As CIOs, we need reliability and, in addition to EHR uptime, email is perhaps the platform that affects our credibility the most. Many of us are enjoying the explosion of intuitive and helpful consumer devices and applications. I like that my Garmin GPS watch can upload my runs to Endomondo, which automatically syncs with the Fitbit pedometer. This allows me bragging rights for the number of steps per day versus my exercise-disciplined wife. Unfortunately, my Garmin stopped working before I left for CHIME12 in California – a personal system reliability annoyance. Apple certainly has mastered the intuitive consumer device. Interestingly, Apple’s reliability issues have bumped into corporate email reliability in recent weeks.
Apart from needing to exercise to tame the extra CHIME conference calories, I was also escaping the stress of the latest CIO annoyance: iOS6. The problems with Apple Maps in iOS6 were well publicized, but corporate users have also felt pain with the calendar function. Most of us know that the iOS calendar function doesn’t seem to work well with Microsoft Exchange/Outlook. One particularly annoying bug is when a meeting in an attendee’s calendar loses track of the meeting organizer. For many weeks, the options were less than palatable: discourage users from upgrading to iOS6, advise users not to manipulate their calendar from an iOS6 device or block iOS6 devices from Exchange. An iOS6 update was published on Nov. 1 and testing looks promising.
We know the importance of having a reliable email platform. For us, after an arduous Exchange 2010 upgrade, we finally migrated our 80,000 email accounts this past summer. We continue to have some issues with client connectivity (we still have users with XP/Office 2003) and the Unified Access Gateway (UAG) that manages Outlook Web Access and ActiveSync connections.
So, the email system “works,” but some users have problems either because of the client or intermittent external access issues. It boils down to, “Yeah, Outlook has been having problems.”
Despite myriad different issues, the problems are all perceived as “Outlook.” Apple’s introduction of the iPhone 5 and iOS6 with the calendar bug was “another email problem” from the end user perspective. I’m not an Apple detractor. I use an iPhone 4S and an iPad 2, both with iOS6. In fact, I’ve really enjoyed using Apple maps as a GPS and haven’t got lost yet. However, it is amazing how the consumer friendly Apple devices deftly shifted the calendar blame to Microsoft Exchange, at least in our organization.
Here’s hoping the iOS6 patch brings us reliability and improved perception of our overall email platform.
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