First, let the IT department know that you’d like to use your Droid 2 to work with the company’s network and computers. They’ll set up the network to let your phone connect. Then all you have to do is add the company account to your phone, which works much the same way as adding a new email account.

To get started, in the Application Tray, tap My Accounts. At the bottom of the screen, tap “Add account”, and then select Corporate Sync.

On the screen that appears, enter all the information that your IT folks supplied you—the domain name and user name, password, email address, server, and so on.

Ask the IT department exactly what you should use as your user name. If no one’s around, here are some things you can try:

The first part of your work email address. If your email address is [email protected], your user name may be goodguy.

The first part of your work email address, plus the company’s Windows domain. For example, honkingservergoodguy. If this looks familiar, it may be what you use to log into the company network at work.

When you’re done, tap Next, and you’re set up and ready to go. If you run into any problems, check with the IT staff.

As with your Gmail account, you can choose whether to have your Droid 2 sync your mail, calendar, and contacts. When your new corporate account shows up in My Accounts, tap it and you’ll be able to turn each of those on or off. For details see Accounts. You may now use your corporate account the same way you use your other accounts for email (Setting Up Email Accounts), contacts (Placing a Phone Call), and your calendar (Using the Calendar).

A virtual private network (VPN) is a kind of virtual tunnel that lets authorized people into the network, while blocking everyone else. If your company has a VPN, you need to connect to it to do things like check your email while you’re away from the office. Check with the IT staff. If your company has a VPN, and if you’re permitted to use it, they’ll give you the information that lets your Droid 2 connect to the corporate network over the VPN. They’ll also set up an account for you.

Here’s what you’ll need to set up your Droid 2 to access the VPN:

Once you’ve got all that, you’re ready to set up the VPN. On the Home screen or a pane, press the Menu key and then choose “Wireless & networks”→VPN Settings→Add VPN. A screen appears asking you which of the VPN protocols you’ll use for the VPN. Choose the one your IT folks told you to use.

After that, you come to a screen that asks for all the information you’ve gotten from your IT folks. When you’ve entered all that, press the Menu key, and then tap Save. Your VPN connection and its settings are saved.

From now on, when you want to connect to the VPN, go to the Home screen or a pane, press the Menu key, and then choose “Wireless & networks”→VPN Settings. Tap the VPN to which you want to connect. You may need to enter a user name and password or passwords (these are the ones you’ve been given by the IT folks). When you do that, tap Connect, and you make the connection. The status bar shows you that you’ve got a VPN connection and displays a notification if you’ve been disconnected, so that you can make the connection again. At any point, to disconnect, open the Notification panel, touch the notification for the VPN, and touch it again to disconnect.

An increasing number of companies and government agencies use Google Docs for creating and sharing documents, including word processing files, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. Google Docs works much like Microsoft Office, but the software and all the documents live on the Web, where you can share them with others. The basic service is free for individuals, although companies of all sizes can pay for the useful corporate features.

With the Droid 2’s browser, you can view all the documents you have access to on Google Docs. You can’t create or even edit them in the browser, but it’s not likely that you’re going to want to create a full-blown presentation or spreadsheet on your smartphone. (If you want to do more than just stare at your Google Docs, you can get an app for that; see the next section.)

To use Google Docs on your Droid 2, launch your browser and visit Google Docs on the Web at http://docs.google.com. (If that doesn’t get you to the right location, check with your IT department.)

You come to a page that shows you all the documents you have access to in Google Docs. You can choose to see them all in a list, or only see the ones that you created (Owned by Me), or those that you have starred.

To view any document, tap it. The document opens in a built-in Google document viewer. You can scroll through the document and zoom in and out using the usual Droid 2 finger motions (Controlling the Droid 2 with Your Fingers).

Creating and Editing Google Docs Documents

There is, in fact, a way to edit documents in your Google Docs account, by using the free app called Gdocs. You can search for it in the Android Market (for details about finding and installing apps, see Chapter 11).

Gdocs isn’t a particularly pretty solution, but it does get the job done, especially if you’re in a pinch and need to do some quick-and-dirty editing. (And it’s free, so stop complaining.) Download it, enter your Google Docs account information, and you can then browse through the documents on Google Docs, although it’s tougher to do than via the browser, since you can’t see a clean, categorized list.

When you find a document you want to edit, tap it, and it gets downloaded to your Droid 2. After the document is downloaded, press the Menu key, tap Folders, and then tap “Local documents”. You see a list of all the documents you’ve downloaded. Edit it (keep in mind that the editing tools are fairly rudimentary). When you’re done, save the file. You can then sync it so that it uploads to your Google Docs account.

The gold standard for creating and editing documents is Microsoft Office, and although your Droid 2 can’t rival a computer when it comes to editing, there is a way to create, edit, and view Microsoft Office documents, using the Quickoffice app that comes on the Droid 2. It’s basic and bare-bones, but it gets the job done.

If you’re willing to spend a little money, get Documents to Go from the Android Market. There are two versions, a free version, which lets you view word processing documents and spreadsheets, and a full version, which lets you edit word processing documents and spreadsheets, do basic editing of presentations, and view PDF files. The full version costs $14.99.

Again, though, don’t expect Documents to Go to do everything you can do on a computer. Still, it’s nice to be able to edit documents when you absolutely need to.