At this year's Microsoft TechED event details of the new features that will be included in the next release of the Windows Phone operating system were revealed. Codenamed "Mango" and assigned version number Windows Phone 7.1 (or 7.5 - opinion seems to be divided), the update is scheduled to be released before the end of the year and will be made available for all existing Windows Phone 7.0 devices.

Among the features that will be of interest to Enterprise customers are:

• Pinnable Email folders - a specific email folder or RSS feed can be added to the home screen for direct and easy access
• Conversation View - emails can be viewed and bulk-actioned by conversation
• Lync Integration - an instant messaging client for the Office Communications Server and Lync Communications Server products will be included
• Office 365 integration - autodiscovery services for Office365-hosted Exchange mailboxes are included, meaning that if your email is hosted on the Office 365 Exchange platform, setting up an Outlook email account on the device will be detect the required server settings automatically (allegedly)
• Information Rights Management support - ability to restrict forwarding of sensitive mails from the device outside the organisation
• Email search server support - search for and find mails on the Exchange server older than the mails synced to the device via ActiveSync
• WiFi improvements - added support for wireless networks using hidden SSIDs

You can watch a video running through these features here - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/why-windows-phone-in-the-enterprise

There are allegedly over 500 new features included in the Mango update, the complete list of features that have so far emerged is as follows:

• Outlook Conversation View – Emails combined together in threads
• Lync Messaging Client – Enterprise messaging client supporting OCS and Lync
• Twitter integration – Tweets integration into people hub
• Office 365 integration – Office 365 features built-in, including automatic configuring of Exchange email accounts hosted on the Office 365 platform
• Bing Vision – Scan QR, Microsoft Tags, books, CDs and DVDs
• Bing Audio – Similar to Shazam, will identify songs
• Windows Live Messenger integration – Integrated into the people hub and messaging hub
• Facebook Chat integration – Integrated into the people hub and messaging hub
• AOL Messenger integration – Integrated into the people hub and messaging hub
• Contacts grouping – Create groups of contacts to send messages to
• Xbox LIVE sync function – Sync function to likely sync settings/games across devices
• Now playing artist information on lock screen – album art on the lock screen
• Visual Voicemail support - Visual voicemail using same method as iOS/Android
• Network awareness NCSI support – improvements for switching between networks/optimization
• Internet Explorer 9 mobile – HTML5 support and hardware acceleration
• Multitasking support – switch quickly between apps
• Fast application resume – quickly resume recently used apps
• Podcast support – download podcasts via the Marketplace
• Turn-by-turn navigation in Bing Maps - voice guided directions and turn-by-turn
• SMS dictation – Microsoft tellme dictates messages
• East Asian Language keyboard support – additional language support
• Handwriting and dictionary support – support for writing Chinese characters
• Pin Outlook Folders – Pin folders as favorites inside Outlook
• SkyDrive integration – Access SkyDrive documents from Office Hub
• Kinect support for games - interact with Kinect and Xbox games from Windows Phone
• Outlook email server search – search Exchange servers from Outlook client for messages older than those synced to the device
• Complex (alpha-numeric) password support – strong number and character password support
• Information Rights Management – support for protecting e-mails and Office documents: if an email is set not to be forwarded outside the organisation on the Exchange server, it will not be possible to forward that email from the device either
• Ringtone support – third party ringtone support
• App list – automatically detect list, implemented jump list and search for apps
• Marketplace search improvements – apps, podcasts, music separated for easy search
• App install improvements – progress bar install UI
• Search extras – User search actions can be connected to third-party apps
• Motion Sensor – apps to use new gyroscope hardware
• Background audio – apps can run audio in the background
• File download service – third-party apps can download files from the web
• Alarms – alarm notifications for third-party apps
• Pin app features – Users can pin live tiles of deep app features in third-party apps
• Zune Smart DJ mix – allows users to discover new music and save/create playlists
• Camera sound toggle – users can now disable the camera shutter sound
• WiFi improvements – support for hidden SSID networks

The below video runs through the more consumer aspects of the Mango update, while perhaps not as relevant to the enterprise, makes the platform that much more user-friendly that businesses should recognise that an increasing number of employees will start bringing them to the IT department for approval...