[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Technology is never quite as easy as it seems - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"
Monday, July 25, 2005 11:45 PM bradley

Technology is never quite as easy as it seems

Well here I am back home reading the... um... cdrom I guess you'd call it.  The Audiovox didn't come with a manual, just a quickstart guide and instead with a cdrom that you had to browse to find the PDF manual.  And I'm obviously missing something.  I sync'd.  Then I had to manually run the SBS mobility config file and when I go to synchronise it gives me a “failed to connect would you like to try pass through settings”.... uh...okay...whatever that is...so now that I read the Small Business Mobility document, I'm off to the Audiovox document and Wayne's chapter in the Advanced Windows Small Business Server 2003 book to see what I missed.

For all I know it could be the cell phone not fully set up.  I'm not sure if I need to set up the Xmail or whatever the Cingular service is, but it also doesn't appear that the plain ol' Internet [IE on the phone] is working.  So I need to read up as to what I missed.

My sister and I were joking that instructions need to be more step by step....

  1. Open the box
  2. Remove the phone from the box
  3. Turn on the phone
  4. Take the twisty tie off the power cord
  5. Save the twisty tie in case you want to wrap the power cord back up exactly the way it was [which of course you never can]
  6. Firmly grab the power cord and extend it to ensure that you cannot wrap the power cord exactly the way it was
  7. ....you get the idea :-)

Like one of the question I have about the settings that isn't clear on page 21 is that it says “enter the domain name for the Windows Small Business Server“.  Okay ... does that mean the domain name on the inside or the domain name on the outside?  Like when I log into the network at the office all I see as the 'domain name' is DOMAIN, not DOMAIN.LOCAL or DOMAIN.COM.  So I'm not quite sure which domain that is.  Plus if you have a dyanamic IP or no domain name [as you can set up a server by accessing it with https://ipaddress/remote and Remote Web Workplace will work]  or https://domain.tzo.com/remote what exact fully qualified domain name are you talking about?  I only open up 443 on my servers, thus the instruction to put in the “fully qualified domain name“ at home is https://domain.tzo.com/remote.  So in those cases when it wants Server name and Domain, in a dynamic setup or places where folks haven't set up a domain name and are using an IP address... can they still use this? 

It's not clear to me.

In the meantime... since I can't get to the Internet on the device at all, I'm not 100% sure it's even fully ready to go.

Bottom line... I'm reading and seeing what I missed.

In the meantime...the phone is charging.

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# re: Technology is never quite as easy as it seems

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 7:31 AM by bradley

Here's a few lessons I learned when I first got the my smartphone (Motorola Mpx220). First, I looked at Microsoft's website and saw a newer version of ActiveSync, so I installed from there instead of pushing it from SBS. This meant that the self-signed certificate wasn't copied onto the phone and I had to do this manually (thank you Google!).

When setting up the server name, I learned that it had to match the certificate. I don't use ISA in my setup, but presumably you will want the same external (domain.com) as it is setup in ISA. You do not need to put the subfolder, as the phone will automatically try connecting to https://domain.tzo.com/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync (not the remote folder for RWW).

Of course, if IE doesn't even work, then your problem isn't the certificate or server name yet. What kind of plan did you setup with your carrier? With Cingular you have the choice between a $20 MediaNet package or $40 PDA connect. With the PDA Connect plan, you can go into your configuration and remove the proxy settings. It should work with them, but I've noticed a slight speed increase without them.

Also, are you trying to browse via GPRS, or via the USB sync-cable? Within the options for your desktop's ActiveSync is a checkbox to allow pass through Internet. Perhaps this would help. Or perhaps you should try getting the GPRS to work first before messing with ActiveSync (after all, this is what you will be using most to check e-mail and stuff)

# re: Technology is never quite as easy as it seems

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 7:40 AM by bradley

On a related note, you (and the recipient of this phone) may want to check out (and get the RSS feed) for http://www.smartphonethoughts.com. They are always reviewing new software that's available (and sometimes new phones).

# re: Technology is never quite as easy as it seems

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 11:57 AM by bradley

SBS SP1 has the latest version of ActiveSync, so that shouldn't be your problem.

In general, carriers NEVER set their network settings up right in their images. Don't ask me why, but with my 2 smartphones to date (including the AudioVox, which is an awesome phone, by the way), I've always had to tweak stuff by hand.

Make sure to go into your network settings and for all network connections, set the network to "Automatic". It's the easiest way to make sure things keep working. If you keep getting the pass through request, it's not going through correctly.

Also, don't be surprised if Cingular screws up your GPRS billing. For 2 months running now, they've billed me for network usage even when I have the plan (like, right below each other too), so I have to call and get a credit for the mistake. We'll see if this is correct in Month 3.