying and productivity draining as Windows itself.

Sesshi said:

and I'm certainly not going to provide my login credentials to a third party. I wonder how the sysadmins of the trial users would feel about that. I have a feeling that's probably a sackable thing if you work for a large corporate with more draconian rules. Given the interest in the iPhone and the probable cluelessness of the majority of their users, it'd be a great way to harvest a whole bunch of passwords.

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I agree about the third party / credentials issue. But in reality the only clueless thing is thinking any email is really secure.

lekun said:

Yes, by metaphor, but accurately it just acts as an intermediary using the HTTP API of OWA. It collects your mail and then lets you access via IMAP



Yep, the iPhone doesn't offer that – Though my personal work-style I don't use PUSH as I find the constant "ding-You have a new mail message" to be as annoying and productivity draining as Windows itself.



I agree about the third party / credentials issue. But in reality the only clueless thing is thinking any email is really secure.

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Ah.. I dont rely on push for email, I can obviously go and get that. I rely on push for changes made to my contacts and calendar. As a highly productive Windows user I employ an assistant to handle my appointments. However, now I have a Windows handportable I simply use the 'full' Outlook on the move.

I'm trying to set this up on my iPhone, but you have to configure it manually and it seems to require Microsoft Exchange to allow IMAP access. My work has not activated IMAP Exchange access, so I think I'm out of luck?

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1C25 Safari/419.3)

well I signed up, couldn't get it to work. E-mailed got a reply that I had 7accounts on their server. I replied back twice in the last four dsys and no response back.Poor customer service and the directions for configering the phone suck as well.

Recant

Well, I take it back. I orginally set up smooth and no seem to be having problems. I had to get a new iphone so I went through the set up again to no avail. Based on others experiences, I am not even going to bother.

Oh well.

Work Around

There is a way around this obnoxious tagline they stick on the end. Use a gmail account setup just for your work to send smtp email with. Works like this. Setup Gmail account and make your work email address the default email address for the gmail account. You do this under Settings --> Account. Then use this gmail account as the way to send email.

I don't think the solution from synchronica is very good. I'm considering building a $5 a month service where your OWA email would automatically get forwarded to a Gmail account. Then you could use Gmail to download to iPhone using POP. It wouldn't sync, but it would have the additional benefit of being able to replace Outlook with Gmail. I don't think sync is so much the issue as being able to get your mail when your on the go. At least for me, its not what really matter. What do you think?

lekun said:

I got it working today for my iPhone (actually I just set it up in Apple Mail and then synced the account to the iPhone).

It tags each message with an obnoxious "This message was sent via Synchronica Mobile Gateway." In addition to being annoying, I worry that someone at my company will see it and realize that I have given my username and password to a third party and that won't be looked upon with favor. So maybe no sending email from the iPhone at this point. Though that will suck.

I really just think of this as a stop-gap measure until Jobs & Co. come down from their ivory tower and license Exchange, but I'm not holding my breath.

I have no idea what to make of Jobs statement to USA Today that "they were working on it" in response to the question of corporate email and what those "pilot programs" are? Did he mean he was testing Exchange with big companies, or did he mean there were companies like Synchronica that were filling the void?

Edit: In the end I turned it off. It doesn't support SSL for either incoming or outgoing, which, I am not too worried about security (I don't email trade secrets) but it seems a little cavalier considering I use SSL for all my personal accounts. Plus, the annoying "This message was sent via Synchronica Mobile Gateway" stamp was really getting to me.

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