Getting Web-based and ISP e-mail on your Windows Mobile phone

How do you use e-mail in your small business? Do you get e-mails from potential customers asking about your rates or services? Do you respond to requests from current customers in e-mail? Do you use e-mail to communicate with your team and to keep tasks moving forward and schedules aligned? Do you get e-mail from family or friends that deserve a quick response? Some things cannot wait until the end of the day or for you to get back to your desk. If you carry a Windows Mobile phone, you can do all these things wherever you have a wireless connection. And if you have more than one e-mail account, you can use your Windows Mobile phone to access up to seven of them.

Many small businesses find that the simplest and most affordable option for keeping connected to e-mail on the go is to access their Web-based or Internet Service Provider (ISP) e-mail accounts on a Windows Mobile phone. Whether you have an e-mail account with Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, Microsoft Office Live for Small Business, or any other company that provides Internet service, you can respond to customers' requests quickly, ask (or answer) time-critical questions, and confirm arrangements and orders over e-mail—all from your phone.

Meet Alex, owner-operator of a home heating company. Alex has four employees, each of whom he has supplied with a Windows Mobile phone. Because the expertise in Alex’s company is more about heating systems than computer systems, Alex’s choice for e-mail is through his ISP. Everyone in the company has an e-mail account with this ISP that they can access on their phones.

If schedules need to change during the day, Alex can quickly get in touch with his technicians in the field through e-mail to confirm addresses or appointment changes, and he can reach all of his employees with one communication. In turn, Alex’s employees can stay connected to the office during the day. For example, with their Windows Mobile phones, Alex’s employees can submit a request by e-mail to order specialty parts before they leave the job site. Because the technician e-mails the request, it eliminates the chance of someone mishearing a voice message and ordering the wrong part. Not having to wait until the end of the day also means reducing the time it takes to complete a job and improving customer satisfaction.

You can set up your Web-based or ISP e-mail accounts right on your phone. There is an Auto Setup “wizard” right on the phone that walks you through the steps. On a Windows Mobile 6 phone, go to Start, tap Messaging, then tap New E-Mail Account to get started with the Auto Setup process. Auto Setup can check automatically for your server settings and makes the process easy. A new feature of Windows Mobile 6.1 makes easier still to auto-configure your custom e-mail accounts. You can refer to the instructions for setting up e-mail on the Windows Mobile Web site for details of what you need. I have also found that mobile operators are happy to help if you find you need assistance.

If I wanted to change my e-mail settings—and I have from time to time, particularly when I want to adjust the size of messages I receive on my phone—I can do so with just a few taps on the Menu in Outlook Mobile on my phone.

Outlook Mobile comes free with Windows Mobile phones. If you already use Microsoft Office Outlook on your desktop, you'll find that it’s an easy transition to use Outlook Mobile on your Windows Mobile phone. After all, you're already familiar with the look and feel of the folders such as Inbox, Drafts, Sent Items, and Deleted Items.

Outlook Mobile is, of course, compatible with the various Microsoft Office suites. So you can download, save, view, and send Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on your Windows Mobile phone.

For those times when you are not connected, you can also read the e-mails you have already downloaded. You can also create e-mails offline in Outlook Mobile and send them the next time you are connected.

One of the features I particularly value about Windows Mobile is the capability to synchronize my Outlook e-mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks between my desktop computer and my phone. With ISP or Web-based e-mail, you have two choices for how to download e-mail onto a Windows Mobile 6 phone.

Let’s look at how someone like Alex might use this feature.

Say that while Alex is in the office, he gets a call from a new customer. He enters the contact information into his desktop Outlook Contacts and schedules an appointment in his Outlook Calendar. When he synchronizes his desktop computer with his phone, the contacts and calendar information are transferred, so he has the information he needs wherever he goes.

Synchronizing saves time in two ways. First, Alex only has to enter the information once. Second, if he were out of the office and needed to contact a customer, he wouldn’t have to return to the office because he would have their contact information with him on his phone. The Windows Mobile Web site has step-by-step instructions on how to synchronize your Windows Mobile phone with your desktop computer.

You can have an even richer e-mail experience on your Windows Mobile phone with a Windows Live Hotmail account or an Office Live Small Business account. Not only can you wirelessly synchronize your e-mail when you choose; your e-mail is also synchronized to your Window Mobile phone in real time whenever you have mail. No waiting; your Inbox is always up to date.

With an Office Live for Small Business account, your company can have its own domain, which projects a more professional image. Your company-branded domain can end with .com, .net, .org, or .info, and can support up to 100 e-mail accounts.

If you have Windows Live and Office Live e-mail accounts on your Windows Mobile phone, you just need to log on to each account separately in order to receive your e-mail.

How many e-mails do you get in a day—10, 20, 30, 50, more? You can simplify your life by extending the reach of your e-mails to a Windows Mobile phone and using its capabilities to control the flow of the information. Staying connected means you can get more things done, and less stress for you and your customers. It also means having more time to spend on things in life that matter to you.

As a small business owner, I’ve found that on the days when I need to be out of the office on one project, it’s reassuring to keep connected to my other projects and family via e-mail. As a result, there are no surprises when I get back to the office, and I've stayed connected to those who matter most during the day.

It doesn’t take much time at all to get used to using e-mail on your Windows Mobile phone from the Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, or most other types of e-mail accounts you are already using on your PC. Your flow of e-mail doesn’t need to stop when you step out of the office. Because the setup is intuitive—there’s a wizard right on your phone to take you through the process—and the look and feel of Outlook Mobile is familiar, you’ll find it easy to get started. Before long, I’ll bet you’ll wonder how you got along without it.

If you want to maximize the benefits of e-mail on a Windows Mobile phone—such such as the ability to view e-mails in HTML format to preserve spacing, pictures, charts, tables, and hyperlinks as in the original documents and over-the-air synchronization of Outlook Calendar, Tasks, e-mail, and Contacts—you might consider the value to your business of moving your company e-mail to a Microsoft Exchange Server solution.