What's New in Outlook Mobile
4/12/2010
Outlook Mobile and Exchange
With Microsoft Outlook Mobile in Windows Mobile 6.5, users can be more productive through a more unified messaging experience.
- Enhancements were made to Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging voice mails.
- Conversational view was added to help users organize their e-mails.
- Text messages can now be synchronized with a user's account in Outlook and Outlook Web Access. And, when looking at the Global Address List (GAL), users can now see whether a person is free or busy.
User Scenarios
The following scenarios provide the user's experience of the new features.
Outlook Mobile and Exchange
Marco uses the Conversation View in Outlook Mobile to group e-mails within conversations so he can track issues he may have to resolve before an upcoming convention in Barcelona. The New, Top, and Bottom e-mail shortcuts help him triage his Inbox and respond to e-mails. He can quickly see which e-mails he has responded to by the reply/forward icon displayed in the e-mail list and within each e-mail message. The integrated free/busy information shows him whether his colleagues are available if he needs to call them or set up a meeting.
Calendar shortcuts, in addition to existing messaging shortcuts, help him work through setting up meetings or navigating his calendar in a quick and efficient manner. Marco sees that he is missing a team meeting at this very moment. With a touch he calls the number from the invitation, which includes the pass code sequence, and immediately joins in the meeting. He sets up his laptop to look at a schedule spreadsheet. While he’s still on the phone, an SMS message from Anna appears in his computer’s Exchange e-mail Inbox. She says hi, he says hi, and she invites him to lunch.
Marco can now manage his SMS folders and select multiple messages to move or delete all at once.
Alarms and Appointments
Anna and Marco sit in a café talking. Anna glances at the lock screen on her phone. Along with her missed calls and emails, she sees her next appointment, which is displayed on the Lock screen as text and contains the subject, time, and location.
Anna has a few minutes to talk to Marco, so she sets an alarm to remind her when she has to leave for her appointment. Soon the alarm goes off, and Anna sees an Alarm screen. Using the slider she sets it to Snooze. The next time it goes off she dismisses the alarm using the slider and leaves for her appointment.
Conversation View*
Anna checks her e-mail. She likes Conversation View, where she can see a list of all her e-mail grouped by conversation. She navigates to the conversation entitled “Barcelona.” It contains five or six unread e-mails from Marco and Jane.
Anna could flag this conversation, clear the flag, or mark it as complete. If she wanted, she could even choose to ignore the Barcelona conversation, which would stop the synchronization of messages within that conversation and delete the existing conversation from her phone. Read or ignore? She can’t decide, so she moves the conversation to a different folder, which automatically moves all e-mails associated with that conversation. She selects the “always” option, which means that future e-mails belonging to that conversation will also go into that folder.
Anna flags the Barcelona conversation with a green flag, then changes it to a red flag. She clears the flag, opens the folder, and looks at all the related messages within the conversation. She selects the latest one, which is from Marco.
*Supported with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Free/Busy*
Anna wants to check whether Marco Tanara from another team is available to meet today. She doesn’t have Marco in her saved contacts that are stored in Exchange, so she searches the global address list (GAL) for Marco Tanara. She sees a few search results and selects from the list. The GAL card for Marco is displayed, and Ana can see his information.
Ana clicks Get Free/Busy Information from the GAL card and checks Marco’s availability. She then quickly switches between dates to see when Marco is free in the next few days.
*Supported with Exchange 2010
Unified Messaging*
Sitting in a noisy restaurant, Anna looks at the Inbox on her Windows® phone and quickly notices the new icons that show she has a voice mail from Jane. She opens the message and sees Jane’s contact details. She could play the message without needing to open Media Player, but with all the noise in the restaurant she finds it convenient to simply read the voice mail text transcription in the message.*
Anna sees that the message is about their trip to Barcelona, and she returns Jane’s call directly from the menu in the voice mail card.
*Supported with Exchange 2010
Nickname Cache*
At the airport, Marco checks his Windows® phone and sees an e-mail from Jane. She’s reminding him that he promised to connect with her at the upcoming conference in Barcelona. He begins replying and remembers the woman from the meeting earlier who was also going to the conference. Ana something. Can’t remember her name—but didn’t they trade e-mails a week or so ago?
He begins typing in the To field: “An…” The Windows phone’s autocomplete produces a list of suggestions from its nickname cache. And there she is. Anna Bedecs. He selects her name and adds her to the recipients of the e-mail.
He suggests that the three of them meet at the conference. Since he knows Barcelona, he can show them around a bit…
*Supported with Exchange 2010
Reply/Forward Indication*
Anna visits Jane for dinner and talk. While Jane is cooking, Anna checks her e-mail on Jane’s computer. She opens Outlook Web Access and goes down the list of e-mails, making short replies, until she gets to one from Marco. This one will take a more considered answer, so she flags it and goes to help Jane in the kitchen.
Later, in the cab going home, Anna opens her Windows® phone and synchronizes her email. Looking through the list of messages she notes the message icons, which tell her immediately whether the message has been replied to or forwarded. If she were to open any of these e-mails, she would see the date and time of the reply—but she doesn’t open them. She opens instead the flagged e-mail from Marco, the one she had saved until now.
*Supported with Exchange 2010
General Enhancements
Users can now save e-mail addresses that are embedded in the body of an e-mail message or in an SMS message in any folder to their Contacts list.
You can customize e-mail as follows:
- Allow the user to bypass Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) probing for incoming and outgoing e-mail.
- Disable auto-configuration for e-mail accounts. You can now configure the initial state of the Try to get e-mail settings automatically from the Internet check box.
- Customize the string for the Digital Rights Management (DRM) error message.
Other changes include:
- Icons identify DRM-protected content in File Explorer.
- Support for China Mobile PushEmail client for the Monternet mailbox has been added as an optional component. For additional information on how to enable this functionality, please contact your Microsoft support contact.
- Outlook Mobile now applies the user-supplied SMTP server and the OEM or mobile operator–supplied override SMTP server as backups for one another. They switch from one to the other when the one in current use does not respond. This simplifies the selection process and improves performance and reliability.
- Calendar compatibility. The calendar feature reads and allows the user to add e-mail recipients from e-mail addresses stored in Group tags that are referred to as Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) categories. These categories display as a new field in the USIM contact card and can access the Category list. Categories are displayed in filtering within Contacts list view.
- Customize the strings that are displayed on devices that are running Windows Mobile Professional or Windows Mobile Classic when a user accesses the storage card through Start > Messaging > Menu > Options.
- New feature within the e-mail application makes it easier for users to find and add e-mail recipients. Windows Mobile now supports building and maintaining a list of commonly e-mailed people by creating a cache of e-mails received and e-mails sent.
- Contact pictures now appear in the contacts list view.
- Reply/Forward submenu in Messaging, which was previously Reply.
- Configure the first menu item in the Tap and Hold menu in the messaging folders to Reply instead of to Delete.
- Windows Mobile 6.5 now supports consumer push mail.
SMS and MMS Enhancements
- Messages now show high and low priority icons in the SMS conversation view.
- More competitive threaded SMS experience. Users can now scroll through unread messages in a thread, which results in all messaging being marked as “read.” An added feature within the Text Messaging application allows users to select multiple contiguous or non-contiguous messages within the threaded SMS conversation view. Once the messages are selected, users can delete or move the messages.
- SMS national language 7-bit encoding based on standard 3GPP spec 23.038 Rel8+ has been added. OEMs can add other code pages as the standards expand. Users sending SMS messages with national language characters will be able to send more characters per message, which will help reduce their SMS cost.
- Ability to change the display name of a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) account.
- Non-threaded MMS in CHome plug-in.
The following scenario describes a typical user's experience handling threaded messages.
Marco prides himself on being organized, and this extends to the SMS messages on his Windows® phone. Sitting in his office early, before the day begins, he takes a moment to organize his messages. He selects a folder named “Jane” and renames it “Jane-Anna”. When he realizes how many messages he has from Anna, he changes the folder back to “Jane” and creates a new folder named “Anna”. In list view he selects the important threads—contiguous and non-contiguous—between Anna and himself and easily moves them into the Anna folder. He then goes into conversation view and taps just Anna’s messages from the remaining conversations and moves them into her folder. Finally he selects the unimportant messages that have accumulated over the last two days and deletes them with a couple of taps.
Exchange Enhancements
- Global address list (GAL) lookup. The "Search Company Directory" option displays in the drop-down list box / auto-suggestion list box when a user types the name or e-mail address of an e-mail recipient. Users can also search the Global Address List (GAL) or company directory contact details for a suggested recipient.
- New icons in the e-mail list view lets users quickly view e-mail messages that were forwarded or replied to from Outlook Mobile and Exchange 2010. Users can now also see the date and time that the e-mail was forwarded or replied to when they open the e-mail.
Enhancements that were made for Exchange 2010 include:
- Conversational view.
- Unified Messaging voice mail enhancements, also known as the Unified Messaging (UM) form.
- E-mail recipient auto-suggestions that synchronize with the auto-suggestion list in Outlook Web Access.
- GAL lookup.
- Free/Busy information.
Personal Information Management (PIM)
Windows Mobile 6.5 now supports multi-selection in the Contacts application. The Windows Mobile Standard user can select more than one contact at a time and perform any of the following actions:
- Beam multiple contacts using either Bluetooth or infrared.
- Copy multiple contacts to the SIM card or to Outlook Contacts.
- Delete multiple contacts.
USIM contacts
Windows Mobile 6.5 increased the user interface (UI) support for the Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) Contacts. Windows Mobile 6.5 can display, read, and write USIM (3G SIM) phonebook contacts that include additional fields such as multiple phone numbers, e-mail address, nickname, and grouping. This is an improvement over the 2G SIM that had only a name and a number field.
Customize
You can customize PIM as follows:
- Prioritize time zones for areas outside of the United States. When you release devices outside the United States that use the MS NITZ implementation, you can now prioritize the time zones of the target location.**
- Control whether the transfer from non-numeric characters to numbers is enabled for the Simple-PIN edit control. **
- Automatically set the system volume when you activate profiles. You can configure Windows Mobile to automatically adjust the system volume to the preferences of a newly-activated user profile rather than leaving the system volume unchanged. **
- Save phone numbers from the dialer and Call History screen directly to the SIM card without creating an Outlook contact. You can also save, directly to a SIM card, phone numbers that are embedded in the body of an e-mail message, a Short Messaging Service (SMS) message, or in a browser window.
- Configure devices to set the date and time automatically from information that the carrier network sends. To support Network Identity and Time Zone (NITZ), you must support the NITZ Radio Interface Layer (RIL) protocols. **
Other Items
- Users can now save e-mail addresses that are embedded in the body of an e-mail message or in a Short Messaging Service (SMS) message in any folder to their Contacts list. When users save e-mail addresses, they can update an existing e-mail address in Contacts or can create a new contact.
- By default, users can access fixed dialing numbers (FDN) and service dialing numbers (SDN) from the Contacts list. When the FDN and SDN registry keys are not present, these numbers appear in the Contacts list.
- Windows Mobile now supports Bluetooth Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP).
See Also
Concepts
What's New in Windows Mobile 6.5