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New Microsoft Outlook for Mac from Office365
Problem reported by Tim Uzzanti - 10/31/2014 at 9:34 AM
Resolved
Employee Post
Today, a new Microsoft Outlook for Mac was released for Office365 subscribers.  We downloaded and tested the new Microsoft Outlook and we quickly discovered it does not work with SmarterMail.  It doesn't even connect.
 
We haven no idea if this is a Microsoft issue or SmarterMail issue but we are aware of the problem and will be looking into what we can do to solve it.
 
Thanks,
 
Tim Uzzanti
Tim Uzzanti
CEO
SmarterTools Inc.

68 Replies

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Gary P Replied
Any Update on this Tim ?
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
No updates yet.  We were solely focused on getting SmarterMail 13.x released which we did yesterday.  After a major release we dedicate the team to look at things like this and also provide additional support to the Customer Service team.  
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Gijs van Gemert Replied
any news? :)
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
No information yet.  We also discovered some changes to the Windows Mail clients that comes with Windows 8.1 as well.  It works but seems to constantly hit the server.  All Active Sync related items are being evaluated now and concurrently.
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Gijs van Gemert Replied
Do you have some fix? We really like to use SM it again :)
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
When we have an update, we will update the thread.
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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John McLachlan Replied
Hi Tim, I know you said you would update when you know, but I'm going to ask anyway :) is there any more progress on figuring out this issue, Outlook 2011 is a persistent cause of grief for us with sync and exchange issues, and we are hoping this new version is an improvement but we can't test it.
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
An update...
 
We are continuing to work on EWS and EAS as it relates to Outlook 2011 for Mac, Outlook for Mac from Office365, and Outlook 2013 for Windows.
 
The changes that have been made to each of these versions over the years have impacted their compatibility with SmarterMail.  These have slowly developed to be more and more problematic so I have put together a team to look at the issues as a whole.
 
Modifying anything with EWS, EAS, or any protocol for that matter, is extremely dangerous.  Most of the time, the modifications we make to SmarterMail are to accommodate clients that deviate from the protocol. Now, that is not to say sometimes we don't fall under that situation as well.  When we make changes to a protocol, it could have a significant impact on other clients, mobile devices, desktop applications etc.  Internally, we test across 50 of these solutions to make sure a simple change to fix one client didn't cause a problem in another.  But keep in mind, while we test against 50, there are 100's of unique clients used against SmarterMail.
 
With that said... We have found things that we could do to accommodate some of these deviations by clients, as well as a few things we could have done differently.  We have a minor release planned for this week; however, it will not yet include these changes as they are still being tested against the variety of test clients I mentioned above.  The hope is that we will have this ready for our next minor release.
 
Thanks,
Tim
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Reto Replied
Hi Tim

It would be good if you test some of this 50 devices in another locale than US.

We have some serious problems with the current SmarterMail as Exchange Replacement as there is sometimes the date off by one day or month and day get switched (Timezone settings are correct in SM).

What I can't believe is that SM is storing the birthday date for an contact different depending on the source. From the Webmail the date get set to mm/dd/yyyy 00:00:00 and over EAS to yyyy-mm-ddT22:00:00.000Z in the xml file. I would expect that SM stores the date internally to a fixed format to avoid conversion problems.
I'm not sure if storing a timezone is really needed for birthday.

Of course we will open an support ticket this week, this post is just an input for your special team that looks into EAS and EWS.

Best Regards,
Reto
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
We did resolve an issue exactly as you describe in EWS... a minor version or two ago. If you have another example of it, please open a ticket so we can get it resolved in this review we are doing. Thanks.
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Reto Replied
It's on the current sm version over EAS. I'm currently documenting the various errors. Another Problem is loosing an existing reminder (on all devices, webmail and outlook) when updating only the shows as/busy status within outlook. It seems outlooks sends only updated fields to the server and the server is then deleting the reminder because it's not in the EAS message.
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John McLachlan Replied
I can also Vouch for this issue Reto.
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Graham Southgate Replied
Has the connectivity to this version of Outlook been resolved?
 
And if so, is there a set of instructions that will tell me how I can configure it.  I only purchased the add-on to be able to use it with my Mac and I have never got it to work.
 
I can connect from My iPad using Smartermail server - running
  • SmarterMail Enterprise Edition
  • Version 13.1.5451
Thanks
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John McLachlan Replied
Hi Tim, 
 
Any word on this please ? 
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
We has EAS and Calendaring changes ready for the last minor. This upcoming minor we will have EWS changes which will resolve Microsoft Outlook for Mac from Office 365.
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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John McLachlan Replied
Thanks Tim
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
They are requesting a SP1 version of the EWS protocol which we do not support. We will be looking into what features its requesting and not fulfilling.
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Neal Culiner Replied
As of SM 13 build 5535 I still cannot use the EAS service I'm paying for fully.  Yosemite Mail, Outlook 15 Mac, etc. still cannot connect or use EAS.
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Brian Davidson Replied
We also don't seem to get full functionality. I do realize it's not all ST, but it is frustrating.
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John McLachlan Replied
Neal, Mac Outlook and Mac Mail uses EWS, not Active Sync, so Activesync will only work with IOS. So you need EWS plug in to work with Outlook 2011. The Caviet is that EWS does not work with the new version of Outlook 2016. Ans with Microsoft releasing the full public beta today of the full suite, this problem is likely to become more widespread. It would be good to get a solution. Tim Uzzanti, can you give us any more updates on whats happening ? has the new version resolved the issue potentially ?
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John McLachlan Replied
Tim any more news on this ? with Microsoft releasing the full public beta today of the full suite, this problem is likely to become more widespread. But from what i understand Outlook has jumped a couple of .updates ahead so it may have addressed some of these issues ?
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Liam Dwyer Replied
I am also experiencing this same issue with the latest version of Outlook for Mac for Office 365 and SmarterMail EWS. I just added the EWS to my license specifically for my Mac clients. An update on this would be appreciated.
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
The new Outlook for Mac requires an entirely new version of the EWS protocol. There are no bugs or modifications that need to be done with our implementation, but there ARE features that we need to implement, such as "conversations."
 
In Minor versions, we release fixes or make slight modifications to accommodate changes to email clients but the new Outlook for Mac is requiring significant NEW features to be added. Therefore, support for these new features has been pushed to the next Major version of SmarterMail.
 
We attempted to work on some of the features and get them in a Minor but the effort is about 400+ hours of work. Some of this work is complete but has required a number of significant changes to SmarterMail. For example, requiring configuration files to hold new data. We're anticipating the next major of SmarterMail to be in a few months and will release a public BETA prior.
 
I delayed my response to this thread because we were making an effort to get this in a Minor but the amount of changes, and time to implement these changes, were just too significant to put them in a Minor.
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Brian Davidson Replied
Tim, the information is appreciated. It helps us manage our client expectations.
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Bruce Barnes Replied
Great response, Tim.  Thanks!
Bruce Barnes ChicagoNetTech Inc brucecnt@comcast.net Phonr: (773) 491-9019 Phone: (224) 444-0169 E-Mail and DNS Security Specialist Network Security Specialist Customer Service Portal: https://portal.chicagonettech.com Website: https://www.ChicagoNetTech.com Security Blog: http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/ Web and E-Mail Hosting, E-Mail Security and Consulting
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John McLachlan Replied
Thanks Tim. Appreciate the response.
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Gary P Replied
Any Update on this Tim, how close are you to releasing a 'major' update to fix this ?
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User Replied
Gary, we are currently working on this and hope to have it in the initial SmarterMail 14 release. If not it will be shortly thereafter.
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Gary P Replied
So realistically what time frame are we looking at. 1 week, 2 weeks , a month ?

I do fully understand that it may be tricky to be precise, but equally it would be VERY helpful so we can advise clients.
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John McLachlan Replied
HI Tim, 
 
Just following up on this, I noted that Version 14 is now out... should this function with Outlook 2016 Mac?
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Employee Replied
Employee Post
We are still working on this.  It's a pretty big change going from the Exchange 2007 SP1 web services to Exchange 2010 SP2 as most of the new functions have to do with conversations which SmarterMail doesn't have back end support for.  So there are some work arounds that need to be done to make that work.  We will get that in a minor update to SmarterMail 14 but that is not available yet.
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Neal Culiner Replied
Bryon - this is way overdue. Sooner than later please, it was supposed to be in SM 14's "major" release and probably would have warranted it being a "major" release.
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Gijs van Gemert Replied
Hopefully it is here soon... This takes way to long. We can not use smartemail for months now :(..
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
Its about 90% completed. We have tested what is done and as soon as the final pieces are in place, it won't take much time for testing and release. Not only do we have to worry about Outlook's integration but other clients as well and unfortunately, the protocol gets bastardized across clients.
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Bruce Barnes Replied
Tim, et al:
 
You may want to read this article: https://account.smartertools.com/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fMain%2fDefault.aspx and see the planned authentication changes to Office 365 before proceeding further because they are based on, and predicated by planned changes to Exchange, to wit:
 
Exchange ActiveSync 16 is just around the corner:
 
 
It appears that now that Microsoft has moved Office to the cloud, they are going to do everything possible to impede connectivity by everyone else.
 
Using the testing facility at: https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com/, and running Exchange ActiveSync with Autodiscover, under the latest version of SmarterMail 14.0.5637
 
I got the result "Connectivity Test Successful with Warnings"
 
 
Bruce Barnes ChicagoNetTech Inc brucecnt@comcast.net Phonr: (773) 491-9019 Phone: (224) 444-0169 E-Mail and DNS Security Specialist Network Security Specialist Customer Service Portal: https://portal.chicagonettech.com Website: https://www.ChicagoNetTech.com Security Blog: http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/ Web and E-Mail Hosting, E-Mail Security and Consulting
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
Looks like it will be available for all customers and on-premise installations of Exchange as well.  We will put EAS 16 on our roadmap and see what we can implement within SmarterMail.
 
Thanks for the information.
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Employee Replied
Employee Post
Great news! The SmarterMail minor release scheduled for Thursday will include the long-awaited Exchange Web Services update to version 2010 SP2!! This took a lot of work but was well worth it. The EWS update adds support for Outlook 2015 for Mac from Office365 and the Outlook client for iPads. You should also see improved syncing and functionality when using eM Client as well.
 
One thing to note is that there may be a delay in including the push functionality when using Outlook 2015. Messages may have to be manually retrieved by using the Get New Messages button or refreshing the client. However, we are working hard and will do our best to include this in Thursday's release. 
 
Thanks!
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Neal Culiner Replied
Regarding your 2nd paragraph - please don't release this update until that is resolved. Don't release something half-baked please.
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Gijs van Gemert Replied
finally :)
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Neal Culiner Replied
When will we see the full solution available? It's odd in both Outlook for Mac (now released and out of preview) and the new Office 16 preview for Windows just sit there and never poll for e-mail.  
 
Thank you.
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John McLachlan Replied
Andrea, There are still several bugs with this implementation (many that i had raised several years back that where issues in Outlook 2011 for mac and have not been rectified which concerns me)
 
These are: 
 
1. If you put certain file formats in as attachments, Outlook shows a duplicate of the file with no data in it, in the attachments. This is really frustrating, Seems to be an issue with .jpgs still in this new version of outlook.Both the recipient and the sender can see this in the sent items and the received email. 
 
2. Also as mentioned above, Push emails are not working, you must press get mail for it to work. this is really a deal breaker.  
 
3. Email sent from Outlook 2015 Mac as a reply to an email chain, do not hold the chain in the recipients email, Especially noted when recipient is in Apple Mail.
 
There are others that i am continuing to test, and i will post them here once i confirm them all. 
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John McLachlan Replied
Andrea, There are still several bugs with this implementation (many that i had raised several years back that where issues in Outlook 2011 for mac and have not been rectified which concerns me)

These are:

1. If you put certain file formats in as attachments, Outlook shows a duplicate of the file with no data in it, in the attachments. This is really frustrating, Seems to be an issue with .jpgs still in this new version of outlook.Both the recipient and the sender can see this in the sent items and the received email.

2. Also as mentioned above, Push emails are not working, you must press get mail for it to work. this is really a deal breaker.

3. Email sent from Outlook 2015 Mac as a reply to an email chain, do not hold the chain in the recipients email, Especially noted when recipient is in Apple Mail.

There are others that i am continuing to test, and i will post them here once i confirm them all.
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
Thanks for the feedback. We will look into them.
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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John McLachlan Replied
Another issue is Server-based Rules cannot be set due to an error that the "Exchange Server is Unavailable" even though it is connected.
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John McLachlan Replied
Another Issue I've discovered:
 
Calendar Event time issues with 10am 

If you set an event with a 10am start in any timezone, Outlook 2016/2011 of mac, 
will change the time to 12am as you send the event schedule.

- Recipients get the event for 12am
- Your calendar shows the event at 12am
- Smartermail webmail intermittently still shows the correct time (but sometimes changes also) 
- if you try to change the time, it goes even more haywire
- Recipients who accept the invite can't delete the event in many cases. 
 
 
If you set the time for 10.01am it works fine, there is something specifically wrong with the 10am time. 
 
would love a solution... this is persistent since 2011, and i can't figure out if the issue lies with Smartermail, EWS or microsoft  or Apple. but it is a persistent issue. 
 
 
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Employee Replied
Employee Post
What version of SM are you running?
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Employee Replied
Employee Post
And what is your timezone?
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John McLachlan Replied
Enterprise 14.1.5675 with Exchange add ons, and timezone is +10 Sydney Australia
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Gary P Replied
Any update on this? Can someone from Smarter Tools confirm exactly where things are at with Office for Mac 2016 and other versions? , as reading above I think it's a little confusing at present.

Would be helpful to know and planned roadmap. 
 
Thanks
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John McLachlan Replied
Andrea or Tim, is there any update on this Please ?
 
Please advise when we will have:
 
- Push Emails working. 
- Fixes for Calendar issues I raised. 
- UTC Time issues with calendar. 
- JPG atachments splitting the preview image out and showing 2 attachments. 
- Server Based Rules working. 
 
I understand this is a new build but many of these issues where pre existing 
with the old version (outlook 2011) as well so they are not new. We mac users continue to pay Smartermail for 
a service that is not actually working as described on the box. Basic things like Calendar Date issues, 
Attachement issues and Push emails are the basics ? Surely these should work as expected. 
 
Really starting to get disheartened with Smarter mail as an exchange alternative in the mac environment. 
there is just to many on going quirks. 
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Graham Southgate Replied
Fully agree with the sentiments above.  Only got the addin to be used by me on a Mac and it hasn't worked for coming up to a year.  Was considering offering it to my user base but I can't charge for something that doesn't work.
 
It it is a lot of money on a promise that it will be fixed soon.   
 
Please give us some sort of time line - either it is coming or it is not!
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
I'm currently using Microsoft Outlook for 2016 on the Mac. The SEND and RECEIVE issue is currently being worked on. It is a shame there is no "frequency" to check in addition to auto-pooling. Also, the RULES requires a deeper evaluation of what is necessary. That is somewhat tailored around the Exchange. Were going to evaluate that soon. I haven't seen any UTC issues with the calendar. There have been a number of enhancements in our calendar code over the last few months. I'm also not seeing any attachments not working/splitting. Are you using the most recent versions of Microsoft Outlook?
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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John McLachlan Replied
Tim yes we are on the very latest version of everything. I find it frustrating to hear " Im not seeing any issues" when its clearly an issue I'm seeing on a daily basis. it is reproducible and I've been raising some of these issues for several years.

Send a JPG image with an image preview as an attachment and it splits the file into 2 when sending. This was verified as a bug with you guys years ago and it is yet to be rectified, even in the new versions.

Set a calendar event to 10am in UTC 10+ Timezone and send an invite it will change the time to 12pm. for you and the recipients.This is reproducible like clockwork in any instance. it also happens in other timezones (not all)

Even just viewing a calendar event now is frustrating in Outlook 2016 I have my timezone set to 10+ but it still displays times incorrectly as UTC without the 10+

I can send you screen grabs of all of these issues if required.

Im happy to discuss this with you offline Tim if you want to email me directly, then i can show you these issues first hand via email.
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
Yea, that would be best. I will have someone start an outbound ticket so we can duplicate the issues. Were actively working on this and want it 100%. Thanks, Tim
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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John McLachlan Replied
Tim, Let me know when yo have a ticket setup, so i can send you the screenshots.
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John McLachlan Replied
@Tim... Still waiting for a reply on a ticket for this, please advise. I would like to get this sorted out. The new Versions just release have not resolved any of my issues.
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Sérgio Rocha Replied
Thanks Tim
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David Weir Replied
Hi Tim any updates on this
Regards David Weir
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Marc Orcutt Replied
Any update on this? I just upgraded to the latest (14.4.5801) version and my Mac Outlook clients still don't get push notifications and users have to manually hit send/receive to get updates.
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
We are currently testing it internally and have a number of employees using it.  We are going to be starting BETA with a few companies.  Were also exploring some of the newer availability functions as well.  
 
This was a complete overhaul.  EWS will also be significantly faster!
 
Tim
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Graham Southgate Replied
Very annoyed - had to pay my renewal last week for EWS and EAS and had a whole year where - as a MAC user this hasn't worked - hope that you will review those loyal customers who have had to pay for a product that hasn't worked and offer some sort of refund.

I don't get away with treating my customers like this.
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Derek Curtis Replied
Employee Post

EWS should work normally on all clients while Outlook 2016 for Mac works differently because Microsoft transitioned to a new EWS implementation. All you need to do is hit Send and Receive in Outlook 2016 to see new email. I use EWS with Apple Mail on my Macbook and it works just fine for calendars, contacts and, of course, email.

Software evolves...new protocols, technologies, software and devices are all released at a very rapid pace, and we do our best to support all of them. As Tim mentioned, we worked on our older implementation and architecture of EWS and we have a newer implementation in BETA in the office with a few employees and will release it to some customers as well. What he didn't say was we had a second, completely separate team re-architect our EWS integration so that we could support all of the features in EWS as well as fully support Outlook 2016 for Mac.

Derek Curtis COO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Graham Southgate Replied
I understand that - what I would say is that we cannot update every time a minor fix is issued to work out ourselves and find out if something has been fixed. I have to inform my clients every time the system is going offline to allow for an upgrade, and as far as they are concerned, this is an outage.

We also know that there are always small issues with upgrades - which take time and resources to resolve and frankly I lost faith in your communications about the status of this issue. I know you have been hedging your bets as to the status - but this lack of honesty degrades my faith in your company - for what is 99% a great product. You say for me to use Apple Mail. I want to use Outlook and I can use IMAP for that in Outlook without a problem.

What I have struggled with personally is not having my Outlook Calendar working properly for over a year - and each time I want to update it, I have to check my iPhone or iPad to do it.

This goes for several of my clients, to a point that they are considering changing hosts to another provider - which costs me income.

If you do an upgrade and you haven't fixed something - tell us and then we can work out if we want to do the upgrade or not....and keep our customers informed.
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Marc Orcutt Replied
"All you need to do is hit Send and Receive in Outlook 2016 to see new email." - I'm sorry, but EWS is a push-based system and having to tell my Mac users that it is on them to remember to check for emails with all of the other stuff that they have to do through the day isn't really viable. The Mac users have already dragged the company into a different direction to find alternate solutions, like Slack, that provides them the communications and notifications that they need. Like Mr. Southgate commenting above, I too just renewed our annual subscription for SmarterMail, including EWS and EAS, which was really hard to justify when something basic like push notifications don't work and haven't worked for the entire last subscription period (and then some).

A double-whammy was the special holiday pricing for new users that was $200 cheaper than it was for our renewal, with the same exact options. I find it infuriating that, as a loyal repeat customer of a defective product, I'm charged more than a new user would be out-of-the-box.
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Derek Curtis Replied
Employee Post
Graham - Every major and minor release comes with a link to the release notes for that release. A review of those release notes should let you know if an issue you’re seeing is fixed or not. If your issue — or a mention of the item you had trouble with — isn’t listed in the release notes, chances are that issue is still being worked on. For larger issues or issues that can’t wait for the public release, we send custom builds to solve issues. We understand that upgrades can take time. However, we do what we can to make the upgrade process as simple as possible so that services are impacted as little as possible.
Derek Curtis COO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Derek Curtis Replied
Employee Post
Marc - Renewing your Upgrade Protection has a MUCH HIGHER discount available than paying for a new license. Renewals receive 60% off…the holiday promotion is 40%.

As for justification for the renewal, major releases bring new features, performance improvements and new functionality — just look at the release notes for both our major and minor releases and you’ll see the amount of work that goes into them. Next year will receive 2 MAJOR versions alone. You can’t associate ONE feature requiring additional work to the product as a whole.
Derek Curtis COO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Graham Southgate Replied
Derek - read our comments - don't try to avoid the issue. In the UK we have a sale of goods act and if the product advertised doesn't do what it says on the tin - the company supplying is in breach and should not charge.............

You charge separately for EWS and EAS and neither from my understanding or bill are discounted on renewal - only the core SmarterMail product (which is very good) but well under 50% of my bill - therefore stop telling me I am getting discount on a faulty and full price renewable product.
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Marc Orcutt Replied
Derek - well, maybe I did something wrong in the renewal. I will review it to see why there is a pricing discrepancy.

As for the new features that have been added in each releases - I can appreciate what you're saying as our company provides software product solutions as well. HOWEVER, our customers could care less about new features when we can't fix a bug that stares them in the face everyday.

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