Greetings, experts. 
I'm looking for some advice on solving some predictable problems as our company considers switching away from BlackBerrys. If you're willing, please take a quick look at my description below and please share any input you might have.
- We're small, about 10 handheld users
- We're Exchange (2007)
- In the past, we were all on BBs via BES ... in the last few years, the more savvy users have switched to Androids and iPhones via ActiveSync
- We've now reached the point where the less savvy users (owner, stakeholders) are determined to switch. It looks like they will be going with Android, Moto Droid 4 due to keyboard.
- These users will demand features that BB/BES had that the rest of us could manage without.
I've been working to prepare these users for any loss of features, and working with our Verizon rep to come up with workarounds and apps that might help. (I haven't ben too impressed with our rep's assistance, thus I'm here.)
Using stock email via ActiveSync, my Moto Droid X2 gives me email, calendar, and contacts. One thing that it does not provide is tasks, which I believe was available on BB/BES setup. My understanding is that we could add TouchDown to our devices and gain back this feature, so that might solve that problem.
From what I gather, another perk of TouchDown would be longer email history than just 1 month, is that correct? Any other big benefits of TouchDown that make it worthwhile? If we can convince our users that they don't need tasks, I would prefer them to not move away from stock.
Beyond that, we're faced with some loss of features that I can't see how to resolve. The biggest, is that we have all company contacts centralized to a single Exchange public folder. Not just our internal list of employee contact information, but basically any contact we've ever stumbled across -- customers, leads, business partners, etc. It's a bible, and all employees use it. I know stock email can't access this, and from what I can tell, TouchDown can't either. (BB/BES could handle public folders.)
As an organization, are we missing a much better way to centralize these contacts? Something related to GAL or something like that? Should we set something up to replicate the central contacts folder to individual personal Exchange contact folders? Ideally, we'd want the ability to edit / add to this list, but we could probably settle for just read-only.
Lastly, all our personal Exchange calendars are shared among each other. I believe BB/BES allows us to view other users' calendars, but I'm not having any luck seeing how we might do this on Android with any app. It's not really a deal-breaker, but it would be nice.
I'm looking for some advice on solving some predictable problems as our company considers switching away from BlackBerrys. If you're willing, please take a quick look at my description below and please share any input you might have.- We're small, about 10 handheld users
- We're Exchange (2007)
- In the past, we were all on BBs via BES ... in the last few years, the more savvy users have switched to Androids and iPhones via ActiveSync
- We've now reached the point where the less savvy users (owner, stakeholders) are determined to switch. It looks like they will be going with Android, Moto Droid 4 due to keyboard.
- These users will demand features that BB/BES had that the rest of us could manage without.
I've been working to prepare these users for any loss of features, and working with our Verizon rep to come up with workarounds and apps that might help. (I haven't ben too impressed with our rep's assistance, thus I'm here.)
Using stock email via ActiveSync, my Moto Droid X2 gives me email, calendar, and contacts. One thing that it does not provide is tasks, which I believe was available on BB/BES setup. My understanding is that we could add TouchDown to our devices and gain back this feature, so that might solve that problem.
From what I gather, another perk of TouchDown would be longer email history than just 1 month, is that correct? Any other big benefits of TouchDown that make it worthwhile? If we can convince our users that they don't need tasks, I would prefer them to not move away from stock.
Beyond that, we're faced with some loss of features that I can't see how to resolve. The biggest, is that we have all company contacts centralized to a single Exchange public folder. Not just our internal list of employee contact information, but basically any contact we've ever stumbled across -- customers, leads, business partners, etc. It's a bible, and all employees use it. I know stock email can't access this, and from what I can tell, TouchDown can't either. (BB/BES could handle public folders.)
As an organization, are we missing a much better way to centralize these contacts? Something related to GAL or something like that? Should we set something up to replicate the central contacts folder to individual personal Exchange contact folders? Ideally, we'd want the ability to edit / add to this list, but we could probably settle for just read-only.
Lastly, all our personal Exchange calendars are shared among each other. I believe BB/BES allows us to view other users' calendars, but I'm not having any luck seeing how we might do this on Android with any app. It's not really a deal-breaker, but it would be nice.
