[d4springer]

I have finally managed to get email to display in iDrive from an iPhone 5 with IOS7, took some messing about but eventually I have a procedure which is very simple and seems to work each time.

Most people have probably seen their SMS appear in iDrive, the concept is the same, when SMS shows up on the phone as a banner alert it is sent via Bluetooth to iDrive so you can see it there. However iPhones do not seem to send emails over.

Background
Basically I work in IT (my own business) and could really do with seeing a preview of any emails coming in whilst I'm on the road. I have no intention of reading through loads of messages whilst driving and would never bother replying or drafting emails from iDrive, just like to keep on top of things (especially alert messages or customers etc...), hate being on long journeys with my iPhone pinging away, keep getting tempted to read it!

My phone is synchronised with Microsoft Exchange, I can therefore see my Outlook Email, Contacts and Calendar. I have "Push" email (this is likely to be a key option).

Prepare iPhone
You have to configure the iPhone to display email as banner alerts. Go to Settings > Notification Centre and make sure Email is listed under the Include section.

Within the Include section go to Mail > (your mail account) and switch on Show in Notification Centre and Show in Lock Screen. You will also notice there was an option to display 1, 5 or 10 unread items. Leave it at default for now, but you may have to come back here later.

Now go to Settings > Bluetooth > (your BMW) and select the small blue "i" icon, make sure Show Notifications is turned on.

You will likely need Push email selected, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > and switch on Push.

Essentially, once this is all done, new email will display in the iPhone Lock Screen as it arrives.

Prepare iDrive
Pair up your iPhone, then in iDrive go to Settings > Connections > Bluetooth > (highlight your phone) > Press the Option button (or scroll right) > Configure Bluetooth, make sure Office is ticked.

1st Method to view your Email in iDrive
Get in the car with your phone (this is very important!), before you turn on the car, unlock your phone and close down the Mail App (hold the iPhone home button for a couple of seconds to see all running apps) find the Mail App and swipe upwards to close. (Incidently this is why you need the Push email option selected so that email still comes into the phone without you having to fetch it manually).

Now manually lock your phone and switch on the car (if your testing you don't need to start the engine, just initiate the switch to start up iDrive) and that should work, new email will be displayed under Messages (which is available in iDrive from the Office or Telephone options). You can see a preview under the Messages option, if you select an Email you can read it or have iDrive read it to you. However, I could not reply, in that iDrive attempted to reply via Text Message, so this looks like a one way only workaround. Not a problem for me though as I pointed out earlier I just wanted to get a preview of what's going on whilst I'm on the road.

At this point, whilst testing, I then unlocked my phone and email still showed up in iDrive, I then connected up to the car using the Apple Cable and launched the Connected Drive App. Email still worked (even though the Connected Drive App states "do not lock phone"), this meant I could see my Email and Calendar just by going to the Office option in iDrive.

However, I had some issues getting it to work again after some use, maybe because I kept turning off the car, restarting over and over and repeating my tests, the 1st method may only work once between drives rather than constantly re-enabling etc... So I stumbled across the next method.

2nd Method to view your Email in iDrive
As before you need to close down the Mail App and manually lock the phone, however if it's not displaying the email in iDrive after doing this, I found that tweaking the notifications settings helped, in the iPhone, go to Settings > Notification Centre > Mail > Include and change to another settings (for example if you have it set to default 10 Unread Items, change it to 5).

Once you've finished, close everything again and lock the phone.

Summary
As you can see I was a bit bored on a Sunday (have already washed the car!), but I was determined to get this working somehow. It's obviously a workaround and not the official method, hopefully one day Apple will update their Bluetooth to allow this to just work, but until then at least I know it is achievable.

Basically it looks like a case of trying out quick methods, once the phone and iDrive are pre-prepared it doesn't take too long to close the mail app and lock the phone each time you get into the car, but if that doesn't work flawlessly then you need to alter the notification settings each time also.

Would be interesting to see if anyone else has success with this.

[PurpleTT]

Well it certainly sounds like you thoroughly tried everything and pretty much got there, although in this day and age you should be able to just get in the car and drive while the phone and car sort themselves out on their own.

I note you said you tried to reply but that didn't work. I'd never thought past seeing who's e-mailed and I figured that's all I was after. However, imagine it reads the e-mail out, and you can dictate a response...

Same for texting...

Thanks d4springer all I need now is my F30 to try it with!

[d4springer]

Originally Posted by PurpleTT

Well it certainly sounds like you thoroughly tried everything and pretty much got there, although in this day and age you should be able to just get in the car and drive while the phone and car sort themselves out on their own.

I note you said you tried to reply but that didn't work. I'd never thought past seeing who's e-mailed and I figured that's all I was after. However, imagine it reads the e-mail out, and you can dictate a response...

Same for texting...

Thanks d4springer all I need now is my F30 to try it with!

Yes under Messages you see a list of everything that's been received, that includes Email, SMS and My Info stuff from the BMW Connected Drive site.

You can tell the difference and see who the email is from just by looking at the list, if you then select an email, it opens up and you can see the Sender Address, Subject, Time of Receipt, Body Text etc..

There is a small menu to the left of the email where your cursor sits and by spinning the iDrive controller you can select a number of functions up and down this menu (I think it highlights "Read Aloud" by default), this is where I found you can select Reply or Forward, but when I tried that the system just Replied or Forwarded by SMS instead of Email. But as we noted it's not a big deal, just being able to see an email, subject and have the car read out to you is enough.

One handy thing I noticed, if the email sender puts their telephone number in their message, one of the email menu items was "Call Sender" and iDrive finds this number and calls it, so if you needed to reply to someone at least you could do it safely by just calling them back.

Anyway how long before your car turns up? Are you ready with the phots so we can see it?

[-AndyH-]

The big difference here is between an iPhone and Blackberry device.

With a Blackberry, iDrive syncs all emails that have already been received. With an iPhone, iDrive is only able to show new emails received (that appear as notifications).

I think this is an Apple control thing in terms of what is broadcast via BT. But I am not sure. It's really poor that BMW do not officially support the iPhone for Office functions because they have appeared as an Apple partner during previous product/software launches!

[d4springer]

Originally Posted by -AndyH-

The big difference here is between an iPhone and Blackberry device.

With a Blackberry, iDrive syncs all emails that have already been received. With an iPhone, iDrive is only able to show new emails received (that appear as notifications).

I think this is an Apple control thing in terms of what is broadcast via BT. But I am not sure. It's really poor that BMW do not officially support the iPhone for Office functions because they have appeared as an Apple partner during previous product/software launches!

It is frustrating, I have a feeling it's something to do with encryption though, the protocol used by Phones to send email data to the car is called Message Access Profile (MAP), Blackberry seems to have supported this for a long time whilst Apple only started using this from iPhone4 onwards.

When the phone initially pairs with the car using MAP an encryption policy is implemented, this encrypts the email data (and contacts etc..) so they are not broadcast in plain text (avoids someone sitting in the traffic jam next to you seeing your email I suppose), but there are different levels of encryption and it looks as though this may be failing between the iPhone and iDrive, whereas it always works fine with the Blackberry.

[BMWSKI]

Thanks for this. You have been busy!
One question though...Do you need to have EBT for this to work?
Cheers

[sygazelle]

Great post.

Thank you for taking the time to share what you have learned.

Originally Posted by d4springer

I have finally managed to get email to display in iDrive from an iPhone 5 with IOS7, took some messing about but eventually I have a procedure which is very simple and seems to work each time.

Most people have probably seen their SMS appear in iDrive, the concept is the same, when SMS shows up on the phone as a banner alert it is sent via Bluetooth to iDrive so you can see it there. However iPhones do not seem to send emails over.

Background
Basically I work in IT (my own business) and could really do with seeing a preview of any emails coming in whilst I'm on the road. I have no intention of reading through loads of messages whilst driving and would never bother replying or drafting emails from iDrive, just like to keep on top of things (especially alert messages or customers etc...), hate being on long journeys with my iPhone pinging away, keep getting tempted to read it!

My phone is synchronised with Microsoft Exchange, I can therefore see my Outlook Email, Contacts and Calendar. I have "Push" email (this is likely to be a key option).

Prepare iPhone
You have to configure the iPhone to display email as banner alerts. Go to Settings > Notification Centre and make sure Email is listed under the Include section.

Within the Include section go to Mail > (your mail account) and switch on Show in Notification Centre and Show in Lock Screen. You will also notice there was an option to display 1, 5 or 10 unread items. Leave it at default for now, but you may have to come back here later.

Now go to Settings > Bluetooth > (your BMW) and select the small blue "i" icon, make sure Show Notifications is turned on.

You will likely need Push email selected, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > and switch on Push.

Essentially, once this is all done, new email will display in the iPhone Lock Screen as it arrives.

Prepare iDrive
Pair up your iPhone, then in iDrive go to Settings > Connections > Bluetooth > (highlight your phone) > Press the Option button (or scroll right) > Configure Bluetooth, make sure Office is ticked.

1st Method to view your Email in iDrive
Get in the car with your phone (this is very important!), before you turn on the car, unlock your phone and close down the Mail App (hold the iPhone home button for a couple of seconds to see all running apps) find the Mail App and swipe upwards to close. (Incidently this is why you need the Push email option selected so that email still comes into the phone without you having to fetch it manually).

Now manually lock your phone and switch on the car (if your testing you don't need to start the engine, just initiate the switch to start up iDrive) and that should work, new email will be displayed under Messages (which is available in iDrive from the Office or Telephone options). You can see a preview under the Messages option, if you select an Email you can read it or have iDrive read it to you. However, I could not reply, in that iDrive attempted to reply via Text Message, so this looks like a one way only workaround. Not a problem for me though as I pointed out earlier I just wanted to get a preview of what's going on whilst I'm on the road.

At this point, whilst testing, I then unlocked my phone and email still showed up in iDrive, I then connected up to the car using the Apple Cable and launched the Connected Drive App. Email still worked (even though the Connected Drive App states "do not lock phone"), this meant I could see my Email and Calendar just by going to the Office option in iDrive.

However, I had some issues getting it to work again after some use, maybe because I kept turning off the car, restarting over and over and repeating my tests, the 1st method may only work once between drives rather than constantly re-enabling etc... So I stumbled across the next method.

2nd Method to view your Email in iDrive
As before you need to close down the Mail App and manually lock the phone, however if it's not displaying the email in iDrive after doing this, I found that tweaking the notifications settings helped, in the iPhone, go to Settings > Notification Centre > Mail > Include and change to another settings (for example if you have it set to default 10 Unread Items, change it to 5).

Once you've finished, close everything again and lock the phone.

Summary
As you can see I was a bit bored on a Sunday (have already washed the car!), but I was determined to get this working somehow. It's obviously a workaround and not the official method, hopefully one day Apple will update their Bluetooth to allow this to just work, but until then at least I know it is achievable.

Basically it looks like a case of trying out quick methods, once the phone and iDrive are pre-prepared it doesn't take too long to close the mail app and lock the phone each time you get into the car, but if that doesn't work flawlessly then you need to alter the notification settings each time also.

Would be interesting to see if anyone else has success with this.

[d4springer]

Originally Posted by BMWSKI

Thanks for this. You have been busy!
One question though...Do you need to have EBT for this to work?
Cheers

I think so, the UK configurator tells you nothing about what EBT is (it's listed under optional equipment as Enhanced Bluetooth Telephone with USB and Voice Control), but there are no specific details, however I just checked on the USA site and their configurator gives some indication, it says "Offers an array of Mobile Office Functions" so sounds like it is required.

[d4springer]

Originally Posted by sygazelle

Great post.

Thank you for taking the time to share what you have learned.

No probs, would be interested to see if you can get it to work? (even if you do sit on the wrong side of the iDrive controller!)

[BMWSKI]

Oh well, thanks anyway

[sygazelle]

Originally Posted by d4springer

No probs, would be interested to see if you can get it to work? (even if you do sit on the wrong side of the iDrive controller!)

I will let you know. I picked my 2014 328 in Munich and dropped it off on August 21 in Zurich. I'm in that agonizing waiting period. In the meantime, I'm trying to learn as much as I can before I get the car in my hands. Reading posts on this forum (and another one ) are helping me pass the time while I wait.

Thanks again!

[claykin]

Originally Posted by sygazelle

I will let you know. I picked my 2014 328 in Munich and dropped it off on August 21 in Zurich. I'm in that agonizing waiting period. In the meantime, I'm trying to learn as much as I can before I get the car in my hands. Reading posts on this forum (and another one ) are helping me pass the time while I wait.

Thanks again!

You may be waiting a long time. I wonder if they plan to hold your car until the brake recall is addressed?

[PurpleTT]

Originally Posted by d4springer

Anyway how long before your car turns up? Are you ready with the phots so we can see it?

Funny you should ask, called dealer today to change colour from Black to Tanzanite and a few other things and he said that'd better be it because as of 3pm today the order is "locked in". He said January, but my New Vehicle Contract says 31st Dec. Who knows!

[d4springer]

Originally Posted by PurpleTT

Funny you should ask, called dealer today to change colour from Black to Tanzanite and a few other things and he said that'd better be it because as of 3pm today the order is "locked in". He said January, but my New Vehicle Contract says 31st Dec. Who knows!

Tanzanite sounds good, that's the metallic dark blue? Apparently looks great in the sun (so you will need to wait a while to see the affect if your picking up in Dec/Jan!)

[sygazelle]

Originally Posted by claykin

You may be waiting a long time. I wonder if they plan to hold your car until the brake recall is addressed?

I wonder too. I can't wait to get my new car. If its delayed, BMW can put me in a new M5 as a loaner in the meantime

[claykin]

Originally Posted by sygazelle

I wonder too. I can't wait to get my new car. If its delayed, BMW can put me in a new M5 as a loaner in the meantime

I'm sure they will do what they can for you, but the M5 may be pushing it (as you likely suspect).

[Kick.doc]

Thanks mate will do

[cassmie]

Is your iphone 5 working with idrive 4.2?

[BMWSKI]

Originally Posted by d4springer

No probs, would be interested to see if you can get it to work? (even if you do sit on the wrong side of the iDrive controller!)

Hi d4springer.
Just wondering how your Office functionality was going? I coded EBT yesterday and wondered if I should know anything different before I start playing around with it? Have you found an easier or more reliable way of using it since this thread?
TIA

[DickieGibbo]

Originally Posted by BMWSKI

Hi d4springer.
Just wondering how your Office functionality was going? I coded EBT yesterday and wondered if I should know anything different before I start playing around with it? Have you found an easier or more reliable way of using it since this thread?
TIA

I coded mine too yesterday and works perfectly with Blackberry 9900. I also have a shortcut to my inbox for when I receive an email!

Music streams perfect via Bluetooth too, but no album art. I also have photos of people that are calling me appear when receiving a call. I programmed these sometime ago in the phone and show up now 6NS is switched on.

Dickie

[sms720]

Has anyone used this setup with 2 phones? - so if I code EBT on my motor when it arrives is it possible to get both SMS and Emails from my 2 phones simultaneously (iPhone 5 and iPhone 5C)

Not asking much I know but would be interested if anyone has this working or at least tried?

I should add kudos to the OP for a lot if time spent on this subject.

[d4springer]

Originally Posted by BMWSKI

Hi d4springer.
Just wondering how your Office functionality was going? I coded EBT yesterday and wondered if I should know anything different before I start playing around with it? Have you found an easier or more reliable way of using it since this thread?
TIA

Hi BMWSKI, basically no change, have got myself into a routine of changing the notification settings from 5 to 10 or vice versa, then locking the phone as I get in the car (although sometimes I have forgotten to do this, however email still seems to show up in Idrive anyway).

It's definitely very useful if I'm on the road for an hour or two, if something comes in and needs responding to I just phone the email sender back, seeing as most people put their phone details in their email signature Idrive picks that up and gives you an option to call them back rather than having to reply by email from the car.

One other thing you may find useful which I messed about with recently, Idrive uses the term Great Britain for our country address, but the iPhone stores contact details as UK, this basically prevents you from looking up your iPhone contacts to import the address in Navigation (it ends up sending you to the Netherlands). Anyway I stumbled across a "fix" whereby you can use the term Great Britain if you add the contacts into Outlook first and sync them across to the iPhone. Idrive can then read your iPhone contacts and give you the option to Navigate to their address. It's not a great fix but it kind of works, I posted the instructions for how I did it here if you want to have a look:

http://www.f30post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=943440

Aren't computers great!