Windows Mobile 6 Part II

Welcome back to the second half of our WM6 article offering you options while you wait!  Well, here it is well into Q2 and I’m still waiting for WM6 on my Dash.  I’m sure it will be here soon enough, but will it have much waiting for me when it finally shows up?
 
Messaging

E-mail is definitely an area Microsoft beefed up in WM6.  However, several of the features touted won’t be available to me because my employer and personal e-mail provider are not going to be touching Exchange Server 2007 anytime soon.  To be fair, there are several other cool enhancements to WM mail besides the one requiring Exchange Server 2007.  Some that come to mind are mail flagging, quick filtering, keyboard shortcuts, and HTML mail.  BUT, have you guys heard of FlexMail?  It’s a mail app for Windows Mobile devices (both Pocket PC and just recently, Smartphone) and it has a ton of great features in it that have changed the way I manage my e-mail. 

Wait a minute…

Now some of you may be thinking, “is this the same old FlexMail that caused me all those problems a year ago?”  Well, it is the same app, but it’s a new version, has added Windows Mobile Smartphone support, and has undergone a ton of testing over the last several months.  In fact, all of the testing for FlexMail is the reason this article has trailed so far behind the first part.  I wanted to make sure it was a solid, stable app before sending out the news to our readers.  The latest FlexMail Rev. 2 version has just hit the streets and it’s been hammered by many Pocket PC and Smartphone testers, including yours truly, so this is a release you should definitely check out!  [Full disclosure:  I am a FlexMail beta tester, but I don’t profit in any way from FlexMail sales.]

Before jumping into some screen shots and features, I need to give a little background about how I can even get to my e-mail.  My IT department doesn’t allow VPN access to our network via a Windows Mobile device.  They do have a Windows Mobile app that allows remote mail syncing, but it’s so slow and buggy I just can’t stand it.  We have an Outlook Web Access client that works on my phone in a pinch, but it gets real annoying when compared to having the e-mail right in my phone’s Inbox.  A trick I recently learned about was MS Outlook’s capability to make a “redirecting rule.”  Note that this is not an e-mail forward, but a redirect.  This allows me to redirect certain mail, based on my rule, to my personal AT&T Yahoo! POP account for viewing away from work.  The cool part about this:  the sender’s e-mail address stays the same, just like the sender sent the e-mail directly to my personal mail!

So what does this mean?  Well, I now have a bunch of work e-mail piled up in my personal e-mail.  This would be a mess, but FlexMail has a cool feature called Message Filtering.  It’s really another name for e-mail rules.  This allows me to check my e-mail very quickly by synchronizing with my personal e-mail provider, and automatically organize my work and personal e-mail into their appropriate folders based on rules.  Bam, instant data aggregation!  Now, all on my phone in a simple folder tree structure you can see my mail tidied up and ready for triage.  The other cool thing about these message filters is that I can select one of the mail folders on my phone and delete all the messages in it.  In one fell swoop, I’ve got a bunch of old work e-mail purged right out of my Yahoo! account.  For you guys that know what the acronym means, FlexMail also has a ton of features for full IMAP mail server support.  

Message Flagging:  you can flag an e-mail for further action.  I don’t know why, but I use this way more than I have on the desktop.  I skim my mail, flag any items that require more than a simple reply, and I’m done.

Tight Inbox list:  FlexMail does a good job of cramming all the info you need in the inbox list:  sender, subject, date, size.  It’s got all that and a cool summary icon indicating the message status: flagged, read, replied, forwarded, priority, partially downloaded, etc.  You can even tweak the fonts if you like to cram even more text into your tiny screen.

HTML mail:  just like WM6, but FlexMail has been doing this for a while now.  It just looks so much better than plain ol’ text.

Immediate Send:  just like it sounds--it sends the e-mail immediately if your connection is active.  You don’t have to remember to hit Send/Receive to send out that e-mail you just hit Send on.

Find:  it’s got a built in e-mail search capability.  Sure, it can’t search my server’s e-mail, but like I said, I’m not getting Exchange Server 2007 anytime soon.

E-mail Notifications:  A cool little pop-up comes up after syncing your mail that allows you to walk through the new e-mail messages, previewing the subject, body and sender along the way.

FlexMail in the past has had some real bugs and issues.  This new version that just came out has been real solid for me and something I’ve been using non-stop for months now.  I’ve syncing 100’s of e-mails at a time and it has chugged right through it without a problem, whether on a WiFi connection or Edge.  There’s a Pocket PC version too for you touch screen-ers.  I’ve been amazed at just how well I can keep up with my e-mail, all from my tiny little Smartphone.

Contacts
I still use just the built in Contacts on my Smartphone.  This is an area in WM6 that I’m really looking forward to.  I’ve only seen videos and presentations, but I love all of the things they’ve done to better leverage the Contacts database throughout the OS, like the Call History.  Oh yes, and the ability to search the global address book (I believe this just requires Exchange Server 2003—and we’ve got that where I work!).

In Closing…
Granted, FlexMail and Agenda One aren’t free, but I can honestly say they allow me to use my Dash in ways simply not possible with the standard WM5 capabilities.  It remains to be seen to me whether WM6 is going to surpass my Messaging and PIM capabilities that I have with this set of apps on WM5.  However, I’m still eager to try out the WM6 upgrade for my Dash! 

Try some of these apps out and let us know if they change the way you use your device.  For me, they not only did that but also allowed me to better balance my work, family, and personal time.  And that's the smartest part about really using a Smartphone!  

Steve Hagerott: Steve has been a Windows Mobile power user since 2003. He works as a software and hardware architect, with a degree in aerospace engineering. Most of his time out of the office he enjoys with his wife and four boys. He also beta tests Windows Mobile software, plays with gadgets and RC aircraft, and volunteers at his church. Steve holds two U.S. patents, and two patents pending, addressing software test and manufacturing automation innovations.