We know and understand all of this. But in the latest SM16 builds (right now we`re on v16.3.6897), things have gotten worse for syncing Outlook via EAS: now it will randomly stop syncing for a user and stay that way until we reboot IIS and SM services or the whole server.
We`ve been living with the "minor" issues of mismatches, odd missing mail or very slow initial mailbox sync via EAS, but now people find that someone sent them an email half a day ago and they did not know of it because Outlook stopped syncing and they saw it by chance on the phone. It`s causing all kinds of stressful situations here, even loss of projects and revenue.
People do not care of the protocol issues or anything else - things were running relatively OK until a few weeks ago and now we`re full of problems. I hear "Why are we not using MS Exchange?" more and more often now (as in DAILY).. I personally believe it would be a massive waste of money and resources and keep putting everyone off: "SM 17 with MAPI is coming very soon and the issues will be gone" I keep saying for a few months, but at this point nobody believes me anymore.
For some users I can provide work-arounds (e.g. set up the same account twice in Outlook: once with EAS and syncing for 1 month which seems to work flawlessly [for contacts, tasks, calendar] and again with IMAP [for reliable {except for when there were IMAP issues with SM} for syncing all email]) or just convince them to not use the expensive Outlook program but instead use the WebMail interface (very decent, in my opinion) - but this is not an option for all users, especially not for the higher-ups.
People just want to be able to use Outlook for their Calendar, Mail, Contacts, Tasks, easily and I cannot put them off much longer. Tonight we`re scheduled to update to the latest SM 16 minor build - maybe this will solve the random Outlook not syncing issues. But if not, I fear that management simply will lose all patience for waiting for the elusive MAPI implementation in SM 17 and I will need to provide another solution, or I`m out. So what should I choose? How long should I stretch the line further?
This is why I`ve been asking about the status of EAS in SM 17 - maybe at least it will work as it did before, where even with mismatches, at least it would not stop syncing.
Thanks for listening :)