Today I am going to be discussing an easy and simple way to test out Enterprise Vault 11’s new Mobile IMAP feature in a lab environment without the need for a physical Android or iOS device. We will be using a program called “BlueStacks” that is an Android emulator for Windows and MacOS.
BlueStacks is a free program that can be downloaded from here: http://www.bluestacks.com/app-player.html
(Click on the Thumbnails to see larger pictures)
Once BlueStacks has been downloaded and installed, open it and configure it to use a new or existing Google account. This will allow you to access the Google Play store to download an IMAP compatible email app to use.
Once you have successfully configured BlueStacks, simply search for an email app and install. AquaMail is a simple, light-weight app that is IMAP compatible and free to download that I have used successfully in my testing, but there are many others that can be used as well. Below you can see some screen shots of BlueStacks and navigating to the Search portion:
Once you have selected an Email app, simply add your Enterprise Vault 11 IMAP configuration settings and sync your archive to the app. Below I've include screenshots of setting up the IMAP account in Aqua Mail as well as a sample of what you will see once the archive has been synced (minus the blurring of course)
This is a great way to verify/test and get a good idea of the look and feel of Mobile IMAP in a lab environment without the need for any physical hardware before implementing it in a production environment.
For further information, please see the following article:
- Enterprise Vault 11.0 IMAP Access: Key Topics: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC6624
- This contains links to IMAP access configuration and best practice guides and IMAP client-specific behavior