Another Android Post... HTC Phones

[cornelius10]

Let me start off by saying that I realize most of the things I am about to discuss are third party issues. Still, I am hoping that someone here can help me come up with some solutions. I have been reading everything I can find for the past few weeks. I have seen many discussions and bugs, but no solutions.

Zimbra version: 6.0.10 NE

We have approximately 50 mobile users. We recently switched everyone from Blackberry to Android. This has not been pleasant... Everyone loves the overall capabilities of the Android devices, but they hate the email functionality. There have been many requests to switch back to Blackberry. I would prefer not to do this as I do not want to run a BES server. All of our Android phones are HTC devices (mostly Evo 4G's). Ideally, I would like to resolve all issues using the pre-installed software on these devices.

Issue 1: ActiveSync
Currently all of our devices are using the HTC mail app to connect via ActiveSync. For the most part everything works great. Everything except that forward messages as eml attachments thing. Yes, I know that this is an Android issue. Yes, I know that Android uses SmartForward and that the real problem is Android cannot view eml attachments like most other devices can. That being said, this is a major source of frustration for our users. Many of our users travel heavily and their phone is their primary device. They forward a lot of messages from their mobile device. Other mobile users cannot view these messages. Web Client users can view the attachments, but still complain that things come across as attachments instead of inline. I know that there is probably no solution to this at the moment, but I'm going to ask anyway. Does anyone have a solution for this other than using Touchdown? Does Zimbra have any plans to implement something that would force these messages to be sent inline instead of as attachments?

Issue 2: IMAP
As a possible workaround for Issue 1, I have been considering using ActiveSync for contacts and calendar and IMAP for mail. I'm starting to like this idea as it would eliminate the eml thing and allow users to view HTML mail. However, I am running into an issue with this as well (also using the HTC mail app). Most, but not all, HTML messages sent from the Zimbra Web Client appear as blank messages on the device. You can see the header, but not the body. HTML messages sent from outside sources display correctly on the device. It is just HTML messages sent from our Zimbra server. I believe this is a primarily a Zimbra issue and not an HTC issue. Again, mail from outside sources displays correctly. Also, before Zimbra our company used a basic Linux IMAP server (Postfix/Dovecot). I connected to this server with an HTC device for over a year before we switched to Zimbra. I never had an issue reading mail from our old server. The IMAP issues started after the switch to Zimbra. Any ideas on why HTML mail sent from our server is not visible on mobile devices?

Thanks in advance for help with these issues.

[phoenix]

Have you considered using a third-party application such as NitroDesk Touchdown, it's not free but it works a treat with Zimbra NE and it will sync everything including viewing HTML email and as a plus the developers are very responsive to questions/suggestions. Just for the record, I have no association with that company other than as a (very) happy user.

[uxbod]

Yep, I second that Phoenix as I have had no issues with Touchdown.

[cornelius10]

Phoenix / Uxbod,

Thanks for the reply! Yes, I have considered Touchdown. I have played around with the demo version on several occasions. While personally I am not a big fan of the UI, it does seem to solve all of the ActiveSync issues. I realize that it is probably not realistic, but I was hoping to find a working solution that did not involve purchasing third party software. Due to the limitations of Android, I know that Touchdown is probably my only option for an ActiveSync client that works as our users expect it to.

My biggest question at the moment is more on the IMAP side. Why do HTML messages sent from our Zimbra server show up with a blank body in the HTC mail app. Again, all HTML mail sent from outside sources displays correctly. It is just mail sent from our server using the Zimbra Web Client. What is different about the mail sent from our server? I have attached a document illustrating this.

Thanks!

[fruitloaf]

For the HTML emails you should try Zimbra 7. ZCS6 identifies itself as an activesync 2.5 device which leads android to only pull text versions of an email. If there is no text version it will probably appear blank or in some cases I found I just got the raw HTML code.

ZCS7 gives decent HTML rendered email on Android however it doesn't solve the forwarding problem. Have you tried to get any users to use the mobile web client. Its excellent for me and you can put a shortcut direct to a bookmark on users home screens.

[cornelius10]

fruitloaf,

Thanks for the info. I'm glad to hear ActiveSync on ZCS7 handles HTML better. I will probably be scheduling an upgrade soon. I was just giving it a little time to work out any bugs. My problem with HTML is with IMAP though, not ActiveSync.

Regarding the mobile web client, yes I have put a shortcut on a few users phones. It is proving to be tough to get them to use it though over the native mail app. Personally, I use it all the time and really like it. If we don't switch to IMAP for mail, I will probably push the mobile web client more.

[mxx]

Hi,
Have you tried k-9 mail for imap? It's open source and free and probably still the best imap client for android!

[cornelius10]

mxx,

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I have tried K9. Overall, I think it is a great IMAP client (though I have never been able to get Drafts working correctly). I like its very robust configuration options. However, it is those very same configuration options that caused me to rule it out as a company wide solution. I do not have access to most of our deployed Android devices. Trying to install and configure K9 would thoroughly confuse most of our users (they are not the most tech savvy...). I am still hoping for a built in user-friendly option. I think I will be waiting for quite awhile...

[bsaxon]

We are experiencing the same issue with email forwarding (1500 Android Phones all using HTC Mail with Zimbra EAS). More details are located at the following page. Be sure to put in your vote. There is a commitment for Helix but doesn't guarantee that it will be fixed. Since it works with Exchange 2007, I know a server side fix is possible. So I am crossing my fingers at this point.

Bug 55289 – Android forwards as .eml attachment

[xeon]

Originally Posted by bsaxon

We are experiencing the same issue with email forwarding (1500 Android Phones all using HTC Mail with Zimbra EAS). More details are located at the following page. Be sure to put in your vote. There is a commitment for Helix but doesn't guarantee that it will be fixed. Since it works with Exchange 2007, I know a server side fix is possible. So I am crossing my fingers at this point.

Bug 55289 – Android forwards as .eml attachment

I experience the same thing on HTC ThunderBolt using ZCS 6.0.8 NE. However I mainly looked at the issue with the Outlook connector omitting the .eml attachment. So here is the bug for that:
Bug 58616 – message containing EML attachments are not showing within Outlook

If Zimbra can fix it so its not forwarding the email as a .eml this bug would not be needed, however if anyone sends a .eml attachment Outlook and ZCB might omit it as well.

Planning on upgrading to 7.0.1 this weekend. That should fix the HTML email issue and maybe other small quirks I am experiencing.