Scalix is an Exchange alternative. It’s not as fully featured (and development seems to be at a standstill) but it is a lot cheaper than Microsoft’s offering. They even have a free community edition but that doesn’t offer Outlook or Exchange connectivity.
We had successfully managed to sync Scalix to Windows Mobile 6 devices as well as iPhones and I was hoping it would also work on WP7.
My first attempt failed and ,after reading that WP7 only uses a subset of ActiveSync functionality, I presumed it wasn’t possible. However, after struggling with IMAP, and not wanting to go near POP3, I managed to get ActiveSync up and running on my Omnia 7.
I can sync my calendar, contacts and email just like what is available with an “Outlook” (Exchange) account. You also get “push” email functionality and a nice “Live Tile” for your home screen (although not as cool as my attempt above). It doesn’t seem to sync if I flag an email but if I read or delete one then that change syncs.
Read on to get the walkthrough
Here’s what to do (bear in mind, you do need to have Scalix ActiveSync licenses enabled for each user that wants to use it)
- On your WP7 device go to Settings>System>Email & Accounts
- Click “add an account”
- Click “advanced setup”
- Type in email address e.g. thom@corp.co.uk
- Type in password (same as webmail password)
- Press “next”
- Press Exchange ActiveSync
- Fill out as follows (replacing italics as appropriate)
- Email address & password should already be filled from step 4 & 5
- Username: thom
- Domain: Scalix ignores it but it must contain something to continue
- Server: webmail.corp.com
- Require SSL: Depends on how you have it set up. Tick if your webmail goes to a https:// address
- Account Name: Anything. Shows up on Live Tile and app list. TIP – Start it with “a” or a number if you want it at the top of the list
- The next 5 boxes are your own preference but that is where you can choose to sync Email, Contacts and/or Calendar
- Click the “sign in” box at the bottom and it will start it’s initial sync
It automatically pins a live tile to your Start screen, showing you a total of unread emails.
I have heard from others that the intitial sync doesn’t always work. However, the following options seem to sort the issue.
- Try a hard reset of the device (take the battery out) then try to re-sync
- Disable wi-fi & try over normal 3G (sometimes a corporate WLAN my mess up the connection)
Hope that helps some others out there.
To find out more about Scalix, check out scalix.com
Thom's HeadSpace 
Hi,
I’m also trying this but i keep getting the error 85010014.
I already found that this is only when I try to synchronize the calendar;
If I move all my apointments to a local pst file the phone synchronizes without an error.
But from the moment I make a new appointment on my PC i ghet the error number.
If i create an appointment on my phone it gives another error (no number).
Did you do something to get your calendar synced?
grtz,
Stijn
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I literally did the steps above and that was all.
Do I understand correctly that ActiveSync works on your WP7 for contacts and email?
Have you got ActiveSync working on older Windows Mobile 6.x devices? You may just have something wrong on the Scalix server side?
What happens when you add something to the webmail calendar?
Another thing to try is
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These are the first devices that are going to use ActiveSync.
The weird thing is that I once got all the appointments on the phone. It’s only after trying to add a new appointment on the phone that the problems begun.
Adding through webmail works perfect.
I already removed the activesync account from the phone and powered off + removed the battery.
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I set this up on another phone and got a similar issue. It wouldn’t sync at all.
I did a hard reset and turned of wi-fi.
This force it to use a 3g connection and not our corporate wireless connection and it seemed to sync fine after that.
I then re-enabled wi-fi and haven’t had any issues
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Unfortunately the guy that set up Scalix ActiveSync for my company doesn’t work here any more so I don’t know if he did anything special to get it working.
I would normally recommend contacting Scalix or using there forums but they seem to be ignoring the issue, giving the “this device is unsupported” line.
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