A Look at Good Technology's iOS Enterprise Client

Technology is moving at the speed of light. Well, maybe at the speed of business. Moments after my manager's approval via the company procurement system, I received instructions and authentifcation information to install and use the Good Client software for iOS.  

Installation was quick and easy. I downloaded the client app from the iTunes app store (link). On first launching, the application asked me for my login information and the private key sent to me via email. Before I knew it all of my corporate Exchange emails, contacts, and calendar events were synced to my device.  In all, it took less than a five minutes to get all of the information on to my device.  At the current time, Good limits the number of emails downloadable to the device at 1,400. 

The Good application supports push notifications and application badges, but has very limited notification and lock screen support.  This means that you will get a notification that a new email has arrived or calendar event is due to occur, but unlike the native email or calendar, the information details contained in each are not visible via banners, alerts, or lock screen notifications.  In addition, it is important to note that all PIM information as well as email is contained within the application. There is no integration with the standard iOS contacts, calendar and email functions. Good does provide an option for IT admins to allow contact sharing from the device to the Good app, but that feature has been turned off by my company's IT admin. Information security policies make it evidently clear as to why many organizations are implementing this type of "walled garden" of corporate data. On a personal level, I actually prefer this implementation as I like to keep my corporate separate from my personal information. 

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When you open the Good app, you are presented with a password screen (if your session has timed out), and a typical iOS-type bottom action menu consisting of Mail, Day (agenda), Contacts, Month view, and preferences. 

The full complement of event management features are offered such as accepting/declining meeting requests and creating meetings with invitees.  Adding invitees supports corporate Exchange server searching as well as determining availability so adding people that are not on the local database is not an issue.

Email attachents are also viewable within the application using a built-in document viewer.  The document viewer can handle standard office documents (Excel, Powerpoint, Word), text files, as well as PDFs.

 The preferences section is pretty extensive allowing for:

• Change log in password
• Setting up an email signature
• Controlling what email folders to push (sync) to the device
• Out of Office settings
• HTML email
• iOS contact sync (if allowed by IT)
• Sounds and vibrations setting for new email and event reminders

Overall I am very impressed with this application and its functionality.  While not as powerful in terms of features than a full-blown Blackberry, the Good Enterprise Client app is more than adequate enough for someone to consider ditching their 'Berry and most likely saving their company quite a bit of money in monthly fees and expenses in doing so.  

Bye Bye Blackberry.

Good Technology
 
Update: As of Feb 2013, Good has still not updated the application to take advantage of the iPhone 5 screen!