.FLYINGHEAD OUTLOOK 2007 SECRETS
.TITLE Outlook Mobile Service: a low-bandwidth connection to your mobile life
.AUTHOR Bill Mann
.SUMMARY We have a problem. Ok, maybe not you personally, but we, the users of Outlook, collectively have a problem. That problem is how to maintain access to our Outlook data when we’re mobile. Outlook Mobile Service (OMS) is one possible solution to that problem. It’s an inexpensive, low-bandwidth way to get access to crucial Outlook data on virtually any mobile phone that can send and receive text (SMS) messages.
.OTHER
We have a problem. Ok, maybe not you personally, but we, the users of Outlook, collectively have a problem. That problem is how to maintain access to our Outlook data when we’re mobile. Outlook Mobile Service (OMS) is one possible solution to that problem. It’s an inexpensive, low-bandwidth way to get access to crucial Outlook data on virtually any mobile phone that can send and receive text (SMS) messages.
OMS is a free Outlook 2007 add-in that communicates with your wireless service provider to move text and multimedia messages between your mobile phone and the copy of Outlook 2007 on your desktop. This service has a lot of phone-related capabilities wrapped together, things like creating text (SMS) and multimedia (MMS) message in Outlook and sending them to phones, sending messages to mobiles and regular email clients simultaneously, and a new mobile address book.
But for my money, where OMS will be most useful to most people is its ability to forward reminders, calendar summaries, and selected email messages to any mobile that supports text messaging. With OMS, you don’t need a high-end phone with a high-price, high-speed data connection to get crucial Outlook data while on the move. This is the aspect of OMS that I’ll be talking about in the rest of this article.
.TEASER To learn how to set up OMS, tap here to read Bill’s full article.
Note: For information on the complete capabilities of Outlook Mobile Service, search for OMS in the Outlook 2007 help system.
I recommend you configure OMS to use single text (SMS) messages to forward any notifications of messages from your most important correspondents, along with any reminders and a copy of your next day’s schedule. We’ll see how to do so shortly.
Using this approach, you will get notified of the important stuff when it happens, without getting a vast number of text messages sent to your phone every month, which can quickly become expensive if you exceed the allowances of your mobile service plan.
.H1 Setting up to use Outlook Mobile Service
To get started with Outlook Mobile Service, go to the Outlook Mobile Service Hosting Providers page listed at the end of this article. Select your country and your mobile service provider on this page to see if they support OMS.
If so, the site will walk you through the steps to get a hosting provider account and install OMS. While OMS doesn’t require a high-end phone and an expensive data plan, you do need to confirm certain things before you can use OMS. Specifically:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Your wireless service provider must support OMS. Many do, but not all.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Your phone must support text messaging, and you must have a service plan that can handle the quantity of text messages OMS will send, at a cost you are willing to bear. I suggest you have a plan that can accommodate an additional 200 text messages per month to be safe (above what you already use monthly).
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET You must leave Outlook 2007 running with a live Internet connection. If you shut down the copy of Outlook you installed OMS on or Outlook loses its Internet connection, OMS won’t work. I learned this the hard way when I went on a week-long trip, and reflexively shut down my desktop machine on my way out the door. It didn’t take too long to figure out why I wasn’t getting daily calendar updates (or anything else) from OMS, but by then, it was too late.
.END_LIST
Once you install the Outlook Mobile Service add-in, it becomes integrated into Outlook 2007 and adds some new choices to the Tools > Options menu, as shown in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A Outlook Mobile Service adds a Mobile section to the Preferences tab.
OMS adds a Mobile section to the Preferences tab of the Options dialog box. Click the Notifications button to control how OMS sends you Reminders and Calendar summaries, as shown in Figure B. You can also specify that OMS forward incoming messages that meet certain criteria to your phone.
.FIGPAIR B Use this dialog box to tell OMS what information you want delivered to your phone.
Back at the Preferences tab, clicking the Mobile Options button lets you tell OMS whether to send text or multimedia messages to your phone, as Figure C shows. It also lets you specify how many text messages you will get for each Outlook item.
.FIGPAIR C Tell OMS the format and quantity of text messages to send for each item with this dialog box.
Since text messages are limited to a small number of characters per message, forwarding a good-sized email message using OMS could take dozens of text messages. I stick with one message for each Outlook item to keep the flood of text messages down. If I really need to read the body of a long message or notification, I can find my way to a PC instead of trying to do it on my phone.
Note: If you decide to allow multiple text messages per Outlook item, consider adjusting your mobile service plan to accommodate the increase.
The exception to this is my daily schedule. OMS is smart enough to use however many messages it takes to deliver all relevant schedule items. You don’t have to worry about missing a meeting because your whole schedule wouldn’t fit into a single text message.
One last thing to be aware of. When OMS sends a text message to your phone, it marks the corresponding Outlook item as "Read." I expected to see items in the Unread Mail folder when I was at my computer, but OMS had read them and sent me messages about them, so they were no longer there. Once I realized this it made sense, but it did throw me at first.
.H1 Conclusion
I’ve been living with OMS for a while now, and find it to be pretty useful for notifications. I have always had Outlook remind me of meetings and appointments by popping up a reminder on my desktop. With OMS, those same reminders appear on my mobile too, which comes in real handy when I’m out in the lab or otherwise away from my desk for extended periods. And I like getting a summary of the next day’s schedule delivered to my phone so I don’t have to get to my PC to find out when my first appointment is in the morning.
I find OMS less useful for working with email messages. Getting a single text message on my phone to show me that an email from someone important has arrived is very useful. Actually reading emails delivered by OMS is difficult and not very practical. That’s a limitation of the SMS text message format rather than a failing of OMS, but still a drawback to using this service for email.
The value of this product depends heavily on what you are looking for. If you are hoping for the full experience of Outlook 2007 on your mobile device, you will be disappointed. If, however, you spend a lot of time away from your computer, and want a simple and inexpensive way to get Outlook notifications and calendar information on your mobile phone, Outlook Mobile Service may be exactly the service you need. For this purpose, we give OMS four stars.
.RATING 4
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Read [[http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/outlook/HA101078921033.aspx?pid=CH101316361033|Introduction to Outlook Mobile Service]].
Read [[http://messaging.office.microsoft.com/HostingProviders.aspx|Outlook Mobile Service Hosting Providers]].
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
