Like many Mac using NHS Staff I was excited then quickly disappointed to discover that the new Exchange 2007 compatibility did not extend as far as allowing me to access my NHSMail email account at home. When trying to configure Mail to connect to the NHS Email service over the Internet the connection would fail during initial setup. This turned out to be due to a compatibility issue with the patch level on the NHS Mail servers and Mail app which interestingly did not affect connections from Macs on N3 ( the NHS Private network )
Thankfully with the release of 10.6.2 this issue has now been resolved and NHSMail is now fully accessible through Mail as well as via your iPhone.
To configure Mail go to Mail preferences, select Accounts and click on + to add a new account. Enter your email address and password and click Continue. Mail should auto-discover the NHSMail servers and auto-select Exchange 2007 Account type. Complete the new account preferences as normal and you should be good to go.
It is fairly clear that the NHS are beginning to promote the new improved NHSMail service heavily and this will only improve their chances of getting the service adoption rates up, especially amongst the growing numbers of NHS staff using Macs at home instead of PC’s.
Is it also possible to set up a remote pc account with gotomypc or logmein in order to access your programmes at home. My wife can work froim home using a programme called citrix. This would help NHS staff as I know in my area they charge a fortune for parking and there relaly is no need for some staff to have to work from the office (think green!!)
Many hospitals do have remote access solutions in place to enable staff to work from home ( I am doing so myself today ). Typically these are secure solutions that require authentication tokens to ensure person connecting is authorised, solutions such as logmein would normally be be blocked by the hospitals Internet security solutions ( Bloxx/Websense/Surf Control ) as allowing this sort of access without control would be very likely to compromise the security of the hospital networks, as well as contravening IGSoC requirements.
Fantastic, been frustrated by this for ages, works a treat!