Mobile communications
When you are away from the office, you may need to keep in touch with things in various ways: by telephone or email, or by using your appointments diary.
There are now many devices on the market designed to enable communications while on the move: the mobile phone, the Smartphone, tablet devices, the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), and Wi-Fi, or 3G cards for use in your laptop computer, to name but a few. On top of that, the combinations of features that can be used together can be very confusing.
You need to consider a number of things before purchasing a mobile device and/or service. What facilities do you need? Do you need to check your St Andrews email account when you are away from your office? Would you like to view and keep your University diary up to date in your office, or remotely? Do you need web or Internet access? Would you like GPS and satellite navigation facilities? You need to decide what is important before spending the University's money. Some things may be desirable, but are they really necessary? Please refer to the table below for a rough guide to the facilities available in each type of device:
| Device | Phone | Web | Diary | Other* | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile phone | yes | no | no | no | no |
| Mobile phone with enhanced services | yes | yes | yes | yes+ | no |
| Smartphone | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Tablet | no | yes | yes | yes | yes |
* e.g. GPS and satellite navigation, Wi-Fi, 3G
+ Standalone use or synchronise via cable connection to PC or Mac
Read more about the mobile phone services available to University staff.
What IT Services can and cannot do
When you buy a smartphone you also buy certain services and set up a data plan (an agreement on the amount of data you can transmit or download in a given period, and the cost). The arrangement you have made with your service provider may well impact on the ability of your device to function in the ways described above.
IT Services cannot guarantee to make every smartphone work in conjunction with the email and calendar systems that we provide for computer users within the University. The smartphones listed below are known to be compatible with our systems. If your device differs from those listed we cannot undertake to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to make it work with our systems. Similarly the service arrangement and data plan that you have purchased may be incompatible with our systems, or may turn out to be unduly costly when working with our systems. For these reasons you are strongly advised to consult IT Services before buying a smartphone and to use the service provision offered by the Catalist agreement.
This is a rapidly changing area of technology, and IT Services staff are investigating the many combinations and permutations on offer. However it is sensible for users who depend on IT Services for support to take up one of the options listed above, all of which are known to work in our environment.
Devices fully or partially supported by IT Services
- Apple iPhone 4S, 4, and 3GS
- University-owned Blackberry smartphones
- Most MS Windows Mobile-based smartphones
- Most Symbian-based smartphones
- Most Android-based smartphones
- Some tablets
Tablets
With more and more tablet devices coming to market, with various competing operating systems, features and form factors, selecting a tablet device which will do what you need can be difficult. You are advised to consult with IT Services before purchasing a tablet device for use at the University as not all devices are compatible with current University collaboration and network services. Please read the following section for more information:
Information and advice on tablet devices
Blackberry devices (Research in Motion - RIM)
The University has invested in a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), allowing University-owned Blackberry devices to synchronise email and calendar using our own Blackberry services. Members of staff with privately-owned Blackberrys may be allowed access to our BES if the owner agrees to certain security restrictions.
A word of warning: IT Services has introduced Sender Policy Framework (SPF) for outgoing emails, in an attempt to reduce incoming spam. SPF provides policy to help email servers decide whether emails sent from a domain are genuine, and not spoofed. If you use your supplier's Blackberry servers your outgoing email from the device is routed via any number of Blackberry servers before being delivered to the recipient. If you specify your St Andrews address (abc123st-andrews.ac.uk) as the return address your messages may be treated as possible spam by the recipient's service provider. This is because the email has not been handled initially by a University of St Andrews email server and the message cannot be verified to have genuinely originated with @st-andrews.ac.uk address.
Worldwide, email servers will check that any messages purportedly sent from a St Andrews address are initially routed through our outgoing SMTP email servers. Blackberry devices use their own SMTP servers to send mail, and the header information in the message records this. Mail servers will read the header information and will reject the message as spam, thinking that the address has been spoofed.
Please contact us via the IT Service Desk for further information on any of the above.
Further information regarding standard mobile handsets, the Catalist agreement, line rental call charges and data plans can be found via the Telephones section on the Tech and administrative services web page, or you can contact the Telephone Office.
