[kritchie]

As an "enterprise user", the reason I still take abuse around the office for having a BB is that I can easily do more of my job from my phone than any other platform. As I wait for BB10 to drop, I increasingly worry that it will be a step backwards in enterprise integration. It seems all of the coverage is around how RIM will address consumer feature gaps and not how RIM will continue to dominate in the areas of enterprise and security.

When evaluating the Playbook I noticed many of the features that exist on my BB OS7 device are missing from the Playbook OS - such as calendar availability. I understand that the Playbook OS and BB10 are not exactly the same. But I haven't found any reviews that cover the pure enterprise feature sets that BB10 will have.

Below are some of the reasons I'm still on BB as opposed to iOS, Android or Windows. If anyone can comment on whether they'll exist in BB10, it would be greatly appreciated.

Advanced Search - the ability to specify separate To/From, Subject, Body, Local/Remote, Email Type, etc. is paramount to finding the "needle in the haystack" which is my email.

Saved Search - the ability to take an advanced search and save it for frequent re-use.

Find in Message - the ability to find a phrase in the body of an open email. Critical for skipping through long emails to get to a specific point.

Attach Files / Contacts - the ability to attach files from the filesystem and contacts from the addressbook to any email.

View Calendar from Invite - the ability from within an email calendar invite to view the proposed calendar entry within the context of the rest of my calendar.

View Calendar Availability - critical for scheduling people and resources across multiple timezones.

Forward Calendar Entries - within calendar, the ability to forward an entry to another user.

Reply to Attendees - within calendar, the ability to reply to all attendees - different than updating the calendar invite.

Show Task Due Dates in Calendar - and alert on them.

View Attachments to Calendar Entries - enough said.

Remote User Lookup - in email and calendar, the ability to lookup corporate contacts not in the local addressbook. Bonus if the lookup is backgrounded like BB OS.

Browser behind the firewall - probably not possible without BES. Having to enable a VPN every time I want to hit an internal website is a PIA.

For me, enterprise integration is really about extending the full access to Exchange to the palm of my hand. At times I even prefer my BB to my Outlook client - it's faster for finding and attaching vcards to emails for example. Perhaps others have more enterprise features they could add to the list. I'm just hoping these don't go away. We need at least one enterprise focused mobile platform going forward. iOS, Android and Windows are decidedly consumer focused and lack deep integration with Exchange and the corporate network.

[S180]

I can't comment on the specific features. What I can tell you is that there will be a MAJOR update in October/November for BDS (the BES for BB10/PB). This should bring a lot of features currently missing in the currently released BDS. This release was supposed to co-incide with BB 10 release. Even though BB10 has been delayed, this BDS update will still be released in the October/November timeframe.

[BB10FTW]

@S180 - How do you know that? I don't use BES or any other RIM services beyond BIS but, as a fan of RIM I am just curious. Also what might you be able to comment on with the major update?

[S180]

How do I know this? Insider RIM information from individuals in that particular department.

I can't comment much on specific features unfortunately.

[BB10FTW]

RIM has got me working on my patience a lot lately.

[jonty12]

You, my friend, have summed up my concerns very nicely. My biggest concerns are highlighted below (as well as BB Mobile Conferencing, and BB Travel)

As an "enterprise user", the reason I still take abuse around the office for having a BB is that I can easily do more of my job from my phone than any other platform. As I wait for BB10 to drop, I increasingly worry that it will be a step backwards in enterprise integration. It seems all of the coverage is around how RIM will address consumer feature gaps and not how RIM will continue to dominate in the areas of enterprise and security.

When evaluating the Playbook I noticed many of the features that exist on my BB OS7 device are missing from the Playbook OS - such as calendar availability. I understand that the Playbook OS and BB10 are not exactly the same. But I haven't found any reviews that cover the pure enterprise feature sets that BB10 will have.

Below are some of the reasons I'm still on BB as opposed to iOS, Android or Windows. If anyone can comment on whether they'll exist in BB10, it would be greatly appreciated.

Advanced Search - the ability to specify separate To/From, Subject, Body, Local/Remote, Email Type, etc. is paramount to finding the "needle in the haystack" which is my email.

Saved Search - the ability to take an advanced search and save it for frequent re-use.

Find in Message - the ability to find a phrase in the body of an open email. Critical for skipping through long emails to get to a specific point.

Attach Files / Contacts - the ability to attach files from the filesystem and contacts from the addressbook to any email.

View Calendar from Invite - the ability from within an email calendar invite to view the proposed calendar entry within the context of the rest of my calendar.

View Calendar Availability - critical for scheduling people and resources across multiple timezones.

Forward Calendar Entries - within calendar, the ability to forward an entry to another user.

Reply to Attendees - within calendar, the ability to reply to all attendees - different than updating the calendar invite.

Show Task Due Dates in Calendar - and alert on them.

View Attachments to Calendar Entries - enough said.

Remote User Lookup - in email and calendar, the ability to lookup corporate contacts not in the local addressbook. Bonus if the lookup is backgrounded like BB OS.

Browser behind the firewall - probably not possible without BES. Having to enable a VPN every time I want to hit an internal website is a PIA.

For me, enterprise integration is really about extending the full access to Exchange to the palm of my hand. At times I even prefer my BB to my Outlook client - it's faster for finding and attaching vcards to emails for example. Perhaps others have more enterprise features they could add to the list. I'm just hoping these don't go away. We need at least one enterprise focused mobile platform going forward. iOS, Android and Windows are decidedly consumer focused and lack deep integration with Exchange and the corporate network.

[kritchie]

So there have been a lot of demos of BB10 running on the dev devices. Yet I still don't see any that cover the features I listed above. All the demos I've watched focus on the user interface which looks great but isn't the core BB functionality I'm really concerned about.

Has anyone found recorded demos of the features above? If so, please post. Does anyone have a dev device connected to enterprise infrastructure that could create some demos around then features above?

[kritchie]

Now that some lucky souls already have their hands on the Z10, someone should be able to comment on whether the features in the first post of the thread made their way into BB10. Anyone?