So your running either Exchange 2003 SP2, or Exchange 2007 and you want to synchronise your iPod Touch or iPhone (standard/3G) , for mail, contacts and calendar?

If the answer is YES, then read on.     In the past you had to put up with IMAP or POP access to Exchange which did the job, but was fairly limited.

So with the advent of Firmware 2.0 for iPhone/Touch you can have full support for synchronising using the full push ActiveSync Airsync mechanism.

Right lets get started.     The first thing you need unless you have an iPhone 3G is to upgrade the firmware to version 2.0.    This can be done using iTunes and there is a small cost to-do this for the iPod Touch.   

Of course you need to have an Exchange server already setup to synchronise with mobile devices.   So its a good bet to make sure Windows Mobile devices can currently synchronise before you end up getting very frustrated.

So what do you do on the device?    I’ll walk you through what I did on an iPod Touch, but its the same process for the iPhone.

I used the new screenshot functionality of Firmware 2.0 to take these screenshots,    you press the top button and home button together and it saves the screen to the Photo’s application.

OK,   so the first step is to go in Settings from the home screen as follows -

Select Mail Contacts, Calendars.

Lets next tap Add Account

Tap Microsoft Exchange

Ok, so far so good, now it gets interesting.

Now,  unless you have email auto-discovery switched on, on Exchange (and I haven’t found anyone outside Microsoft that does),   in the email address type something that isn’t an email address,  e.g in my example I’ve type dummy (you can change it later).    This is an important step,  as if you really type in an email address the iPhone/Touch sits for ever trying to verify the address and you are never prompted to enter the address of your server.

The username is your windows domain followed by \.   The \ is difficult to get on the iPhone/Touch keyboard.     Press [.?123] key  , then [#+=] key ,  and you’ll see it.

Ok,  make sure your username and password are correct.   The password is case sensitive but the username isn’t (but remember the \ ).

Ok, now its time to type in your email address the Internet address of the server your synchronise with.    Note you don’t need to prefix it by http:// or https://   for help with what this address is look at ActiveSync on an Windows Mobile device that synchronises already in your organisation,  or ask a friendly IT admin (yes they do exist )

Almost done…

What do you want on your device, Mail, Contacts and Calendar?    I’ve found that most things work OK.     The biggest omission is that iPhone/Touch is that you can’t access the Global Address List (GAL),  like you can in Windows Mobile.

That’s about it,  your all ready to receive email.

Go check your email….

I always found that you can now change the email signature (within settings) so that it doesn’t reveal to your corporate IT that you sent and email from your Iphone/Touch, which I think some may find a good feature.