Friday, May 27, 2011

What I wish my phone did

This post could also apply to any smart phone.  It's about my bb since that's what i have now.  I'm curious to see what the Windows7 phone will be capable of.

Ok, I've had a BlackBerry with my last two jobs and now I have a torch.  I'm still waiting for three big features that would truly give me 'outlook in my pocket'.  I understand that not everyone wants to have all the features of their pc in their pocket, but I've always wanted to be able to do everything on my phone that I can do on my desktop.  I don't think I'm alone given the popularity and incredible demand in the tablet device market.  But, I digress.  On to the features!
  1. I wish I could categorize items from my phone: Color coding is awesome!  I categorize my emails, my task items, and my calendar items.  I sometimes do this with rules, but mostly, I do it manually.  It helps me segregate the items on my calendar as well as helping me know at a glance what my plans concern.  I color code for different projects, types of meetings, etc.  I wish I could do this from my bb and sync it back to my outlook
  2. I wish I could follow up on items from my phone: Have you ever noticed that you can mark an email to be followed up on from within outlook?  Just right click the email in Outlook and under Follow Up, there are a bunch of options.  Say you've read the email and you need to respond to it, but not until next week.  Right click >> Follow Up >> Next Week.  Outlook puts a flag on the email and also adds the email to your To-Do bar (Alt-F2 to show/hide).  Outlook pops up a reminder next week that you need to address that email.  I wish i could mark something to be followed up from within my phone.  As it is, i mark the message unread (even if I've read it) so i know i need to mark it when i get back to my desk.
  3. I wish my phone knew when i was in meetings: Wait, it does: my calendar is synchronized with my phone!  I mean, i wish my phone knew when i was in a meeting and automatically turned off the ringer.  Then turned it back on after the meeting is over.  How hard would it be to add a field to a calendar item with a drop down containing my profiles.  Let the default profile be 'silent', but maybe it's just a training class and i want it to go to vibrate during that time.  So be it.
Anyway, those are my top 3 requests for my phone.  If anyone knows how to accomplish this in the existing setup, let me know.  Otherwise, I'm waiting with baited breath.

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