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Microsoft Software

Gmail For Android Gets Microsoft Exchange Support 87

Posted by msmash from the one-less-hassle-in-your-email-experience dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Google has updated Gmail for Android with a very notable feature: support for Microsoft Exchange. You can download the latest version of the app from Google Play (if you don't see it, don't worry: Google says the gradual rollout may take three or more days). The company had actually released this feature a few months ago, but at the time, it was only available for Nexus devices. With the new update, Google is making the feature available to a wider audience. "Exchange support was previously only available on our Nexus devices, but as of today, Exchange support covers mail, contacts, and calendar data in Android across all devices," a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat.
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Gmail For Android Gets Microsoft Exchange Support More

Gmail For Android Gets Microsoft Exchange Support

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  • Exchange support covers mail, contacts, and calendar data.

    Is it really that useful to merge these three types of data into a single program? This sounds as dumb as merging a music player, video player, device manager and online music/video/app store into a single program.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      When your users you support are only willing to use one product, it's quite useful.

      • When your users you support are only willing to use one product, it's quite useful.

        If you're working in the sort of environment that's likely to be using Exchange, your users shouldn't be dictating software policy.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by jofas ( 1081977 )
          However, in our current world of grey-area smartphone data ownership (corporate/personal), it's nice to have more options like allowing users to connect with the GMail app. The days of have a corporate *and* personal phone are going the way of the dodo.

      • It's really handy if parts of your users' lives are currently private.

    • Re:What makes Microsoft Exchange so damn special? (Score:4, Informative)

      by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @11:31AM (#51989525)
      Is it really that useful to merge these three types of data into a single program?

      Yes, it really is that useful. For people with white collar jobs, it's incredibly useful, and there are no other products that are nearly as good.

      • Re:What makes Microsoft Exchange so damn special? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by unrtst ( 777550 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @11:45AM (#51989605)

        Is it really that useful to merge these three ...

        Yes, it really is that useful...

        You're both right and wrong.
        Having an interface from your email program into your contact management system is very useful. However, as one example, this could just use LDAP.
        Having an interface from your email program to accept/deny/reply-to meeting invites sent via .ics files is very useful. However, that could easily be done via an external handler based on mime type. The email program *could* be so kind as to parse that for your and show a nice display of the info.

        Exchanged doesn't literally merge this data either. It, and its native clients, provide tight integration of these items (mail, contact, calendar), similar to every other groupware item ever created.
        Personally, I think there should be more standard tools to deal with these standard formats. I primarily use alpine for email, and I wrote my own ics (icalendar) parser to display the contents and shift all the times into my own timezone (which is easily the messiest part of the parsing). I also have it display an option to use gcalcli to import that to my google calendar (I used to use "google calandar add ...", but that broke). It would be nice if someone made a simple command line tool to do the calendar actions on those attachments, and a wrapper for a GUI version, so that part would all be standard and easily triggered by any mail program.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DogDude ( 805747 )
          I put my email address and username into Outlook.
        • You use alpine on android. Really.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by swb ( 14022 )

          IMHO, the real failure was for someone to extend the IMAP protocol to handle contacts and calendar items. Maybe the commands and primitives were already suited for this and we just needed some standard format for calendar and contact data types and they could have been saved as messages in folders flagged as containing that kind of data, and then at that point the processing logic is just up to the client to provide interfaces for it.

          In other words, if you had a MUA that had calendaring and contact user in

          • If somehow you could have gotten all of this done with a client and an IMAP server (at least for individuals without intra-user shared data) maybe a more open client model would have held on to some of the market because the back-end could have been a single system and not a mashup of a half-dozen different services.

            Why would a bandwidth heavy standard like IMAP support have saved things? We already have open standards for calendar and contacts, CalDAV and CardDAV respectfully. And there are open source ser

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by swb ( 14022 )

              The idea is that popular adoption of an easy open source solution didn't happen because of the division of all those items into multiple data types requiring multiple back end services to be installed.

              If they all had been usable through a single server instance, maybe an open source alternative to Exchange circa 2000 would have blunted its momentum. I think despite the so-called complexity of an Exchange install, it offered a fairly easy to install, "single server" solution for mail/calendar/contacts that

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by unrtst ( 777550 )

                I'm fairly certain you are mashing up and confusing the facts here.

                When someone sends a meeting invite via outlook through an exchange server, the recipients receive an email with a text/calendar type attachment, and it's just an iCalendar file, which is a standard format attachment.

                The only reason outlook users see a different interface in their client when the get one of these is because the outlook client detects that attachment type and handles it specially. Any other client can do the same thing, or th

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by swb ( 14022 )

                  My thought was that for a single user (ie, minus any of the group/shared functionality of Exchange or other groupware concepts) IMAP wouldn't have been a terrible way to interact with remote data storage.

                  You get the value of a single server process handling the info, clients not capable of parsing and rendering calendar and contacts could just ignore it (or at least not mangle the data) and if the format was standardized any client could read/cache/interpret it/present it to the user, providing you with an

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by unrtst ( 777550 )

                    My thought was that for a single user (ie, minus any of the group/shared functionality of Exchange or other groupware concepts) IMAP wouldn't have been a terrible way to interact with remote data storage.

                    It's been done. It was done long ago. It did not blunt the momentum of other solutions.
                    Here's the docs for Pine's remote address book, as one implementation: https://www.washington.edu/pin... [washington.edu]
                    Here's a huge list of ways to share/copy/sync/etc address books to/from Thunderbird: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Shar... [mozillazine.org]
                    The ones that won for address books are LDAP and CardDAV.
                    Calendaring is quite different and separate from email, except in sending/receiving invites, so it's always a separate system. The invite stuff is

    • Re:What makes Microsoft Exchange so damn special? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swb ( 14022 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @11:38AM (#51989563)

      Are you serious or just trolling? Did you really just come out from under a rock or mom's basement?

      You can't possibly think of a reason you'd want something like contact info with email addresses tied into the program you send emails with tied into your calendar so you can send appointment info to people?

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • I use three separate programs on my Mac that do all these things just fine and work with each other to do those exact things. I don't see why the all-in-one aspect of Microsoft Exchange is seen as a "must" on a website where people dislike the iMac, systemd, iTunes, etc.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jofas ( 1081977 )
          If you don't see why Exchange integration in apps, I posit that you are not a corporate nor high-volume email, calendar and contacts user. Fact is, Exchange integration is a must for many jobs.

        • Re:What makes Microsoft Exchange so damn special? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by swb ( 14022 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @12:35PM (#51989957)

          Quite literally a huge majority of the white collar world has decided that Outlook and Exchange is ideal for them, especially given the high quality support for them on popular smartphones.

          I have at least 3 Exchange accounts from 3 mail systems open in Outlook at one time and I use them all extensively. I can't imagine the clusterfuck of having three programs to manage this same information.

      • Programs talking with a standard set of protocols work just as well.

      • Are you serious or just trolling? Did you really just come out from under a rock or mom's basement?

        You should't assume everyone here is old enough to have experience in a workplace.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by jofas ( 1081977 )
          No, but a 30-second Google search on "what is Exchange" should be well within the capacity of anyone, even without any work experience and especially for someone who feels the need to make the first comment. One might argue that it actually wastes everyone's time.

    • This sounds as dumb as merging a music player, video player, device manager and online music/video/app store into a single program.

      Or even into a single device, right? And what about integrated circuits? Horrible. Who ever thought such a thing could be practical? What's wrong with rectifiers and vacuum tubes that can be tested and bought at Walgreens?

    • I think you misunderstand. The calendar data is merged into the calendar app, mail with gmail app.

    • Exchange isn't special. But it is what a lot of big businesses use. Because it was one of the first well known brand system to support Email, Contacts and Calendar info. Back in the day where Microsoft was the cool company. During this time having a unified app vs common protocols were popular.
      Being that migrating off Exchange is a bitch, most companies will just keep it.

    • Exchange support covers mail, contacts, and calendar data.

      Is it really that useful to merge these three types of data into a single program? This sounds as dumb as merging a music player, video player, device manager and online music/video/app store into a single program.

      That's failing to address what Exchange is. Outlook is the client, end-user experience and that is what merges e-mail/contacts/calendar data. Outlook is a reasonable mail client but not in and of itself indispensable.

      Exchange is a server product that Outlook can optionally connect to, and it enables exchange of data. More than the obvious e-mail exchange user-to-user, it handles all the expected bonus features like user groups, forwarding, out-of-office messages (server-side, not client-side). It's ha

    • I suppose you could easily have a calendar device a contacts gadget and a portable email system and a phone. After all, what is the possible advantage of centralizing these vastly different data systems into one piece of hardware?

  • Does it work with Office 365 accounts too?

  • I don't think it'll be that useful (Score:5, Informative)

    by danomac ( 1032160 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @11:30AM (#51989519)

    If you can't turn off conversation view. It is annoying on personal email but I deal with it (conversation view buggers up threads, splitting up emails where they shouldn't be as an example), but that would be intolerable on work email.

    For those using Exchange for access to work email, Touchdown is a better paid-for solution that won't erase your phone with work policies, they're only applied to the Touchdown app itself. That makes it worth the price right there.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Touchdown is a better paid-for solution that won't erase your phone with work policies, they're only applied to the Touchdown app itself. That makes it worth the price right there.

      Or the Nine android app, which has a much better layout and easier configuration than Touchdown.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      Add in that every Android device I have ever owned has been able to talk ActiveSync to an Exchange server in like forever via the standard Mail app it is even less useful.

      The headline makes it sound like you have not been able to connect to an Exchange server previously.

      • The headline was referring to conversation view, which you can't turn off in the Gmail app. I've been using Touchdown to access work email for 5 years (or more?)

        The standard Mail app on phones stink. For a long time you couldn't even invite people to appointments. Some have rectified that now, though.

        However, Touchdown controls its own notifications and I've set it to not notify on non-working hours (evenings and weekends, set to different schedules each day.) I know the Gmail app doesn't have that, the not

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jofas ( 1081977 )
        The standard Mail app is no longer supported. The GMail app is the mail app now.

      • Add in that every Android device I have ever owned has been able to talk ActiveSync to an Exchange server in like forever via the standard Mail app it is even less useful.

        The headline makes it sound like you have not been able to connect to an Exchange server previously.

        I was thinking the exact same thing.

        The only real news is that Google fanboys (if there are any) can now use their favorite email app to access their Exchange email.

    • Microsoft's Outlook for Android is also another option, and it's free.

      I prefer its calendar to the default Google Calendar app. It was originally a 3rd party Calendar that Microsoft bought and merged it into Outlook. I think it was originally called Sunrise or something like that.

    • Touchdown...

      I've never been interested in having Exchange in my phone's email client because the email clients built in with most Androids suck.. I bought Touchdown years ago because it was built to talk to Exchange and it worked very well.

      Gmail is pretty good, but I'm still not interested in merging my Exchange account with it because then my phone becomes completely subject to my workplace's rules and regulations on mobiles. Touchdown keeps that separate and I like it that way. Hell, I have a company p

  • Will it work with certificates now? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The gmail app on nexus devices has been terrible in terms of client certificate support for exchange activesync.

    It worked perfectly in android 4.4 on nexus devices, and starting with 5.0 it was broken.

    Google's tech support on this is completely useless, they just say, "Talk to your exchange administrator."

    Oddly enough, samsung devices running android 5.0 or later don't use the "gmail" code to connect to exchange activesync, and samsung phones work perfectly with client certificates.

    If this means that non-ne

  • On my android phone I use the MS Outlook app and find it to be actually pretty good. I can turn off the conversation view, which I hate and I get access to all the same folders I have at my desktop. Plus, it's free with office.
    I know there are a lot of people who would like to put everything into one bucket, but personally I do not want my private emails anywhere near my work emails.
    The worst part of having my MS Exchange emails going to my gmail inbox would be the weekends.
    I would see that there are emails

  • Most corporate Exchange servers are either behind a VPN or proxy; have some third-party authentication wrapper (or even worse, an in-house custom one); or straight up don't let you access it without being hard-wired to their network with a "blessed" computer.

    Most people who use an Exchange server for work won't be able to use this...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Er.... and your point is?

      VPN is perfectly doable for any major VPN protocol (including OpenVPN) on a bog-standard, unrooted Android device.

      And those people who are using, say, the other Exchange capable apps on their phone will use it. Like, say, all the Samsung apps that do just this. Or something like TouchDown (is that being sold still since it was sold to Symantec?).

      So precisely those people who a) have an android phone and er... b) want to, can connect to an Exchange server. This just ties it into t

  • The four main features in Outlook are Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Notes, but for some reason apps like this don't support Notes. It's the same on my iPhone 6 Plus, I have to use a 3rd party app [apple.com] to sync Notes with Exchange.
    • Give it up, and migrate all of your notes to OneNote.

      • Yes, yes. OneNote to rule them all.

        Then I should upload them all to The Cloud, right?

        • Then I should upload them all to The Cloud, right?

          If you'd like to. Your notes are already based on a server, so I don't see there being a big philosophical reason between having the notes be on Exchange, vs a OneNote saved/synced to SharePoint.

  • End-to-end crypto solutions on the client side, such as S/MIME & PGP have existed for nearly 20 years.

    But for Android users, there is simply no decent e-mail app in which supports this type of required security in Google Play store, while also supporting office365 (required for work), tablet mode, and threaded message viewing.

    Stock mail app, Gmail, Outlook, Touchdown, Nine, etc., none of these apps meet of these criteria. And don't mention Samsung Knox, which is only available with stock Samsung ROM on

  • No need for Outlook or costly exchange plug-ins for thunderbird. No need for MS Office. This pleases me.

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