Fortune 500 Company Urging Employees Not to Upgrade to iOS 6 Over Exchange Bug

[Small White Car]

Originally Posted by vkramer

You can wipe your phone via icloud. It should be on you to password protect it.

Neither iCloud nor Exchange ask the phone for permission before wiping it, so I'm not sure why you're suggesting one over the other for that reason.

[John.B]

Originally Posted by tranceme

Interesting. Not happening to us. We have Exchange 2007 and 2010 servers. No issues. That being said, this integration was never perfect. Partly the problem lies with Exchange. We have tons of issues with Outlook clients and Exchange. Meetings get screwed up without iPhones or Android phones at times.

Exactly. I don't know where people get off saying that Apple is alone in their problems with Exchange.

My corporate Android phone still screws up the times of recurring meetings by an hour or sometimes several hours on the phone, and then happily syncs those times back to Exchange to screw up my calendar in Outlook. Also, when I get a meeting request, I can see when the request was sent but not when the meeting is scheduled: but I can accept of decline. :facepalm:

After confirming this behavior, our Exchange team is recommending not using the calendar on the 2.3 Android phones. There supposedly is a fix, but we can't upgrade due to carrier restrictions. At least not without rooting the phone, which is prohibited in most corporate environments (including ours).

[samcraig]

Originally Posted by BMNB1tch

who the hell still uses exchange Jeeps!

pls join the 21st century

it's not 1995 anymore

I think you must be confusing Exchange with MobileMe. Millions of users work for companies that use Exchange. Don't be ignorant or obtuse

Originally Posted by John.B

And, if it did cancel the meeting for everyone when one person declined, that sounds like an Exchange bug.

Not necessarily at all.

[valkraider]

Originally Posted by vkramer

You can wipe your phone via icloud. It should be on you to password protect it.

Not if you want to have corporate email on it.

Corporate email = corporate data = corporate rules and control.

Sorry, but that is SOP for most of the companies I have ever done business with...

If you don't want to follow their rules, don't access corporate data with your personal phone.

[kdog79]

Originally Posted by Jibbajabba

If you hook up your private phone to your companies then its your problem and not the admins. If they do that to your work phone, then again, not your issue.

You clearly never worked for a corporate.

Hear hear what an idiotic things to say. As a sys admin you haven't a clue what you are saying 1D10T

[WestonHarvey1]

Originally Posted by BMNB1tch

who the hell still uses exchange Jeeps!

pls join the 21st century

it's not 1995 anymore

Um. Like, everyone? Like every company on Earth practically?

[valkraider]

Originally Posted by BMNB1tch

who the hell still uses exchange Jeeps!

pls join the 21st century

it's not 1995 anymore

Thousands and Thousands of companies with millions of employees between them?

Also, there is such a thing as modern releases of Exchange...

Oh - and Google uses Exchange profiles for Gmail too.

[Ryan John]

Originally Posted by otoloui

Exchange seems to be an issue affecting both iOS and OS 10.8.2 -- Way too buggy.

Exchange used by most major enterprises worldwide for the last goodness knows how many years, but it's way too buggy.

Grow a pair and just admit IOS6 has a number of issues, as most initial releases do, and wait for the fixes. Stop trying to blame other companies for Apples failing, it's not up to Exchange to work with a new OS, it's up to the OS to work with Exchange.

[batchtaster]

Originally Posted by vkramer

If I could I would urge people never to touch Microsoft Exchange due to the fact that admins have the ability to wipe your phone with one click and no permission.

What a buncha ******** that is...

You act like enterprise/organizations/IT do that sort of thing on a whim. Any organization has rigid rules about that sort of destruction. If only because the organization's data will be lost from that device, never mind the possible backlash. Where I work, it requires the IT Director to approve.

Yes, technically it can be done. But the mentality that thinks it just happens for no good reason or with no big internal drama - including review by Internal Audit - is the paranoid mentality that thinks that we sit there looking at your emails because we have nothing better to do. While, personally, it would amuse me to wipe out your device, you're not worth the paperwork and meetings and such that would result. You're just not that interesting.

BTW, it's not just Exchange that can do it - any MDM solution can do it as well, such as MobileIron or Casper. Something for you to fret over at night. Oh, and probably your carrier as well.

[John.B]

Originally Posted by samcraig

Not necessarily at all.

Can you cancel an Exchange meeting you didn't create in Outlook?

Then why would you be able to do that from your smartphone (any smartphone)?

[WestonHarvey1]

Originally Posted by samcraig

I think you must be confusing Exchange with MobileMe. Millions of users work for companies that use Exchange. Don't be ignorant or obtuse



Not necessarily at all.

I would find it very strange if a bug on a single iOS client could cause the meetings of other Exchange users to be cancelled. If Exchange allows users to cancel meetings that don't belong to them, that's either an Exchange bug or a really strange policy (that could hopefully be turned off as a workaround).

[elemenoP]

You mean you can actually get the invitation and not a stupid, unreadable winmail.dat file??? Sounds like progress to me!

[WillGonz]

This is just a diversion from the Maps issue. It will boil down to, "User had delegate rights." or something else like that.

[John.B]

Originally Posted by batchtaster

You act like enterprise/organizations/IT do that sort of thing on a whim. Any organization has rigid rules about that sort of destruction. If only because the organization's data will be lost from that device, never mind the possible backlash. Where I work, it requires the IT Director to approve.

Yes, it can be done. But the mentality that thinks it just happens for no good reason or with no big internal drama - including Internal Audit - is the paranoid mentality that thinks that we sit there looking at your emails because we have nothing better to do.

We wipe virus-infected Windows PCs on a daily basis. Drama? Sure. But if it has to be done, it has to be done.

And God help the individual who keeps their data on the local hard drive; talk about screwed...

I'd suggest your organization look at what data they are keeping on smartphones and figure out how to get that stored on corporate servers instead.

[Iconoclysm]

Originally Posted by John.B

Exactly. I don't know where people get off saying that Apple is alone in their problems with Exchange.

My corporate Android phone still screws up the times of recurring meetings by an hour or sometimes several hours on the phone, and then happily syncs those times back to Exchange to screw up my calendar in Outlook. Also, when I get a meeting request, I can see when the request was sent but not when the meeting is scheduled: but I can accept of decline. :facepalm:

After confirming this behavior, our Exchange team is recommending not using the calendar on the 2.3 Android phones. There supposedly is a fix, but we can't upgrade due to carrier restrictions. At least not without rooting the phone, which is prohibited in most corporate environments (including ours).

Android is the worst when it comes to Exchange integration. iOS and Windows Phone are about equal, both are missing some features that the other isn't.

Also, FYI, Microsoft employees warned Apple that this issue existed in the iOS6 beta.

[batchtaster]

Originally Posted by John.B

We wipe virus-infected Windows PCs on a daily basis.

Not the same thing. Point missed.

This is about taking a working, functional device - potentially not owned by the organization, but still subject to the organization's rules, policies and sanctions - and deliberately bricking it, not taking a faulty component out of service for maintenance, which is simply BAU.

[richard371]

Anyone actually test this and verify it works?

[Hexfyre]

The only meeting I would ever want to attend is the one which would be cancelled if I could not be there. Why waste my time with meetings where my lack of presence wouldn't be grounds for cancellation?

Just kidding!

[Amadeo]

1. I work at a company that uses Hosted Exchange and I love it. I think the people who are bashing Exchange haven't ever actually been on one, or they were on either an old server, or one that was set up improperly. Exchange & Apple products are a match made in heaven. Beats the hell out of Google Apps.

2. I haven't personally ran into this problem. At least I don't think. I've declined meetings on my iPhone since upgrading, and I don't think it sent a decline to everyone. Well, honestly, I'm not sure if it did or didn't. Either way, yes, this is a bug that needs to get fixed. And I very much doubt it sends a decline on behalf of everyone to the organizer. I'm sure it's just that it sends a personal decline notification to everyone.

[John.B]

Originally Posted by batchtaster

Not the same thing. Point missed.

Edumacate us then:

Originally Posted by batchtaster

You act like enterprise/organizations/IT do that sort of thing on a whim. Any organization has rigid rules about that sort of destruction. If only because the organization's data will be lost from that device, never mind the possible backlash. Where I work, it requires the IT Director to approve.

Yes, technically it can be done. But the mentality that thinks it just happens for no good reason or with no big internal drama - including review by Internal Audit - is the paranoid mentality that thinks that we sit there looking at your emails because we have nothing better to do. While, personally, it would amuse me to wipe out your device, you're not worth the paperwork and meetings and such that would result. You're just not that interesting.

BTW, it's not just Exchange that can do it - any MDM solution can do it as well, such as MobileIron or Casper. Something for you to fret over at night. Oh, and probably your carrier as well.

I think it's acceptable to have IT director approve smartphone wipes, more to track hardware that was lost than the loss of irreplaceable data. We have systems to regularly track approval processes and I'd be shocked if you didn't as well.

Again, if I was in your organization, I'd be lobbying for apps that didn't silo data on smartphones (any smartphones) to begin with.

Originally Posted by batchtaster

This is about taking a working, functional device - potentially not owned by the organization, but still subject to the organization's rules, policies and sanctions - and deliberately bricking it, not taking a faulty component out of service for maintenance, which is simply BAU.

OK, picking up on your edited post. That's the cost of BYOD in the enterprise. Users have to understand how and why they need to backup their phones, and that losing it with corporate data means the phone has to be wiped.

[Nungster]

Originally Posted by nefan65

I may do this for kicks/giggles. I think people would actually thank me...

I certainly would! To many f'n meetings, and a great excuse to miss some of them.

[djpuma]

we use google apps at my job and have for the last 3 years.
I do miss exchange for certain things, but google apps is nice when I don't have to deal with all the data being on our servers.

I hope this doesn't affect google apps since you have to use the exchange option when setting up iphones with our email.

[John.B]

I'm calling BS on the whole story until we at least know which "Fortune 500 Company" this is.

Edit: To reiterate, I'm not buying the story about the "all employees at a very large company" memo:

"We received this memo that was sent out to all employees at a very large company:"

I'd like to know which company of that size sent this out to all their employees without CNN/Fox/Bloomberg/CNET/Engadget/etc. all picking up on it. Let's see if there is any corroboration before we apply too much weight to it.

[thekev]

Originally Posted by Rootus

That's tough to enforce when you can't run iOS5 on iPhone 5, and a lot of people use personal smartphones for work these days.

I wasn't aware of that part. I never bother being the first to upgrade. I like to let others beta test first.

[daneoni]

iOS 6.1 better be one mother of an update.