I’ve posted an article on the SuperSite, Windows Phone and the Move to the Cloud, that I hope addresses the concerns of Outlook users, in particular, who currently have all their email and personal data locked into a particular PC. Windows Phone, as you know, will not sync with any desktop clients beyond the Zune PC software, and even then it’s just digital media content. So if you’re looking to move to Windows Phone, it’s time to adopt a new way of doing things. Frankly, you should be looking into this even if you intend to ignore Windows Phone. Important data shouldn’t be siloed in a single physical location, ever.
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Here’s why I am forced to do it – our IT has commissioned Good Technology’s solution to connect iPhone and Android to our Exchange environment. As a result, when my contacts sync, they go inside the Good App rather than stay in my iPhone’s contacts app. Now, there is an option to sync Good’s contacts to iPhone’s, but it does not do addresses, it only does phone numbers and email addresses. Sucky! Oh, and it does not even have that option for calendar.
So I am forced to connect physically to Outlook via iTunes for sync.
Which is also why I keep bugging you to checking VPN functionality in WP7 so I can connect directly to Exchange without having to go through some intermediate app which is absolutely horrible.
There is no VPN functionality built into Windows Phone 7.
Oh no! That’s a bummer …
Paul, what about Exchange users?
All functionality is there, correct? Email, calendar, tasks, notes, etc.
Also, any comment on corporate SharePoint integration out-of-the-box?
Thanks in advance.
Wagner
No tasks or notes.
SharePoint WorkSpace Mobile client is built-in. It’s actually pretty excellent.
Well, I’m an optimist. I read your response about tasks and notes as Microsoft leaving a space for app developers.
:-)
The problem arises when data is siloed against your will, as is the case with some corporate environments that don’t allow syncing data with corporate servers without some insane encryption. This basically leaves two options – a blackberry, if they support it, or syncing with Outlook on the PC. Obviously, that doesn’t work for email, but at least you get calendar and contact data this way. I know quite a few people who are stuck with this kind of scenario. So weirdly, they’ll have to go iPhone or Android because those platforms can sync with Outlook on their PCs.
So I couple of things from this video that you’ve either seem to contradict are maybe are just unaware of.
One of which is that when you sync photos they can automatically be brought into Windows Photo Gallery as well as controlling the sync and placement of videos.
The video is long but a lot of good little bits of info.
http://www.windowsphone7.com/backstage/events/live.aspx?uri=Event8
Photos can be auto-synced to either Windows Live Photos or Facebook but they are not full-sized. So it’s not auto-cloud-backup, it’s just for sharing purposes.
No, not what I’m talking about. He says they are auto sync’d to Windows Live Photo Gallery, in full size when sync’d.
Right, Windows Live Photos and Facebooks can be auto-cloud backed up, and yes those are not full size, but again not for archiving.
If you send it in an e-mail it is full size as well.
You complained that were was no way to interact with the photos to add things like naming, and organization, because you can’t add photos as a drive would. They specifically designed it this way for the large majority of people who don’t want to deal with all that crap, and just want to get their photo’s backed up easily and automatically, eg: the mothers of the world (no offense to mothers, we all love you).
He talks about that the pictures are automatically brought into Windows Live Photo Gallery when this is done, including all the meta data brought with them, including dates stamps, geo-tagging, etc. If the existing meta data isn’t enough for people’s organizing needs, then from Windows Live Photo gallery, they can do full organization to their hearts content. He wasn’t able to go into much more explanation then that, but it sound like another thing that they actually thought about the majority of people using the device and what to work on for release, vs trying to shove in every possible way the phone could be used that would bog down most people and only provide minor functionality for the small groups that would would whine about it.
I guess the issue that I have is that KIN allowed full-resolution, automatic, over-the-air backups of photos and Windows Phone does not. That would go a long way towards fixing the very real issues with photo importing through Zune. Forcing us to use photo file names like WP000001.jpg or whatever is a step back by almost 10 years. Imagine if it used the GPS data from the phone to auto-name files, or whatever. There are so many better ways this could be handled.
I can’t say that Microsoft “thought through” anything in this case. It’s not right.
One thing I”m worried about…. I have my email all done through one live account (with a live address), but my music / xbox / etc., is all done through a different one.
Will Microsoft allow multiple Live Ids to handle this scenario?
No.
This is an issue for me as well. I’m looking into an efficient way to “fix” that by consolidating accounts.
I’ve heard this brought up a few times on the Zune Insider Podcasts and they suggested a few different things depending on what your needs are.
First, if that one Live address is just an e-mail and nothing else, then you just set that account up as an addition e-mail address. If it is only a second Live Id that encompasses all music and xbox etc, then you use that as your login for WP7.
That’s the easy answer. Now, if that second Id is only for Music, and then a third one for Xbox, the only way to get those to work is to consolidate, which can happen in basically two ways depending on scenario.
If they are @live, @hotmail, @msn (I’ll have to check the accuracy on this), you can’t simply change the address as if it was a 3rd party address, so you would have cancel one of your subscriptions and use a single sign on for the others. If you cancel, you obviously lose whatever was connected to those subscriptions, so really it’s a last resort kind of thing. For Xbox you would lose your gamer points and anything else associated, for Zune you would lose all your music related information. If you do happen to have a live Id that is @ a 3rd party, like I do with @gmail.com, then supposedly you can go into live.com and change it to whatever you like, and even consolidate.
These all come from Matt Akers a Project Manager working on Zune with desktop client that connects to Windows Phone 7, in fact he one of the guys who basically will be in charge of the syncing nature with the phones.
Now I find all this a bit silly, as you should just be able to use your Linked accounts, which for me I have 3 Live Ids linked. Maybe (hopefully) they’ll have something in place for launch that will ease this, as I can’t imagine having them ask people to unsubscribe and lose their info as an official fix.
All this is fine for calendar items and contacts, but what about tasks ? There is no tasks support on WP7 currently, so I would still need to synchronize with Outlook, which is impossible as you explained. Preety much a show stopper for me.
Paul,
First of all, thanks for this article about moving to the cloud and how Windows Phone 7 connects to this all – it was VERY informative! And I have to say that, despite some of the SERIOUS omissions/shortcomings I feel Microsoft made with developing/implementing the way Windows Phone 7 will work, I am extremely excited about them and will probably be buying one as soon as Verizon (my current cell phone service provider) starts offering them for sale, despite the fact that I am going to have to (I feel) jump through hoops to do some of the things I can currently do easier.
I am very disappointed that Microsoft chose not to allow desktop syncing with Outlook for Windows Phone 7 devices – what is the logic behind that?!! MANY people use Outlook to, as you put it, centralize their e-mail, contact and appointment data and it has always been relatively simple to use a USB cable and Windows Mobile Device Center to sync the data between a mobile phone and Outlook. Now, I am going to be forced to go through the hassle of exporting 722 contacts to Google and then have to manually go through each one to “clean them up”, making sure each field is properly populated (because many of them aren’t properly populated after importing!) so the contacts display and sort properly! Plus, Google chose, ON IT’S OWN, to merge some of my contacts that were listed separately in Outlook into a single contact, so I had to fix that issue, too – what a hassle! In addition, I am probably going to have to now enter new contacts in TWO places – Outlook and Google, as I haven’t come up with a solution to sync contacts between the two (I know there are programs out there that will do that, but they aren’t free and I don’t know how well they work – I will still probably have to manually “clean up” the contacts in Google when they are added). Aren’t Outlook and Windows Phone 7 BOTH Microsoft products – shouldn’t they work together?!! Microsoft has an extremely poor record of interoperability between it’s own products – I’ve tried multiple times this past week to import my contacts into my Windows Live/Hotmail account, but it failed EVERY SINGLE time! Google imported them the very first time!
I am also now having an issue with my Google calendar; I exported my Outlook calendar to Google Calendar, then set-up a Google sync program to sync my Outlook calendar with Google Calendar. After I did that, all my appointments on my Google Calendar were duplicated, so I deleted the calendar and tried to start over – now NONE of my appointments are syncing! I realize this is not Microsft’s fault but, again, if I could sync Windows Phone 7 with my desktop Outlook, I wouldn’t be having these issues! Doesn’t Microsft want Windows Phone 7 to succeed?!!
I have also never been exactly sold on the whole “cloud computing” thing – what if someone hacks into and steals my personal, private information? Or, what if Time Warner goes down and I lose my Internet connection (that’s happened before – once for an entire night!), or the power goes out – how do I then access my data?!!
Well, as I said, I am so excited about Windows Phone 7 that, as long as I can get ALL of my contacts on my Windows Phone 7 device and ALL my e-mails delivered to it, I’ll probably do whatever is necessary (i.e. moving my data to “the cloud”) to make it work!
Dennis
Paul,
I still have a question about the e-mail inbox on Windows Phone 7. I have my GMail account set-up so that e-mails from my GMail AND all 5 of my Time Warner addresses get delivered into my GMail inbox – if I set-up my GMail account on the Windows Phone 7 device, will ALL my e-mails, including the Time Warner ones that go into my GMail inbox, get delivered into my single e-mail inbox on the Windows Phone 7 device?
Thanks!
Yes. What won’t be possible to is reply to mail on the phone as if it came from one of those Time Warner addresses. All replies will be from your Gmail account.
O.K., well what about this – I have my GMail account configured to compose new messages and send replies as “xxx_9999@roadrunner.com” (not my real Time Warner e-mail, of course), instead of “xxx9999@gmail.com”. If I set-up my GMail account in a Windows Phone 7 device, will replies and new messages then be sent as “xxx_9999@roadrunner.com” instead of xxx9999@gmail.com?
Thanks!
No. They’ll all be sent from your Gmail account.
Paul, thank you for the awesome job of documenting WP7. It’s a pleasure to read every article – pure useful data without any bias.
What about flagged messages? Do flags sync up with anything, or are they confined within the phone?
Lack of tasks is really bad, but no message flagging makes the situation worse :)
Thanks … Flagged messages appear to work only with Microsoft email servers.