[Q] Multiple Exchange Sync Accounts? - Fascinate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I'd be grateful if someone in the know would clue me in:
Stock Android, I believe since 2.0, has supported multiple Exchange sync accounts (at least for email sync, and probably contacts). Running the
Android emulator on the desktop, I can configure as many accounts as I please.
However... I just took delivery of a Samsung Fascinate (Verizon) and as hard as I try, I can't make it configure a second account (it dumps me into the 'edit' UI for the first account when I ask to create a second one).
So I tried an HTC Incredible that we have here. Same behavior !
Yet, when I Google search 'samsung galaxy s multiple exchange accounts', I find a bunch of people claiming to be using multiple accounts.
What's up with this? Am I just not doing the setup correctly, or did Samsung remove this capability from the devices recently ?
I also figured I could install the stock Android email app as a workaround, but that doesn't exactly seem to be a 'one-click' process. K-9 has no ActiveSync support, so that isn't useful.

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Can't speak for anyone else, but I have yet to see any Android phone that supports multiple Exchange accounts out of the box. That's one of the reasons I bought Touchdown, as it supports multiple Exchange profiles. Of course, only one of them can be active at a time, but if I needed to have two accounts active simultaneously, I could use Touchdown for one, and the stock email app for the other. Oh, and just FYI, I didn't mean for this to become a Touchdown advertisement. ^^;
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Actually, I have a Touchdown license so this is a good plan.
Presumably the situation is this : stock Android supports multiple accounts but none of the device vendor skins do, yet. Correct ? (and it isn't possible to manifest the stock Android behavior side-by-side with the vendor skin).

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I was just coming in here to ask this question. I would like a way to get multiple exchange accounts too. Since it was supported in 2.0 on up i think we should be able to get this to work. Unless Samsung messed this up for us.

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Hmm, I thought Sammy left the stock Android email app on the Fascinate, but it looks as though they modified it just enough to cripple it. :-(
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There are actually good reasons NOT to do this. Corporate IT admins have massive problems with this, and because Google/Sammy/etc. are actually TRYING to work with corporate IT... you end up with this.
Outlook doesn't allow it either, nor does any other mail program which respects Activesync conventions.
It has to do with security... and compartmentalization.

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The Droid X and the Droid supported 2nd Exchange accounts.
I'm sorry, but I disagree that this is a security issue. They are completely disparate accounts, and this functionality should be stock on all Android phones.
That said, the Samsung client is the worst of all of them, and Touchdown is the best option, IMHO.

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Gurm said:
There are actually good reasons NOT to do this. Corporate IT admins have massive problems with this, and because Google/Sammy/etc. are actually TRYING to work with corporate IT... you end up with this.
Outlook doesn't allow it either, nor does any other mail program which respects Activesync conventions.
It has to do with security... and compartmentalization.
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Oh, really? That's interesting. I work on the helpdesk for an IT company that hosts Exchange servers (and much more) for dozens of clients, including numerous medical and financial institutions (i.e. security is a significant concern), and I have never heard about any such security issue. Please explain to me how being able to setup multiple Exchange accounts on a single device is such a huge security concern, and include links to references if possible, as I may want to present the information at our security meeting, which I'm actually attending tomorrow. No joke, that's my job, and I am on the security team.
Btw, Microsoft themselves eliminated the single Exchange account limitation with Outlook 2010. It's still not unlimited, but you can now have three Exchange accounts per Outlook profile. Oh, and did I mention that iOS 4 now also supports multiple Exchange accounts per device? So yeah, if you have any links to share about these alleged security nightmares, feel free to enlighten me.
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8notime said:
That said, the Samsung client is the worst of all of them, and Touchdown is the best option, IMHO.
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While I tend to agree with you, I'd like to point out that I haven't seen any issues with actually reliably syncing with an Exchange server with the Fascinate, whereas the mail client on the original Droid was plagued with bugs, and while it improved later on, one of the more recent post-Froyo patches broke the ability to sync with Exchange 2010 (which has since been fixed).
Also, if I remember correctly, the helpdesk I work on got a bunch of calls from clients who bought the Droid X when it first came out, because it couldn't sync with Exchange 2003, which was a pretty serious bug. Motorola had apparently tested it thoroughly with Exchange 2007 and 2010, but never with 2003. It was so bad that they were giving away licenses for Touchdown for free to anyone that complained, until they were able to issue a patch for it.
Anyway, no mail client is perfect, and all have their pros and cons. Which stock one is better or worse depends on whether the features that don't work right matter to you or not. Me, I'll stick with Touchdown, which basically mops the floor with the stock mail clients, just in sheer volume of features alone.
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IOS 4, android 2.* and up and WP7 all support multiple exchange accounts. Unfortunatley Samsung messed this up for us.
I wonder if there is a way to pull the AOSP e-mail.apk and try that? Or if there would be another way around this.

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Since someone got a little cranky I will elaborate on the security problem.
The issue is largely one of partition. Let me paint a scenario...
I am government contractor x. I provide you with exchange on your phone. Your phone very helpfully merges all your data together. That violates my policies. Additionally, your android device doesn't respect remote wipe, remote lock, or security policy for disclaimers, password complexity, etc.
But the biggest issue is that the exchange data isn't self-contained.
If the phone, client, or whatever provides partitioning of the data then multiple accounts becomes a possibility.
Essentially I as an exchange admin don't want some other company's mail cross pollinating with mine. And because my company is in Massachusetts, it's actually a violation of state law at this point to let our emails into someone else's system.
Outlook 2010 supports separate cache files, contact lists, and all other data... So it can do multiple accounts. The iphone doesn't, and neither does droid.
I love my android phone, but I cannot let the end users have them, because we can't secure thee data. Full stop.
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And yes, ios 4 and some iterations of droid do allow this, but not in s way that is kosher with either microsoft or your mail admins.
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Hehe, I wasn't cranky. I just wanted some additional info to back up a rather vague, blanket statement about data security. I could go on to discuss security issues, but it looks like your concerns exist at a much higher level. If the Android platform as a whole is too insecure for you to allow, then whether or not a phone supports multiple Exchange accounts is irrelevant. That being the case, I won't draw this on much longer, as it's beginning to drift off topic.
Based on what you've listed as your security requirements, I believe Touchdown actually has a strong enough feature set to safely allow Android devices to work in your environment. It supports a healthy set of Exchange security policies, namely remote wipe, PIN/password policies, and complete data encryption (it even encrypts the data it stores on the SD card), and since it only allows one account per profile, and all data is contained within the application itself, and not mixed on the phone, the partition requirement is met. Plus, you can deploy a template that dictates desired config settings for the app, and locks them down to prevent users from changing them. Oh, and don't forget the added benefit of standardization, in that you would only have a single email app to support, regardless of which Android device end users have. The only real down side is the added cost, as it's extra software to buy. And for those wondering, no, I do NOT work for NitroDesk, the makers of Touchdown.
I apologize if I'm still failing to understand any of your points in all this. I do have an interest in security topics like this, and while I'm not completely ignorant, I'm by no means an expert either, not by a long shot. If you'd like to discuss this any further, feel free to PM me, so we don't get any further off topic in this thread. Thanks!

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Gurm said:
Essentially I as an exchange admin don't want some other company's mail cross pollinating with mine. And because my company is in Massachusetts, it's actually a violation of state law at this point to let our emails into someone else's system.
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I have never in my life heard of this happening, nor is there any proof that it's technically possible. I get the whole concept of all data being on the same partition, but cross pollination? They are totally different accounts, with their own data stores.
If a companies security policy is this strict, they probably shouldn't have any phone connecting to their network, unless they have a device management tool in place that prohibits installation of any 3rd party apps unless they install them themselves. Oh and they should probably remove the camera too, if they're a government contractor with this much security in place.
I don't think the Fascinate was designed for a company like this.

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Just to throw in my 2 cents. A division of the company i work for engineers nuclear plants and because of the strict government regulations only blackberries are permited because other platforms are not secure enough.
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8notime said:
I have never in my life heard of this happening, nor is there any proof that it's technically possible. I get the whole concept of all data being on the same partition, but cross pollination? They are totally different accounts, with their own data stores.
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Really? Your contact list isn't comprised of all the contacts from all the accounts? Do you keep strict track of which little yellow "new mail" envelope you've just pulled down? It can't happen? Think again.
If a companies security policy is this strict, they probably shouldn't have any phone connecting to their network, unless they have a device management tool in place that prohibits installation of any 3rd party apps unless they install them themselves. Oh and they should probably remove the camera too, if they're a government contractor with this much security in place.
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Yup. Guess why Blackberries are still the biggest corporate device? For exactly this reason. Why is there always a Blackberry variant with no camera? BINGO.
I don't think the Fascinate was designed for a company like this.
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No Droid or iPhone was.

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Then why are we even having this conversation? We're talking about the Fascinate.
Also, we were talking about email, not contacts. Emails are stored in entirely different data stores. I don't have 1 giant inbox with emails from both accounts. They are totally separated.

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8notime said:
Then why are we even having this conversation? We're talking about the Fascinate.
Also, we were talking about email, not contacts. Emails are stored in entirely different data stores. I don't have 1 giant inbox with emails from both accounts. They are totally separated.
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Because Exchange isn't POP or IMAP. It's an entire comm system. It's not just mail, it's contacts and calendar and notes and public folders and a half dozen other things.
If you just want to sync the contents of two Exchange inboxes, sure there's no TECHNICAL reason you can't. But that's not how Exchange WORKS, typically. I'm sure you could write a client that does that, but as yet folks haven't.
You can go in and uncheck to sync the calendar and contacts, but new "events" will still arrive and have to be thrown out by the client. Essentially you would need to write MORE code to NOT have the entire system than you would to HAVE it.

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I'm sorry but that isn't true. Like I said earlier, I was able to add more than one Exchange account - contacts, calendar, and email - on both my Droid and Droid X. One Exchange account for work, and the other a personal account through a hosted Exchange provider. There was no "cross pollination" between either account, and each had a completely separate inbox/data stores. So not only is it technically possible, the functionality is also available for use. Also, as a security professional, I think there are other real security concerns/vulnerabilities to focus on, than something that has never been proven to be one.

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8notime said:
I'm sorry but that isn't true. Like I said earlier, I was able to add more than one Exchange account - contacts, calendar, and email - on both my Droid and Droid X. One Exchange account for work, and the other a personal account through a hosted Exchange provider. There was no "cross pollination" between either account, and each had a completely separate inbox/data stores. So not only is it technically possible, the functionality is also available for use. Also, as a security professional, I think there are other real security concerns/vulnerabilities to focus on, than something that has never been proven to be one.
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I understand that you have done it before. I've done it too on an iPhone. My point is that the capability to do so is not something that comes pre-cooked in an Exchange client. MS didn't do it until recently themselves. Given that a lot of the stuff in the Fascinate is pre-2.1 due to Samsung's pidgin kernel (really a 1.5 or 1.6 kernel hacked up for 2.1, from what I've read on here) I'm not at all surprised that functionality only recently available is missing.
Like I said - it takes more code to do it than not to do it... don't hold your breath for it from Samsung, although anything is possible in 2.2!