Work support Blackberry only

[utopial]

My company provides everyone with a blackberry and this is the only phone they support (email system is Outlook). I'd like to use my Desire. Is there a way I can do it myself?

 

[furious duck]

My company provides everyone with a blackberry and this is the only phone they support (email system is Outlook). I'd like to use my Desire. Is there a way I can do it myself?

If you're using Outlook then I'm presuming your company uses Exchange. If they support ActiveSync and they make it available to you then yes.

HTC Desire - Exchange ActiveSync email

 

[utopial]

If they support ActiveSync and they make it available to you then yes.http://www.htc.com/europe/howto.aspx?id=690&type=1&p_id=312

what do u mean 'make it available'?

 

[furious duck]

what do u mean 'make it available'?

I was able to connect to my company's Exchange without any problems using ActiveSync. I only mentioned "make it available" in case they could lock it down in any way - I don't know much about ActiveSync tbh. I suggest you try it and see how far you get with it. Here's a direct link to set up.

HTC Desire - Synchronizing with a Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync account

 

[utopial]

i guess they control and wont tell me the passwords etc, so if they dont want me to use another fone then they wont set it up for me

How Much Control Does Exchange Active Sync Have On Android 2.2 Phones?

 

[furious duck]

i guess they control and wont tell me the passwords etc, so if they dont want me to use another fone then they wont set it up for me

You don't know the password to your own email account? I guess if you don't know that then you're not going to get very far then.

 

[uzetaab]

You don't know the password to your own email account? I guess if you don't know that then you're not going to get very far then.

I don't think he means the email account password, I think he means the computer's administrator password. without it, if activesync is not already set up, then he's not going to get it working.

 

[furious duck]

I don't think he means the email account password, I think he means the computer's administrator password. without it, if activesync is not already set up, then he's not going to get it working.

You've lost me. Why would he need the admin password? You're not setting up anything on your local machine you're just accessing the Exchange server directly. To set up the account on your phone you need:-

email address
server address
domain
username
password

 

[jsbombjack]

Why not just as the admins to allow for mobile devices to connect to your email account

If that is done, then it should not matter if it a crackberry or otherwise that connects to the account

We use this method at work, and have a variety of devices from the iphone, windows 7 phones, blackberrys, all the way to my humble desire. All work a treat

 

[Rastaman-FB]

You've lost me. Why would he need the admin password? You're not setting up anything on your local machine you're just accessing the Exchange server directly. To set up the account on your phone you need:-

email address
server address
domain
username
password

not if exchange push is not enabled for him as a user it wont.
anyway blackberries pwn anything else out of the water for terms of corporate email and calender synchronisation couple that with a silly high battery life.

desire is not really a good corporate device, its a gizmo. its not efficient at dealing with heavy loaded email tasks imo
this is as a desire owner with a blackberry torch and 9700 in my possession.
love my desire best but i would never use one for work. ever

 

[furious duck]

not if exchange push is not enabled for him as a user it wont.
anyway blackberries pwn anything else out of the water for terms of corporate email and calender synchronisation couple that with a silly high battery life.

desire is not really a good corporate device, its a gizmo. its not efficient at dealing with heavy loaded email tasks imo
this is as a desire owner with a blackberry torch and 9700 in my possession.
love my desire best but i would never use one for work. ever

Yeah, that's why I said if they support ActiveSync and they make it available.

I've never owned a BlackBerry but I guess as they're targeted more towards the corporate market then maybe they do a better job. I can't really comment though. I've got my work email and calendar syncing though and it works for me.

 

[jay_kay]

I have tried getting my work emails to my Desire but my IT dept say that I need to have token software installed on my phone and aparently it cannot be done.

Have looked into it myself but in the end set up a new gmail account and forwarded all my work emails from outlook to there. Wasn't perfect but meant I could check them out of work.

 

[billy1561]

Get your IT dept to send you the link for exchange that they use then it's easy, just bookmark the link on your desire. Works a treat for me. Incidentally my IT dept said it was not possible for my mobile but sent me the link for home pc access but it works as above no problem Hope that helps.

 

[Uridium]

Get your IT dept to send you the link for exchange that they use then it's easy, just bookmark the link on your desire. Works a treat for me. Incidentally my IT dept said it was not possible for my mobile but sent me the link for home pc access but it works as above no problem Hope that helps.

If they have enabled Activesync on the Exchange server the URL you need to enter in the HTC Mail app will be the same as the one used for Outlook Web access along with your Domain user id/password. Not all organisations enable AS and OWA though.

Even if they have enabled AS you may well find that they have have a default security policy in place meaning you need to allow remote device wipe/pin code entry etc for non work provisioned devices.

 

[Wardogz]

My company only allow authorised BB's onto their network. God I hate BB's.

 

[SUroot]

Blackberry is a great device. Like Rasta said, nothing beats it on a corporate level.

I loved my BB.

From a consumer angle though, I love my desire much more.

 

[Red_Avatar]

I hate any company or department heads forcing a certain brand on its employees when it goes against productivity.

I'm a graphic designer but grew up with PCs. It's only when I started professional graphic design that I was forced to use Macs. Note: I had been using PCs for over 5 years while the others had only worked with computers now and then and mostly old outdated models. They got to work on very expensive Mac G5s and the then spanking new Mac OS X with teachers praising the "mighty Apple" while I was skeptical of all the things Windows did better like network support, software support, cheaper hardware, customization, multi-button mice, etc. In other words: everyone else was "brainwashed" because they got to work with shiny computers compared to their 5-10 year old outdated Windows 95 PCs that were probably bought cheap even when they were new.

When I then got a job as graphic designer, I ended up in a printing office which had another Mac fanatic. We had to use PCs for a lot of the work since the software we used was barely Mac compatible but he insisted Macs would be better for the job if the software was improved ... despite the fact that "Mac servers" didn't exist yet and we needed beefy servers to be power our rendering software (not to mention Mac servers are still completely useless today for business applications except in a Mac-only environment).

So several years later, and the software did improve - we have 7 servers running Windows 2003 and three Macs and one workstation for me running Windows Vista. My workstation cost $400 but the head of pre-press bought my colleague a $2000 iMac two months back while I was refused a new one. He said I could have her old iMac which was slow as shit despite being only two years old - he refused to let me have a new PC and said I would be using it until it died.

So I got pissed off at this Mac fanatic and went to the boss who asked why that iMac, which cost $2000 just two years back was being unused and I explained that it was too slow and that this is why my colleague was given a new one but that I wasn't allowed a new PC and that my software only had a PC license so I couldn't switch to Mac without paying additional fees. His solution? Sell the iMac. So I did, but I wasn't allowed to tell the head of the department to avoid discussions. The iMac sold for $550 and the boss said I could have another $100 on top of that to pick a new PC for me. It wasn't much but I convinced him to let me use parts of the old one (DVD writer & hard drive) and also convinced him to let me buy the parts instead of a full PC.

For $650 I bought a i5 670 CPU with 4GB DDR3, a nice graphics card, a cool case and a 23" screen (I had a 17" screen before, while my colleague had the 24" screen of her iMac). At a third of the price of the iMac, I got a PC that was far more powerful than her brand new one. We did tests with the software and mine was easily 40% faster ... When I told the department head (who was pretty pissed off when he found out I got a new PC and even yelled "WHAT? A NEW SCREEN AS WELL?") he said "hah, speed means nothing. PCs are just shit and crash all the time". Which is funny since my colleague has WAY more problems with her software crashing.

Bottomline: fanboys are idiots, and forcing a brand on people is stupid as well. BB is way overused by "professionals" why don't even need such a phone or don't even use a quarter of its abilities. It's a status symbol, just like Macs are for iTards.

 

[Uridium]

Blackberry is a great device. Like Rasta said, nothing beats it on a corporate level.

I loved my BB.

From a consumer angle though, I love my desire much more.

To be honest Activesync has caught up....there isn't anything a BB can do now that another handset with activesync can't and at less cost.

 

[Nasalhair]

A small misconception with the word "support" is that some think that when their company says they only support one particular product it means that this is the only product which will work. Nonsense! It just means they will only provide help and guidance on that product. Where I work the company only supports Windows XP on client machines (bizarre - we're an IT training company) but all of us trainers have Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 on our laptops, and they still work fine & connect to all of our corporate systems perfectly. Our IT support people complain that if we have problems they won't be able to help us, but that's a tad silly as we teach the systems ourselves so it's unlikely

 

[Rastaman-FB]

A small misconception with the word "support" is that some think that when their company says they only support one particular product it means that this is the only product which will work. Nonsense! It just means they will only provide help and guidance on that product. Where I work the company only supports Windows XP on client machines (bizarre - we're an IT training company) but all of us trainers have Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 on our laptops, and they still work fine & connect to all of our corporate systems perfectly. Our IT support people complain that if we have problems they won't be able to help us, but that's a tad silly as we teach the systems ourselves so it's unlikely

different kettle of fish altogether
if he doesnt have exchange push/AS enabled then it wont work.
quite often companies tend to just use one or the other.
blackberries have more policies so IT can restrict it more so when his company says they wont do it, they probably wont

 

[Rastaman-FB]

Bottomline: fanboys are idiots, and forcing a brand on people is stupid as well. BB is way overused by "professionals" why don't even need such a phone or don't even use a quarter of its abilities. It's a status symbol, just like Macs are for iTards.

macs over pc is a different argument over android vs blackberry mate
if anything you kind of killed your own argument

BB has proven longer battery life over any other smart phone
Blackberry enterprise server has about 160+ more policies than exchange push
Blackberry browser can be forced to go through server proxy
Blackberry can view and browse files with the corporate network
Blackberry can view shared contact directories within exchange
Blackberry can have applications controlled by policy
Blackberry can have have 3rd party software deployed to groups of handheld completely unattended by the user
Blackberry has higher level encryption than any other device.
thats to name a few things Exchange push CANNOT do

i work with both and support both

its not about FANBOI, its about control and security of which is the most important to business models

 

[SUroot]

To be honest Activesync has caught up....there isn't anything a BB can do now that another handset with activesync can't and at less cost.

Except of course IT Policies, Logging of Phone calls, Controlled internet access and Intranet access.

Of course some solutions can mix and match the above with various use of different handsets and methods, but nothing in 1 nice package such as BES

 

[Rastaman-FB]

theres loads active synch cannot do, not surprising tho. its free with exchange and doesnt require additional hardware like BES

 

[SUroot]

Technically bes needs no additional hardware either. You already have an exchange server...

At home I have a VMWare domain controller and VMWare citrix farm running in an old p4 desktop.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

Technically bes needs no additional hardware either. You already have an exchange server...

At home I have a VMWare domain controller and VMWare citrix farm running in an old p4 desktop.

"technically"
except if anything goes wrong with bes or exchange it requies rebooting both infrastructures at the same time.
BES 5 BAS uses 500mb of ram when idle, the resource is high
The only thing RIM support is BESxpress when installed on the same machine (virtual or hardware) previously professional and even then they frown upon it.

its not good practice putting something that heavily utilises mapi and other resources on the same box as the mail host
even worse if TS is installed

it can work but it can be a nightmare