Products & Services
The best is yet to come
By James on 10 September 2008
SEATTLE, USA – For the last two years Andrea Rakowski has been working on Mail for Exchange and she reckons the best is yet to come. And that’s after today’s announcement that Mail for Exchange will be available on more Nokia devices than ever before, giving Nokia users as much choice as they really could want. This latest move, and the next steps, is in response to customer demand, Rakowski maintains, and, the demands of keeping to the Nokia masterplan.
Of course, in true Nokia tradition, even our finest charm couldn’t eek out of the Mail for Exchange product manager a sniff of what’s coming next. Other than an assurance that “its’ good” and “we’ll be continuing to give our customers what they want”.
Rakowski is based in Seattle, rather conveniently, given that’s also home to Microsoft. “It works that I’m down the street from Microsoft” and there’s no doubting her enthusiasm for her job “I love this product, I’m really passionate about it, but I’m lucky because I work with a great team”. Not that they see much of each other face to face. Her manager, Petri Asunmaa, is based in Helsinki whilst the Development team work out of Dallas.
And that’s how it should be, according to Rakowski “We’re a global company, developing and selling the idea of mobile working, and employees being able to do their job from anywhere”. It makes sense then that employees live that life. Add to that a global and connected team, which is something that’s long been developed by Nokia, and allowing people from different teams and disciplines mix it up in the same space. “Right now I work from home, but in a couple of weeks I’ll be moving into the new office in Kirkland, sharing space with another, different, team”. A sniff of what’s to come?
Perhaps, but Rakowski won’t take the bait. She might have only been a product manager for the last nine months but she’s well aware of when to stop with details. “You’ll have to wait and see” is her only offer.
Meantime, whilst she’s off to plot the roadmap, there’s an opportunity to get your thoughts on Mail for Exchange to the people who can make a difference. What would you like to see in it next? Answers below,
please.
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September 12th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Folder support would be excellent.
I would also like to see a little better integration with the inbuilt Messaging app. Specifically, when I open the messaging app from the main menu, go to Inbox, navigate over to the “Mail For Exchange’ inbox, select a message, read it, and press the right softkey for ‘back,’ it takes be back to the ‘Mail for Exchange’ inbox in such a way that still allows me to navigate to other inboxes (text messages and so forth) with the directional pad.
When I navigate to ‘Mail for Exchange’ using the ‘Mail for Exchange’ plugin on my homescreen, it still takes to to the ‘Mail for Exchange’ inbox as I would expect, but I cannot navigate to other inboxes from there. I always found this behavior odd.
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September 16th, 2008 at 5:18 am
I would like to be able to see meeting attendees when opening the appointment in the calendar.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I’d like to SEE my email in LARGER TEXT (the largest font option isn’t large enough for many business users). I’d also like all the functionality of Exchange Mail calendaring and scheduling on my mobile phone. Thanks.
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October 6th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
The absence of folder support is a large reason why many of our employees will not switch to an E71 with MFE.
One addition that I would like to see in the next release is syncing the field for the Contact’s photo in Outlook/Entourage. This is a feature that has really saved my bacon in the past. The addition of syncing Spouse/Anniversary was less revolutionary in the current release.
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