Google continues to show the love to Microsoft Exchange users with the latest update to Gmail. The update is rolling out now and when you get it, you will be able to manage your tasks setup in your Exchange account through the app. No longer do you have to depend on another app (like Outlook for Android) or your desktop client to manage them.
Google has supported Exchange accounts in Gmail on Nexus devices going back to the Nexus 5 but it wasn’t until mid-year last year that they opened this feature up to non-Nexus devices. Since then, Google has been tweaking improvements into the app for Exchange but no major feature changes have happened until today.
That’s not to say other apps haven’t also done a better job of supporting Exchange. Google Calendar also does a great job of supporting the service by
Exchange Task Support in Gmail
letting you find available times of contacts to setup a meeting.
All of this, as Google states in the release announcing this new feature, adds up to increased productivity on your mobile device.
Everyone should see this update to Gmail over the course of the next couple of days so keep an eye out for it, particularly those of you who have Exchange accounts.
I was pleased to see this feature, and have tried it out on my Nexus 5x running Android 7.1.1, There are some features that are unclear how to use, however. I was successful in seeing some of my Exchange tasks (added from Outlook) on my phone, and was able to see a new task added from my phone in the Tasks area of Outlook. However, I’ve had two problems:
1. Done tasks display on my phone, and I can see no way to remove them. I have hundreds of these, and I don’t want to see them normally. I guess i could go through and remove them, but I may want to keep them as a record. Any clues on how to have them not display. The video from the Google blog entry of Mar. 2 2017 shows Done tasks that then magically disappear, but there’s no indication of how one does this.
2. The display of tasks are not complete. Of the 7 current tasks displayed in Outlook, only 4 appear on my phone. I can find no consistent pattern of which display and which do not, except that all tasks manually entered appear while only some of the tasks that are connected to emails appear.
And of course, there’s no manual for this. We’re forced to search out in ad-filled web sites to find our answers….