Syncing Contacts w/ iPhone

Problem reported by kevind - 5/2/2016 at 8:31 AM

Resolved

Managing contacts on an iPhone using ActiveSync could use some work.

Bug -- One of the new features of SM15 is the 'iPhone' type for a phone number.

On your iPhone, add/edit a contact
Change one of the phone numbers to the iPhone type
It immediately syncs to server as 'Home' over EAS.
This works fine with CardDAV.

Strange -- when you add a contact using EAS, it creates a bunch of empty phone slots in the web interface (doesn't happen with CardDAV):

Phone Number

Phone Number

Phone Number

Phone Number

Phone Number

Phone Number

Phone Number

Phone Number

Phone Number

Annoying -- using EAS, all contacts come into Smartermail as "Lastname, Firstname" even though they are "Firstname Lastname" on iPhone and when you add them directly in webmail. CardDAV doesn't do this.

Thanks,

Kevin

15 Replies

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Matt Petty Replied

5/2/2016 at 10:18 AM

Employee Post

Thank you for reporting these.

Matt Petty Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com

kevind Replied

6/25/2016 at 9:53 AM

Here's one more to add to the list.

In webmail, edit a contact and change the phone number to type iPhone.
Look on your iPhone which syncs via EAS, and it shows type Mobile.

Larry Duran Replied

6/27/2016 at 10:01 AM

Employee Post

Hello Kevin, this might be working as intended. I tried it myself and I get the same results, however, when I attempt to edit the contact there's not event an iPhone option. I Googled why this might be and from what I read it looks like only contacts stored on your phone can be assigned the iPhone option.

Larry Duran Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com

kevind Replied

6/27/2016 at 11:43 AM

Hi Larry, thanks for replying.

I would think that if the phone number is type "iPhone" in webmail, you should be able to sync it to the Apple device with type "iPhone" also. But maybe you can't tell it's an Apple device with EAS, so you specify "mobile" type so that it works on Android?

Regardless, there are a couple other bugs listed at the top of this thread. So if you could keep this thread open until all the issues are fixed, that would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kevin

kevind Replied

6/27/2016 at 11:54 AM

Are you using an Apple device? I can select any contact regardless of where it's stored and choose iPhone type.

Larry Duran Replied

6/27/2016 at 12:06 PM

Employee Post

Yes, I'm syncing from Web Mail to my iPhone 6 plus and also attempting to edit the contact on my iPhone as well. Maybe its a difference in devices or possibly iOS versions?

Larry Duran Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com

Larry Duran Replied

6/27/2016 at 12:09 PM

Employee Post

Hey Kevin, I believe some of those issues, if not all of them, will be fixes in our next minor build. Let me see if I can get you a list of which ones are fixed.

Larry Duran Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com

Larry Duran Replied

6/27/2016 at 1:17 PM

Employee Post

Hey Kevin, I have a few updates for you on these issues. I didn't see any about these issues in any release notes so I don't believe any fixes have been completed on them yet. I went ahead and tried them myself to see if I could get similar results and here's what I found.

I am able to select iPhone as the phone number type when I'm creating a contact on my iPhone. When I tap "Done" it immediately is changed to "Home" and is synced like that to the mail client. The strange thing is that after I click done and then edit that contact I no longer have the option to select iPhone as the phone type. I'll get with Matt on this to see if this is normal behavior or not.
I'm seeing the same issue when syncing contacts from my iPhone to the mail client where multiple phone numbers are added to the contact. I'll look further into this and if it's a bug I'll get it fixed before our next minor release.
It appears that contacts are being synced through EAS in the format of last name, first name. We're just displaying it the way the device is telling us so this is working correctly, even though it is quite annoying to look at.

I'll post another update when I have some more information for you.

Regards,

Larry

Larry Duran Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com

Larry Duran Replied

6/28/2016 at 10:48 AM

Employee Post

I have some updates on these items.

This looks to be a limitation on EAS. When I performed my testing I was able to create a new contact on my iPhone, select the phone number type as iPhone, but it immediately changes to Home after I tap the done button. I checked the logs coming from EAS and it is sending it to our web client as a home phone number. So this seems to be working according to what EAS is telling us.
I have a fix in place that should prevent the blank the fields from being created. So expect these changes to be present in our next minor build.
Nothing new on this item. It is working according to what EAS is telling us.

Larry Duran Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com

kevind Replied

6/28/2016 at 12:25 PM

Larry, thanks for your detailed work on this

Regarding #1, can you do a little more investigation? This feature works fine with Google accounts. It *used* to work fine with SM using CardDAV, but doesn't any more. Plus I tried it with another vendor's ActiveSync and the iPhone type isn't even an option -- so maybe the phone syncs with the server to define the data types?

The bottom line is that there might be a synchronization issue with with SmarterMail and EAS. To further demonstrate, try this:

Add a new contact with 5 phone numbers (make them all iPhone type)
Hit Done
The first 2 numbers flip to Home, 3 & 4 flip to Work, and the 5th goes to Mobile
Do steps 1-3 with a Google account and it works fine -- all get saved as iPhone type

Thanks,
Kevin

Matt Petty Replied

6/29/2016 at 8:22 AM

Employee Post

The reason you see this behavior with EAS, Google last I checked doesn't use EAS.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee160254(v=exchg.80).aspx
EAS is actually the limitation they only provide hardcoded elements for 2 home phones, 2 work phones, and 1 mobile phone. The phone itself is sending the data to us as "home" (Honestly should default to mobile), because there is no other way to identify as iPhone.

Matt Petty Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com

kevind Replied

6/30/2016 at 9:04 AM

Matt & Larry, thanks for checking into this. Yes, Apple should have coded the iPhone type to be sent as Mobile type via EAS. What were they thinking? :-)

Too bad SM can't piggyback onto the Google sync somehow. It would be super easy to set up a smartphone (sync mail, contacts, calendar) and you wouldn't have to pay for EAS licensing.

kevind Replied

6/30/2016 at 9:10 AM

One last item. For #3, does EAS actually send a "Display Name" or does SM concatenate lastname, + firstname? The reason I ask is 1) I didn't see Display Name in Matt's link above to the EAS specs and 2) I tried it with another vendor's EAS and it imported firstname + lastname.

Thanks,

Kevin

Larry Duran Replied

6/30/2016 at 12:09 PM

Employee Post

We don't concatenate it. We pull that data from the FileAs element in EAS. I tried changing some settings around on my iPhone to see if it would change but it always comes across the wire to me as lastname, firstname.

Larry Duran Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com

kevind Replied

6/30/2016 at 12:59 PM

OK, makes sense. Maybe the other EAS server just takes the firstname & lastname and ignores FileAs.

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