What is this sourcery? (Blackberrys and emails)

[Little-Miss]

We use zimbra here and when setup on devices (iPad) outside the network you can't send email blah blah, so I VPN onto Network on my iPad and send mail using my account that way...

 

Now twice I have received email from staff members accounts using their blackberrys.....how!? Is this something to do with that package they have to buy into to use email?

 

Sorry if I'm being dim...

[synaesthesia]

Not at all, Blackberries have far superior email systems to most other devices (one of the few things left going for them these days, I say as a BB owner myself) so attach to Zimbra very easily. For the members of staff who ask about using it on their iDevices they are told to use the website as that just works although not as convenient.

[Little-Miss]

Oh ok. So what do they do different to my iDevice to make it work?

[Michael]

It sounds to me you're possibly using POP3 on the iPads and IMAP on all other devices. This would make sense as BGFL block POP3 access outside of their network.

[synaesthesia]

Dunno the technicalities of it tbh Just set it up as an account and it works. Blackberries push all emails through their own email service so I don't know if it's kind of a proxy to piggyback other accounts on. Got 8 different email accounts on mine which just works.

[bossman]

We mobile use Zimbra here and all endusers can use any mobile phone to access their e-mail externally it just has to be setup correctly in both the admin side and on their mobile devices.

 

Blackberry devices have what they call a push mail service which is part of the price plan (£5 extra) and with this e-mail is fed directly to the device unlike other devices which have to run through the browser to access the webmail side.

 

Not had any problems using different mobile devices though.

 

If you setup the devices using IMAP as the server type and the port to access along with the mail server address then the username and password which they use to access their e-mail then everything should work just fine.

[synaesthesia]

Don't idevices have push now though too? If not, what is it they've just banned Apple from using in Germany? (slight ignorance, sorry).

 

It's rare for any BB users to actually pay for that btw, I pay just over a tenner a month including all my minutes etc, generally it's included in all contracts.

[localzuk]

I don't know the specific setup you've got there, but it doesn't make sense for BBs to be getting email direct but iDevices not to.

 

Zimbra, as a product comes in 2 distinct forms when looking at mobile devices:

 

1. With mobile support

2. Without mobile support

 

Both can be used to with mobile devices directly though. The prior option just has better integration with things like calendars etc...

 

The latter means you have to use either a POP3 server or an IMAP server to receive your email. With SMTP, you could either use the Zimbra server to send emails or use any SMTP server, but with your zimbra email address as the originating address.

 

The prior option costs more and costs per device IIRC (from quotes I had a couple of years back).

 

So, it sounds to me like you're being fed a bit of a porky somewhere.