Has anyone used Verizon Messages Desktop App

[lurch3777]

I'm curious, is there anyone out there that has used the Verizon Messages Desktop App? Were you able to use it successfully? Can you still?

You can download it here (The icon that says "Download Desktop App")

Verizon Messages - Verizon Wireless

I opened this thread which I'm pretty sure has just joined all of the other forgotten threads that never get answers.

VERIZON MESSAGES PC App

[vzw_customer_support]

Great question lurch3777! It's a wonderful app, I use it myself and love that it syncs all across all my devices. The download will depend on the phone you have and onto your PC, this is the link to download it http://vz.to/1ok0j4L. This link http://vz.to/1pk5oNC will also assist with questions you may have.

AdaS_VZW
Follow us on Twitter at @VZWSupport 

[lurch3777]

So you're able to use the Windows Desktop app? Can you send text messages and sync with your messages? Mine does not work at all and I cannot figure out why.

[SuzyQ]

Have you tried force closing the app and then restarting it?  Mine tries to sync with ALL my messages on the phone, which are many, and that may be what's bogging it down.  The wheel spins  as messges pop in, but if I try to use it before they are all fully loaded in, I get the app "Not responding".

Still. once it all loads up, I can send and receive texts on the computer - and they pop up on the phone too.  It does work.

[lurch3777]

yeah I've tried that. I have been using the phone and web app for a while now. And I really wanted to just start using the desktop app as I have other problems with the web app. The desktop app seems to have loaded the contacts, but will not send or receive messages. I wonder now if it's because there are so many messages it cannot handle the initial load. It does take about an hour for it to finally say failed to synchronize.

[SuzyQ]

Can you download your messages (use an pp that will back up and allow you to download them to a file) and then clear them off your phone, then try syncing with the desktop app?

I do see that my replies do not show on my phone, though any incoming messages are received.  If I reply on the computer that's the only place I see the reply. Seems that was the case when I used the app on a tablet too....

[Datahero]

I have downloaded the Message+ application for 64 Bit Windows 7.  It's a wonderful idea and I think it's just great.  Unfortunately, its performance is inconsistent, the interface is not intuitive, certain features are difficult to use,  certain obvious features are missing and there is no integrated help facility.  I have elaborated on some of them, below.  Be aware that I have not had this program for very long, so there may be answers and explanations that I am not aware of.  And I might simply be wrong.

Performance is inconsistent:

• Messages which appear on your phone will either immediately appear on your Message+ window (which is wonderful) or they will never appear, ever.  Even waiting for hours doesn't get them.  Exiting and running the application won't get them--they simply don't show up.
• The program sometimes hangs for no readily apparent reason, thus hanging every single window associated with it.  Once this happens, this is a solid hang.  The program will simply not process any more windows messages at all.  Since it will not handle a WM_CLOSE, you can not kill it from the task bar, you'll just get a beep.  You must use the Windows Task Manager to do it.  Once you have killed it, it will steadily hang more frequently.
• Message+ can get into such a state that it will no longer start, no matter what you do.  You can look at your processes, see that it is not there, but trying to run it give you a brief blink and nothing happens.  A full reboot may fix this, but I do not know because I have not performed one.  I think that is just too drastic and I simply have too much other stuff going on.
• Once performance starts to degrade, it does so rapidly.  Message+ will simply stop receiving ALL SMS messages with no indication why.  There is no obvious way to reset this.
• Attempting to fix the application by choosing Repair from the installation program (which is not documented anywhere) produces mixed results.  The repair process takes an extremely long time and the progress bar barely moves making one think that the repair has hung.  It is an exercise for the truly patient (or desperate).  This will fix the program enough so that it will start again, but performance will be poor and hangs will become more frequent.
• A repair inconsistently leaves messages around.  One contact may still have messages while another has them all deleted.  There is no readily apparent reason for this behavior.
• Once you stop receiving messages, you do so forever.  Even a repair doesn't fix the problem.
• Close buttons [X] do not consistently work.  Sometimes you got to click them a few times.

The interface is not intuitive:

• On just about any GUI that you've ever heard of, available buttons or hot spots are highlighted in some way.  The Message+ application does not follow this paradigm; the entire interface is flat and there is no indication of what you can click on unless you directly click on it.
• It is not clear what a button does until you click on it.  Some of the symbols are not obvious nor are they documented in any readily access place.
• Icons can bring up windows which are either docked to the main window or separate with no readily apparent design.
• Windows are launched with either a double or single click, which is startling and inconsistent.  There is no readily apparent reason for this behavior.
• You can do different things based on whether you are in edit mode or not, but it is not described anywhere how to do this and it is not obvious how to get out of it while you are in it.  You've got to hunt around and experiment.
• It is confusing to figure out what phone number to synchronize with.  I installed the program only three days ago and now I have completely forgotten how to do this.

Certain features are difficult to use:

• Trying to get at the text of a message is tortuous.  You've got find very tiny dim icons which may or may not be there.  Sometimes you'll manage to get a pop up with a right click, but all the options will be greyed out.  There is no way to figure this out except by (laboriously) clicking on every part of every window at each stop to see what you can do.
• You can only select a single message text at a time for certain things.  If you want to get an entire thread, there is no way to do this.  You can select multiple messages in edit mode, but the only available action is to delete all of them.
• You can get per message info, which is great, but you have to do it on ever single message.
• The scroll bar performance is poor.  It is very difficult to determine where you are in a window, scrolling control is jerky, trying to move up a little bit at a time does not work.
• Trying to find the program on the Verizon website to download it is not directly obvious.  You can Google the web for messages, some of which have hard URL's that you can click on to get to the right place.

Certain obvious features are missing:

• SMS messages contain valuable information and there is no way to save a message stream to file.  This is lack of functionality is positively astounding.  You've got to scroll through the message and take screen shots.
• The arrow buttons do not consistently scroll window contents.  They typically work, however.
• Messages which are sent to a Jetpack (they have phone numbers) are not caught, which is puzzling.
• You can not display message contents and information at the same time.  This makes it doubly tedious to record information.
• There is no undelete, roll back, restore or recover feature.  Once you delete a message it's gone.  Forever. Even undelete programs do not work because the delete is not apparently file based.  You can hunt through the block list, but this can get tedious.
• There is no way to back up or restore the entire database.  Some of this material is critical.
• There is no export function.  You can not export to a .PDF to e-mail to somebody.  You can not export to a .CSV for offline analysis.

Help:

• There is no integrated help facility..  You can not pull up a window of descriptions of basic tasks.
• There does not appear to be an online FAQ located in any obvious place.
• It is difficult to Google for help online, you must always put Message+ in double quotes, "Message+" or you will get unexpected results.
• There does not appear to be any large experienced user community on the Web yet.  This support site is probably your only realistic chance of getting some useful information.  Otherwise, there are many, many questions out there.
• The Send Feedback Function does not work if you do not have an installed mail client on your desktop. If you are using a web based one, gmail for example, a browser window will start with the entire message stuffed into the URL bar.  You've got to cut the text out of the URL and paste it into separate fields in your message.  You've better off just simply sending an e-mail to verizonmessages@verizonwireless.com.  Thus far, however, I have yet to receive a single response.  Sometimes hitting the Submit button performs no function at all.  The window simply stays up and nothing happens.

In summary, I think it's a great idea, but I simply don't think the User Interface engineering is all that thought out.  The look and feel of an application of an application are absolutely critical to successfully exploiting the functionality.   You should only deviate from (decades old) graphical  interface paradigms when you really have something different to do.  Message+ is performing basic functions, it doesn't need window glitz.  Glitz for glitz's sake is just plain annoying and causes a needless learning curve.  Further, Message+'s glitz is uninspiring and in some cases, downright confusing.

The flawed functionality, the stability, the data lose, the lack of obvious features and the near complete lack of documentation make me think that this is essentially an unfinished or alpha stage product and one would hope for improvements as new version roll out (if they ever do).

If anyone knows of any alternatives to Message+ that do what it does, I'd love to hear about it.  However, I am only interested in capturing SMS messages, not sending any sort of e-mail or data.

[SuzyQ]

Wow, datahero, you've taken some time to explore and find your way around the Messages + desktop app (such as it is!)  I've installed it and used it briefly, but found it to be glitchy, and in most cases unnecessary because my phone is sitting right beside me at the same time. I have not written out the glitches, but I have seen much of the behavior you detailed.

For those who need the text messaging capability on their desktop system, this app is a step in the right direction, but as you've so eloquently pointed out,  it needs work.  Thank you for documenting the difficulties, and I will see what I can do as a CL to pass this info further up the line.

[Datahero]

Actually, that was just a quick summary, if you can believe it.  I haven't had time to thoroughly research the desktop application as I would like. It is very difficult to get anywhere with it.  Also, bear in mind that some of my comments are just opinions and that there are certain inaccuracies.  For example, I finally found the FAQ, but I still don't think that it was in any obvious place, but that's just my taste in the matter.

If you want, try out the web application for the service.  There doesn't seem to be any way to get to this directly, but you can surf to Verizon Messages - Verizon Wireless and then click on the Go To Web App rectangular button.

The web application is far superior to the desktop application in every way and I have no plans to return the desktop application until substantial work is done on it to bring it up to true production level and offer significant additional features.  It simply just isn't ready for prime time.  In fact, the only reason I can think of for using it all at this point would be if you had no access to a modern browser or permission to use one for certain sites (a large business might implement this in a proxy for policy and security reasons)..

The most important feature of the web application to me is that you can export message threads to files.  That is both wonderful and critical to me.  Unfortunately, even this fine piece of code doesn't seem to be able to catch all SMS text messages.  For example, I just sent three (rather long) SMS text messages in a row to a certain number and the cellphone reports successful delivery for all three.  None of the messages show up on the web application which is bad news for me.

At the same time, I received an SMS text message from another number and responded--this happened several times.  All these were captured and displayed by the web application in real time, which is just dandy.  So I don't think I have a problem with my phone.

Not being able to have all sent and received messages show up in the web application (or anywhere else) is absolutely catastrophic for me.

[lurch3777]

The reason I wanted to get the Desktop App working is because I'm having issues with the Web App. Some of the issues you outlined Datahero. But mostly because of connectivity issues, the Web App seems to lose connection after a while and the page needs to be reloaded to get it to work again. From the sounds of it I think I might be on a fools errand.