Welcome to our App of the Week series where we highlight Smartphone and iPad applications for business.
The Apple iPhone is an excellent business companion and a number of recent software upgrades have enhanced support for users who synchronize wirelessly to Outlook via Microsoft Exchange. Unfortunately there are a couple of commonly used Outlook/Exchange items which do not natively sync wirelessly, most notably Tasks and Notes. Create a task or note on your desktop and it doesn’t automatically transfer to your iPhone wirelessly – not so great if you use those features regularly on the go (and we all know someone who has dozens of important Outlook sticky notes!).
iMExchange for iPhone ($7.99 from the iTunes store) you never again have to be without your Notes or Tasks while on the go. Add, edit or delete a task or note from either your desktop or iPhone and it will synchronized within seconds. Since it connects directly to Microsoft Exchange, you don’t need to have any software running on your desktop computer.
iMExchange also adds one important feature for business users on the move – the ability to turn on, turn off and edit an Out of Office message directly from your iPhone. If you’re like me and only remember to turn the Out of Office message after you’ve left for vacation, you will appreciate this feature!
Setup
IMPORTANT: As many businesses use custom security levels and firewalls for their Microsoft Exchange installation, it is important to first download and test the FREE read-only version of iMExchange called iMLite Viewer. If your connection to Exchange works with the free version, it will work with the full version. If it doesn’t connect, you didn’t spend $7.99 to find out it doesn’t work!
Setting up iMExchange is a simple one page job. Upon launching the application, an option for adding and account is readily available. Add in the same credentials that were used to connect the email, mail and contacts portion of your iPhone and you will be up and running in seconds. Multiple Exchange accounts are also permitted.
Using the application
iMExchange has a very intuitive, no-frills interface. After selecting your Exchange account, choices for Tasks, Notes, Out of Office and Contacts are available. In the case of Tasks and Notes, the current total of synchronized items is displayed. Tasks and Notes are available in offline mode (when there is no 3G+ or Wi-Fi coverage) while Out of Office and Contacts require wireless service.
From the Tasks screen, Tasks can be viewed, edited, deleted or added. The creation of a task includes fields that are familiar to Outlook users including title, description, priority, category, start and due dates and a progress slider. Notes are equally intuitive, however colour coding which may be used in Outlook only transfer as categories – the notes don’t actually change colour.
The Out of Office may look a little strange to some users. When viewing the alerts via this application, the HTML code of the alert text is displayed (this code equates to the color, font and size options you may have selected in Outlook). If you know HTML, you can edit the code and text. If you are unfamiliar with HTML, just delete everything that is there and type your new Out of Office reply. It will come through as plain text when it is sent, but it will still work fine.
Hidden gem?
At first glance, the Contacts section of the app appears to have little value. iPhone has enabled full Exchange Global Address Book searching for quite some time now. However, this may be a hidden gem for some business users.
Many iPhone Exchange users can go into their Contacts and search their Exchange Address book for users (this functionality depends on the Exchange setup). In cases where items like an address or phone number are in the Exchange profile, they will appear. Searching through iMExchange shows the same type of information, plus some additional data fields. In testing with my corporate version of Exchange, I found information like an address or phone number through iMExchange that was not visible through a Contacts search. If it works for you, it’s a nice bonus.
Conclusion
Overall, iMExchange is a straight forward and solid app for business users. Whether or not you choose to spend the $7.99 on it depends on if you use Outlook/Exchange Tasks and Notes. If you don’t use either of those features, it’s pricey to just have for the Out of Office and Contacts features. Then again, if you are about to board a plane for a long vacation and are stressing about a forgotten Out of Office message, it may worth the peace of mind.
