This varies wildly. For most users, it should take less than an hour, but it is dependent upon how many folders you have and how many emails are stored in each of your folders. For users with around 1,000 folders, it should take about 2 hours for IMAP accounts and much longer for Exchange ActiveSync accounts.

The app needs to download 64 emails from each of your folders in order to learn your filing behavior so that it can suggest the right folder when you file an email. This is the minimum number of emails required for the auto-suggestion algorithm to work to our high standards, and these emails need to be downloaded in their entirety.

If you are connecting to an Exchange Server, please note that those servers often have throttling policies that limit the speed at which email clients can access the server. One way to speed up the app (both during setup and daily operation) is to modify those policies to allow for faster access. If you change the Exchange ActiveSync Throttling Policy on the server, you should also modify the 'Rate Limiting' option in the Advanced Account Settings screen for the account within the app. Please remember to tap SAVE if you make any changes.

It is not recommended, but if you are using Exchange ActiveSync to connect to your account, you can set the 'Days to sync' option to 1 month or less. This setting is in the 'Advanced' section when entering your account information. Please note, however, that the auto-suggestions will initially not work properly if you choose to do this. Over time, they should work better as the app downloads more of your filed emails.

If you're only using Preside for emails, and you don't use Exchange Categories, we still recommend IMAP for connecting to your Exchange account.

If you're on an Exchange 2013 server or later, and you do use Exchange Categories, Tasks, or Contacts, we recommend connecting with the EWS protocol.

• IMAP and EWS are robuist enough to allow the email client full control over the synchronization process. Since Preside needs to download 64 emails from each folder in order that it can learn filing behavior, this is VERY important. ActiveSync provides some support for limiting the number of emails to be downloaded, but it is time-based rather than number based. Additionally, there is no choice between '1-month' and 'forever'. That ultimately means that to get 64 emails from a folder, 1000 might need to be downloaded.
• Most Exchange servers have an ActiveSync Throttling Policy that limits the number of requests an app can make on the server within a certain period of time. That causes it to be much slower than the other protocols, which usually do not have that limit.
• ActiveSync provides no way of asking the server, "How many emails are in this folder?". The best it can do is to provide an estimate (sometimes way off) of the number of adds & deletes to a folder since it was last synchronized. This causes the 'numbers' to be off in Preside.
• ActiveSync provides no mechanism for uploading an email to the server. This means that you cannot move emails from another account into an ActiveSync account. (Preside does have a workaround for this issue on the latest Exchange servers, but it is still less than ideal.)
• ActiveSync for Exchange Servers 2003 & 2007 do not have proper support for flags changes on the server side. So, if you reply to an email on your desktop machine, Preside will not be able to update the 'replied' flag on its copy of the email.

You can add the account again as an Exchange account, but with emails disabled. That is accomplished from the Advanced section while setting up the account.

EWS has support for Exchange Categories, Tasks, & Contacts, whereas IMAP only supports email. On the other hand, IMAP is a much lighter weight and faster protocol than EWS, and it uses less data. Additionally, Preside has supported IMAP for years, while the EWS implementation is very new.

If you're currently using ActiveSync to connect to your server, then Yes, you should switch to EWS. If you're currently using IMAP for your email and you're using ActiveSync to add tasks, you should still also switch. If you're only using the app for emails and you're connecting with IMAP, then you can proceed without switching over.

The best process for switching to EWS is to leave your existing account alone and add a new account from the More > Accounts screen. Select "Exchange 2016 (EWS)" as the account type when entering the account, and choose a Nickname for the account that distinguishes it from your existing account. Let the app do its syncing and then use that account for a few days to make sure everything is working right. Once you're satisfied that the new account is working well, you can delete the old account by tapping the Edit button on the More > Accounts screen.

Preside currently does not enforce any of the Exchange ActiveSync provisioning policies. Most of those policies do not make sense for individual apps, and these policies should already be enforced by iOS, provided the account is also added to the device in the iOS Settings app. We do recognize that some of these policies do make sense for individual apps, and that users might be interested in how Preside handles issues related to the various provisioning policies. As such, we've listed the various Exchange ActiveSync provisioning policies below with relevant information. As always, we welcome feedback to mail@preside.io about specific policies that it makes sense to enforce within the app.

• AccountOnlyRemoteWipe - is fully supported by the app. A remote wipe will delete the account from the app.
• RemoteWipe - this will act like an AccountOnlyRemoteWipe. It will delete the account from Preside
• AllowBlueTooth - This does not make sense on an app level
• AllowCamera - Use of the camera is always allowed
• AllowConsumerEmail - Users can add any email account to the app
• AllowDesktopActiveSync - The app can NOT sync with Desktop ActiveSync
• AllowHTMLEmail - The user can choose to configure an HTML viewer or Plain-Text viewer for viewing and/or an HTML editor or Plain-Text editor for composing emails.
• AllowInternetSharing - The app can NOT provide internet sharing.
• AllowIrDA - The app can NOT allow IRDA.
• AllowPOPIMAPEmail - The app DOES allow use of these accounts. IMAP is the preferred protocol for connecting with servers and the app will run 10x faster over IMAP than over ActiveSync.
• AllowRemoteDesktop - The app does NOT support this.
• AllowSimpleDevicePassword - The app only allows for a simple 4-digit passcode to open the app or no app-level passcode. Presumably iOS is already requiring the user to use a simple or complex password to unlock the device, so the app-level password is secondary to that.
• AllowSMIMEEncryptionAlgorithmNegotiation - The app does NOT support this, but I don't think weak ciphers will work. I'm not sure on this one.
• AllowSMIMESoftCerts - The app DOES support S/MIME certificates
• AllowStorageCard - This is NOT supported by the app or iOS.
• AllowTextMessaging - The app can NOT send text messages
• AllowUnsignedApplication - This is NOT applicable on an app level.
• AllowUnsignedInstallationPackages - The app can NOT install packaged (signed or unsigned)
• AllowWiFi - The app ALWAYS allows WiFi connections, but it would be constrained by what is allowed by iOS.
• AlphaNumericPasswordRequired - The app does NOT allow app-level complex passwords. Presumably, iOS is already requiring this to unlock the device.
• ApprovedApplicationList - This is NOT applicable on an app-level
• AttachmentsEnabled - The app ALWAYS allows attachments for viewing and composing
• DevicePasswordEnabled - This is not enforced by the app, but the user can be configure an app-level 4-digit passcode.
• DevicePasswordExpiration - The app does NOT support this. Presumably iOS respects this and requires the change in order to unlock the device.
• DevicePasswordHistory - The app does NOT support this.
• MaxAttachmentSize - The app does NOT respect this setting. Attachments of any size can be downloaded or sent by the app. Super-huge attachments might crash the app, though.
• MaxCalendarAgeFilter - The app does NOT sync Exchange calendars.
• MaxDevicePasswordFailedAttempts - This is NOT supported for the app-level password. iOS enforces this when unlocking the device.
• MaxEmailAgeFilter - The app does NOT support this. Users can configure any of the options when adding the account or on a folder-by-folder level.
• MaxEmailBodyTruncationSize - The app does NOT support this setting. The app will try to download full mime emails up to a certain size that is determined based on a variety of factors including the size of the email, whether it is an Inbox, the connectivity, and configuration options in the app. For emails deemed inefficient for full mime download, the app will truncate at 128K.
• MaxHTMLEmailBodyTruncationSize - This is handled exactly like MaxEmailBodyTruncationSize.
• MaxInactivityTimeDeviceLock - The app does NOT support this. There is a user setting whereby the user can set the conditions when the app will allow auto-lock to occur. I am not sure how this interacts with the iOS handling of this setting.
• MinDevicePasswordComplexCharacters - See other Password options.
• MinDevicePasswordLength - See other Password options.
• PasswordRecoveryEnabled - The app does NOT support this. If an app-level passcode is set and the user taps, "Lost passcode", the app will prompt the user to enter the actual password for a select account configured in the app. If that password matches, the user is allowed access to the app.
• RequireDeviceEncryption - The app ALWAYS uses iOS file protection to encrypt data at rest, but it uses the NSFileProtectionCompleteUntilFirstUserAuthentication which will allow access first unlock of the device after startup.
• RequireEncryptedSMIMEMessages - The app does NOT enforce this policy. Users can send an receive encrypted S/MIME messages after they've imported their S/MIME certificate into the app and configured the appropriate settings. Users can configure the app to S/MIME encrtypt every outgoing message and warn the user when that is not possible.
• RequireEncryptionSMIMEAlgorithm - The app does NOT enforce this policy, but it probably won't handle weak ciphers well.
• RequireManualSyncWhenRoaming - The app does NOT enforce this policy. Users can explicitly force manual-syncing only by changing the 'AutoSync' setting to 'Never'.
• RequireSignedSMIMEAlgorithm - The app does NOT support this policy, but weak ciphers probably won't work well.
• RequireSignedSMIMEMessages - The app does NOT enforce this policy. Users can configure the app to always use an S/MIME signature and issue a warning if that is not possible.
• RequireStorageCardEncryption - This is NOT applicable to iOS devices.
• UnapprovedInROMApplicationList - This is NOT applicable to individual apps.