Current encounter with Touchdown

[catchacold]

Here is the email thread since there is no phone support for corp users.

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We currently have a couple Droid X's in our environment and we use Exchange 2003 with Outlook. I have an end user that has hundreds of contacts that have a ext (extension) at the end of their contacts numbers. The Droid X will dial this ext and the call will not go through.

555-555-5555 Ext. 1234

I want Touchdown to ignore Ext. 1234. Is this possible?

I know our Windows Mobile phones would do this.


Hi Danny,

Please ignore the last email. The system is messing with me.

I am researching your issue and will contact you as soon as I get an answer.


Regards,
KerriKat
(In another email she sent me a canned response on a 403 error)

Oh okay – I didn’t understand what you were talking about.


Thanks,
Hi Danny,

I’m so sorry for the confusion. I talked to our developer and he suggested going to settings>advanced in TouchDown and select Normalize phone numbers. That will dial the extension for you. If you do not want this to happen, uncheck Normalize phone numbers.


Regards,
KerriKat
I DON’T want to dial the Ext plus the number.


Windows mobile phone will not dial the Ext plus the number. Works like it is supposed to.
Danny,

Ok great, did you uncheck "normalize phone numbers" and save changes? The default is to have it checked on.

Kambria Chott
Support Super Villain
I am NOT using normalize phones numbers at all.
(I sent another email right after that)

Is there any way to get someone one the phone to discuss this problem?

Email in this instance is not being an effective means of communication.
Danny,

No I'm sorry we do not have a support phone line. I am going to ask my developer this morning once he gets to the office if there is a way to turn this behavior off. You are the first customer I know of who has had this issue. Of course there is always the option to just add in a second phone number field with the number not including the extension…

Kambria Chott
Support Super Villain
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But you don’t understand – We came from a Windows phone environment. The owner of this company has over 3,000 contacts with the following number format 555-555-5555 Ext. 555 – With the Windows Mobile phones, it excludes the Ext. 555 – Touchdown or Droid will dial it. I don’t want it to dial it. I don’t want to manually change 3,000 contacts either.

Understand this is a business environment and I have already went up to engineering with Motorola about a another contacts issue. So now I am with Touchdown, after Moto provided us with 3 licenses to try and fix this issue.



The next problem will be that Touchdown does not copy the contacts to the phone db even if this option is checked.
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Danny,

If you have 3,000 contacts that all have separate extensions to them, but you never want to dial those extensions, then I think your simplest solution here is to create a new contact that simply says "Company X Main Line" and dial that contact every time you want to reach the main line. No, we do not have any way to force TouchDown to ignore 3,000 extensions, there is just no good reason to do that instead of simply creating a "Main Line" contact instead.

I do hope this helps.

Regards,

Kambria Chott
Support Super Villain
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I don’t understand your suggestion.

If this is not possible for Touchdown to do maybe this should be an enhancement. As stated this is how all windows mobile phones work.
Danny,

If you want to dial the direct line of the company, but not include the extension, than your best and fastest option is to create a contact that only has the company main line, and not any extension, and then to call that when you do not care to enter an extension. The Normalize phone numbers option, when turned on, whenever contacts are retrieved from the server, the phone numbers will be changed to make the following replacements:
? • X and x, and ext. will be replaced by a ;
? • P and p will be replaced with a ;
? • W and w will be replaced with a ,
This is useful if you have phone numbers which contain post-dial sequences which need to be correctly interpreted. Also, if you are adding or editing contacts from TouchDown, TouchDown allows for a "pause" option to be inserted into these numbers. In the contact edit screen you should type the phone number and semi colon, then press the character key (bottom left corner). There will be a “pause” option. Choose it, then enter the pin (or leave it in place if it's already there) and save the contact. When you dial, from now on the phone will automatically ask if you want to enter the pin as soon as the line answers your call. Press yes or no and each call will give you the option to dial the extension or not. However, this still involves some changes to be made to the contacts.
All of that said, we are not Windows Mobile. We do not promise to turn your Android phone into a Windows Mobile phone. We try to remain competitive, but perhaps we are just not understanding each other here because the work arounds I have given you should be more than sufficient. If not and you are still disappointed you may choose to return your Android device and repurchase a Windows Mobile phone that meets your expectations. We apologize for any disappointment.

Regards,

Kambria Chott
Support Super Villain