Like many of us, my corporate Exchange email server doesn't have IMAP enabled. So i couldn't get to my work mail from the iPhone.

Luckily, Exchange servers by default, have OWA and WebDAV enabled, so there turns out to be a way to get the mail to the phone. I wrote a little python deamon that gets new mail from Exchange via WebDAV and sends it to Yahoo, which will then "push" the mail onto the phone. The mail is not actually forwarded, it is copied, read below!

This works like so:

0. Login to Exchange via OWA
1. Issue WebDAV/SQL query to search for new mail since last poll - only mail without iPhone tag
2. If there is any mail, it is fetched from the exchange server in raw .EML format using WebDAV
3. The raw mail is then sent to the Inbox of your Yahoo account.
4. The mail is the tagged 'iphone' via WebDav to prevent repeated forwarding.
5. Yahoo will now signal a new mail has arrived to the iPhone via a cellular OMA call (not part of this script)
6. The iphone will receive the OMA call and go to yahoo's imap and get the new mail
7. Because we sent the raw .EML to yahoo, all original headers are still intact, so the mail will look as if it was sent to the iPhone by the original author, so you can reply, or reply all and the mail will go to the original author and/or rcipiants. Unfortunately, the "From" in your reply, will still say you@yahoo.com, this script will not fix that :-)

usage:
python WebDAV-Poller.py <exchange-url> <exchange-username> <yahoo-username> <password> <poll-intervall>

example:
python WebDAV-Poller.py https://webmail.somecompany.com me meyahoo fakepwd 60

this requires that your exchange and yahoo passwd are the same!

if you are interested, you can get the script here:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9WHTFLIE

please note that this only works with python 2.3 or 2.4, i am still working on getting this to work with 2.5

have fun!

Forwarding your corporate e-mail account to an external e-mail provider like yahoo is against most company's policies. I would suggest not doing this. Especially if you valid your job.

Forgetting the security aspect, is this really 'push' if you are polling your exchange server on a set interval? You'd have to be polling every 5 seconds or so for this to be a push experience.

What? If it's good enough for the White House administration, it's good enough for me!

Couldn't you just access Exchange Webmail and setup a forward copy rule to your yahoo account? Then you would not have to use this python script.

I am testing this email solution.

http://www.cortado.com/index.php?s=241&lc=61

They offer free push email accounts.

Sorry for the link. But i figure on if i can save people from using the awful
yahoo email and gmail it might be worth it.

thanks
a.

Hey m8,

can you post the source somewhere else? I can't download....

or if you could email it to me roy [@] roy . com . br that would be great... I'm trying to do something for it run on the iphone itself and update the mail db on its own, so it gets real push....

Is there python 2.3 or 2.4 for the iPhone available anywhere?

Are you planning on modifiyng the script, or running like this on the iphone?

This isn't efficient to be run on the iphone... best would be to run it somewhere on the local server network, as it would be able to poll the server quickly and send it to yahoo...