iPhone 3.0 Features Reviewed: Usability improvements for Road Warrior
Displaying all 3 posts.
Post #1
Zenprise wroteon June 11, 2009 at 9:11am
Just upgraded my iPhone 3G phone to the yet to be released 3.0 software. Here are the new features that I believe will benefit the road warrior in the enterprise:
* Auto-dial #. Phone numbers that are embedded in a calendar entry now show up as hypertext links. When clicking on the link, the phone number is automatically dialed. I have noticed though that this only seems to work if the number is in the notes section. This is definitely a step in the right direction, although most people put dial in numbers in the "location" field when scheduling a meeting in Outlook. Phone numbers in the location field for me do not show up with the hypertext links.
* Invite attendees. You can now invite people to meetings directly from your calendar! When scheduling a meeting, you will now see a field for "attendees" that will either access your local address book or your corporate address book.
* Meeting Status. You can see whether someone has accepted a meeting on your iPhone. Ever been in one of those situations where you've dialed into a call, only to wait for others to join? Now you can glance at your calendar invite to see whether the person ever accepted the meeting.
* Search! Ok, this was something definitely lacking in versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the software. Won't spend a lot of time on this one since a lot of folks have written about it already. What I will mention though is that you can not only search locally on your phone, but you can also search on your corporate server as well. So, if you only sync two weeks of email to your phone, you can still retrieve an email sent several months back by having the iPhone search your corporate email account directly.
* Copy and Paste. Again, not going to spend a lot of time on this one since this feature is well publicized. I will say that the implementation of the copy and paste capability is well thought out and intuitive.
* Voice memos: Easy to use interface to record voice memos (the splash screen when you open the app is a nice picture of a microphone). You can also very easily forward the voice recording in an email to a co-worker. Great feature for doctors or lawyers who spend a lot of time with dictation.
* Faster address book. It seems that search is faster in the address book. If you've got a lot of contacts, you should see an improvement in performance when you're looking up a specific contact from your address book.
* Greater call detail. I've noticed that missed calls now list not only the person who called, but also whether they called you from their mobile, home, office, etc. phone. If the number is an unknown number (i.e., not in your address book), the number is accompanied by the city and state that the call originated from. Very nice feature.
* SMS editing. In previous versions of the iPhone, your only SMS editing option was to delete the entire SMS thread. In 3.0, you now have the ability to selectively edit and erase portions of a specific thread.
* Auto-dial #. Phone numbers that are embedded in a calendar entry now show up as hypertext links. When clicking on the link, the phone number is automatically dialed. I have noticed though that this only seems to work if the number is in the notes section. This is definitely a step in the right direction, although most people put dial in numbers in the "location" field when scheduling a meeting in Outlook. Phone numbers in the location field for me do not show up with the hypertext links.
* Invite attendees. You can now invite people to meetings directly from your calendar! When scheduling a meeting, you will now see a field for "attendees" that will either access your local address book or your corporate address book.
* Meeting Status. You can see whether someone has accepted a meeting on your iPhone. Ever been in one of those situations where you've dialed into a call, only to wait for others to join? Now you can glance at your calendar invite to see whether the person ever accepted the meeting.
* Search! Ok, this was something definitely lacking in versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the software. Won't spend a lot of time on this one since a lot of folks have written about it already. What I will mention though is that you can not only search locally on your phone, but you can also search on your corporate server as well. So, if you only sync two weeks of email to your phone, you can still retrieve an email sent several months back by having the iPhone search your corporate email account directly.
* Copy and Paste. Again, not going to spend a lot of time on this one since this feature is well publicized. I will say that the implementation of the copy and paste capability is well thought out and intuitive.
* Voice memos: Easy to use interface to record voice memos (the splash screen when you open the app is a nice picture of a microphone). You can also very easily forward the voice recording in an email to a co-worker. Great feature for doctors or lawyers who spend a lot of time with dictation.
* Faster address book. It seems that search is faster in the address book. If you've got a lot of contacts, you should see an improvement in performance when you're looking up a specific contact from your address book.
* Greater call detail. I've noticed that missed calls now list not only the person who called, but also whether they called you from their mobile, home, office, etc. phone. If the number is an unknown number (i.e., not in your address book), the number is accompanied by the city and state that the call originated from. Very nice feature.
* SMS editing. In previous versions of the iPhone, your only SMS editing option was to delete the entire SMS thread. In 3.0, you now have the ability to selectively edit and erase portions of a specific thread.
Post #2
Adi wroteon August 13, 2009 at 5:56pm
I have the latest software version but still cannot see where to invite meeting attendees... any ideas? i'm running latest OS on iPhone 3G S
Post #3
Walter wroteon December 22, 2009 at 11:39am
I have the latest iphone/software as well and if there is a way to invite attendees to calendar events I can't find it anywhere ...