Microsoft Exchange 10 Device Limits and Focus for Productivity

Like many things, sometimes you don't know there is a limit until you hit it, or at least are reminded what you learned long ago that things are not unlimited.

In my case, I've just hit a limit of having 10 mobile devices connected to sync to my email account with ActiveSync / Outlook on mobile or iPad devices. Of course, whilst like many, I do like my gadgets, I don't actually have 10 phones or iPads!

What has happened is that every time you add a device to sync to your Exchange Mailbox (this is true for MS Exchange on premise and also for Office 365 Hosted Exchange email), a new device partnership is created and there is currently a reasonable limit of 10 devices as a maximum. The Exchange server has to keep track of what the last messages you've had are, so it knows from when to push you the latest messages etc.

You can access the list of phones / mobile computer devices via the Outlook Web Portal for your email (or Exchange control panel). If you connect you can then choose Options -> Phone, from where the list will then load.

The view allows you to see what devices you are syncing with, when they last did a sync, and, should a phone ever be lost or stolen, you can attempt to initiate a remote wipe from here to protect your private data, even if the phone is lost.

In my case the list reads as a recent history of my mobile phones, showing the dates the respective device was last synchronised and hence retired. Thus I can see that I had an HTCAce (Actually an HTC Desire HD) until Jan 2013, an HTC One X Plus, an HTCOneM8 and now the Samsung Galaxy S7 etc. Is it me or is the life of a phone generally getting shorter these days as we use them more?

Once you have 10 phones in a partnership with your mailbox, you can't have any more. Thus it is probably good to get into the habit of removing old phones when you add a new one. Note that if you use the MS Outlook app for iPad / iPhone / Android phone, then this will take a second slot alongside the native Mail ActiveSync connection if you use that. The Outlook Mobile app is pretty good but we tend to recommend sticking with your native mail app in most cases, so that you have:

  1. All your mail in one inbox,
  2. More flexibility on sync schedules (and hence battery life) and
  3. Less data use abroad if you travel; the native mail apps are much better at being roaming aware for now.

So removing phones or devices no longer used is good for security, reducing server resource load and allows you to add more devices when needed i.e. if you are at the limit and your current phone dies, then you can't configure a replacement until you clear an old phone off the list.  This could cause some small delay at the time you need to get going with work / trips / other things you might need your phone for.

And now for a slight, but very relevant, digression: 

Of course, if you are in the office or trying to get some focused work done then one of the best things you can do is to turn your mobile phone off. Research such as that conducted by Kaspersky Labs shows that your productivity can be 26% better without the distraction of a mobile phone - see http://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/not-using-smartphones-can-improve-productivity-by-26-says-study-116082900664_1.html  for details on this particular example.

You may know that I like to make use of odd moments of time or travel on public transport etc. to listen to audio books (generally from Audible) as well as useful / relevant podcasts so as to make better use of time. Currently I'm listening to Deep Work by Cal Newport. This also reminds us that Facebook / Twitter / What's App and other social apps and services might be great, but they're also a massive form of distraction. Each tweet has the ability to take your mind off task and we all know that there is likely a 20 minute recovery time to re-focus fully again. At Onega, we aim to turn off our mobiles in the office (you are welcome to call us at the office on the phones here of course!) and we've blocked Facebook access for our own good for years, after I started to browse Facebook one morning and then realised 'crikey it is nearly past lunchtime already.'  I recommend that book highly and they also touch upon one of my favourite topics of eudaimonia in one section, in relation to architecture applied to provide a focused environment for deep work.

If turning your mobile off in the office can make you 26% more productive, think how much more focused and efficient you can be if you avoid Twitter, Facebook etc. With a logical extension you could easily get to 100% here and your results may soon reflect that. Likely you may be reading this and thinking 'I could turn my phone off anytime but I choose not to' and think of 100 reasons why you must, must, must keep it on... but this is also addictive behaviour. If you consider it, modern smartphones are designed (actively designed) to hold our attention and app developers work very, very hard to tune the experience to encourage you to indulge in more 'screen time' as every minute of screen time has a dollar (or pound or euro) value. It can be hard at first, but turn your phone off and the world does not fall apart; you'll likely get a lot more work done.

Other things you can do to help yourself focus are to turn off the pop up for new email notifications and just check your mail from time to time. This way you are in control of your focus rather than it being in control of you. Again, this one can be hard initially but you'll also find you soon get used to it. If there is anything urgent there is always the phone, which is generally the best way to have direct, focused attention, immediately.  You can also achieve more in a 5-minute call than 10 days of email back and forth on a subject which would take a lot more cumulative time.  You might notice that I'm not often on Skype either - this is for the same reason again. Nothing wrong at all with Skype, but If you have 10 different methods of contact then you risk simultaneously splitting yourself between IM chats on Skype, phone calls / emails / Slack Messages / Sametime / What's app / Linked in and Facebook messenger etc. and thus not focusing on any of the simultaneous conversations with the attention they deserve.