Friday, June 11, 2010

Now Syncing: Reply/Forward Flags and Conversation View


NuevaSync is now running the latest, Exchange 2010-compatible version of the sync protocol. This provides some nice new features including sync for reply and forward message flags, and a conversation (threaded) message view. At present these features are only available to Windows Mobile 6.5 users but we expect other devices to add support in the future.

In the screen shot on the left, messages that you've replied to show up with a purple arrow, while forwarded messages have a blue arrow. The new conversations view can be selected from the sort menu, on the right below:




Here's my desktop Thunderbird view onto the same AOL mailbox. You can see the messages have the same reply and forward marks (and the same color!). These flags sync both ways, so whether you reply and forward on the device or the desktop, you'll see a consistent view.




The conversations view groups messages from the same thread or conversation together, displayed as one entry in the inbox. For example on the left below the highlighted inbox item is a conversation. It's indicated by the multiple-envelope icon and the number (5) which is the number of individual messages in the conversation. Open the conversation and the view on the right shows all the individual messages.




New users, and any new device that hasn't been syncing in the past will automatically get these new features. To ensure uninterrupted service, we arranged for devices already syncing to keep using the older sync protocol version (the version change triggers a resync). To upgrade one of these devices log into our web site and trigger a device resync.

For now these features are only available on Windows Mobile 6.5 but we expect other devices will be updated in the future to include similar capabilities.