Well, I'm sorry to say the Visto Mobile has pulled it's email service. They did extend the support for 3 months free of charge which was a nice move. This service had been working pretty consistently for me. At this point, I'm disappointed it is being pulled. The one nice feature was that you could delete messags on the iphone that would be deleted from your Lotus Notes inbox. In other words, no dual maintenance. It seems it may be offered by some of the service providers.
So far no news on AT&T picking it up.
iNotes Ultralite
Our corporate Lotus Notes servers were upgrade to the 8.0 version which now provides the Ultralite INotes interface. This has come in very handy for checking details of meetings and for email. This also provides access to all email view, but does not utilize the folder views. The calendar does not allow you to add appointments or meetings. Sending email is problematic since there is no link for the corporate directory lookup to the email capabilities. My biggest problem with this, which may be a factor of the iPhone, is the need to login each time the site is accessed. Good security, but a bit painful to review emails.
EMAIL
So, I'm back to forwarding email to a Google email account from Lotus Notes. However, I've taken a slightly different approach this time. Before getting into that I had received some questions about setting up GMail and Notes to all the response to look like they are being sent from Notes.
I took the following steps.
1. In Notes, I simply set up a Rule to forward all documents to mymail@gmail.com.
I specified to send the full copy when mail arrives for all documents,
2. In Gmail, under Settings/Accounts I added my work account me@work.com as an account I can send mail as.
This will send an email to that account to confirm you control it.
3. In Gmail, I then made the me@work.com.
4. On the iPhone, add an account (Settings -> Mail -> Add Account -> Other)
5. Enter your lotus email me@work.com
6. When prompted for the mail servers, use your gmail account and password, mymail@gmail.com.
The incoming email server would be imap.gmail.com and the outgoing would be smtp.gmail.com.
That seemed to do it for me as a basic setup. The problem was that each email I received at work dutifully got pumped to my iphone. Did I mention the need to delete or file the emails in both places? So I did some more searching.
I happened upon Wireless Mail from MartinScott.com. This is a number of agents that get imported into your Lotus Notes system that control the forwarding of emails to your gmail account. There are several really nice features to these utilities. You can easily configure the schedule of when emails are forwarded. You can remotely override the schedule from your iPhone.
For example, if you typically forward the emails from 8 to 5 during the week, but you are delayed getting into the office, you can send a short email from another specified account (me@mac.com) which will then begin forwarding all emails. There is also a lot of flexibility based on keyword and author that allows very granular control of what gets forwarded.
it still doesn't solve the dual maintenance issue, but it keeps me informed and engaged when I'm not in the office or logged into Lotus Notes. You do need Design access to your mail file, but this seems to be very common. There are some very detailed instructions at the MartinScott site.
Calendar
I'm trying something different for the calendar, also. I am still using Companion Link for Google to sync the calendar entries from Lotus Notes to Google Calendar. This is running from an always on (almost) PC at work. I had been using BusySync to sync GCal to iCal and using MobileMe to get them to the iPhone.
The approach I am trying now uses NuevaSync which push the GCal entries to the iphone using the Exchange interface. This helps to facilitate keeping my iPhone updated even when my MAC is not online.
The site gives good instructions on setting up the phone. However, you do need to create an account to access these instructions. The account is free.
Calendar entries are pushed to the native calendar on the iPhone. I have not experimented with two way syncing back to Lotus Notes. I still run into issues with duplicates being created on GCal. However, Nuevasyn also has a toll to remove duplicate entries from GCal that works pretty well, too.
I simply subscribe to the GCal calendar within iCal to keep that up to date. The one place these entries don't currently show up is in MobileMe on the web. I hardly ever reference that site for the calendar anyway,
Well, I'm still waiting for a native iPhone app like mNotes. In the meantime, I'll keep cobbling pieces together to make it work.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Friday, September 05, 2008
Syncing Lotus Notes, iCal, and MobileMe
The saga continues .... I think I've made this my own personal mission at this point.
Thanks Ryan for asking for an update. I've been fairly busy and haven't returned here recently.
This is my current scenario, a large amount of bailing wire and duct tape.
At work I have a Windows XP PC with Lotus Notes. This is always on.
(I basically use my Powerbook running 10.5.4 to actually work. This is running the Lotus Notes 8.5 for OS/X.)
I use VistoMobile to get my work email to the iPhone. Service with VistoMobile seems to be pretty consistent at this point.
(Oh no! Did I just say that out-loud?) Since VistoMobile is not a push solution, I have SMS messages sent to the iPhone if I receive a priority message (or one from my VP). This is done as a forwarding option within Lotus Notes.
I use Companion Link for Google to sync my Lotus Notes Calendar entries to a Google Calendar, one way sync only.
On my MAC, I use Busy Sync to sync my Google Calendar to ICal. I then use MobileMe to sync between my MACs and the iPhone.
Most of the time this works fairly well. These are the issues that I've run into.
With email, the biggest issue is having to reset the iPhone occasionally. This only seems to be necessary if I forget to turn off WiFi before I get to work. In these circumstance, the wifi networks at work do not allow access to email ports through the firewall.
I was unable to get Companion Link to auto synchronize on its own. So I turned it off. To that end I set up two scheduled tasks in Windows. The first does Companion Link Synchronization every 30 minutes. The second runs a program, aKill, that kills the synchronizations "Ok Dialogue" 10 minutes after the sync is scheduled.
With the calendar entries, on occasion ( once every couple weeks) entries get duplicated on Google Calendar. I haven't determined the circumstances that cause this yet. When this occurs, I log into Google Calendar and delete all the entries. Then in Companion Link I will do a "purge and reload" of the calendar entries on Google.
This was working fairly consistently. There were some old Lotus Notes repeating calendar entries that were messing up once in a while. However, we had gone through a Notes identity migration a few months back and I feel these are remnants of that process.
Overall, my time to manage this setup has reduced considerably to the point I didn't have to think about it too often. It just worked, surprisingly.
Until this week ... I had to do the purge and reload. Everything still syncs correctly to iCal and out to the iPhone and other MACs. However, when I view the calendar on MobileMe some of the custom repeat entries (Every 2 weeks) are showing up on the wrong week. I've spent a few hours chatting with Apple Support on this. It seems as though something is a wrong with the MobileMe account, which was converted from a .Mac account.
If I get a resolution to this, I'll post an update. As I said, bailing wire and duct tape!!
Cheers.
Update 9/5/2008 PM
BTW, I had also tried Lotus Notes GoBetween from PocketMAC which was touted as syncing directly from Lotus Notes to iCal. back in Feb. 2008. Unfortunately, I could never get that to work. From some of the other postings on the web it seems like there may be an update coming out later this year.
Thanks Ryan for asking for an update. I've been fairly busy and haven't returned here recently.
This is my current scenario, a large amount of bailing wire and duct tape.
At work I have a Windows XP PC with Lotus Notes. This is always on.
(I basically use my Powerbook running 10.5.4 to actually work. This is running the Lotus Notes 8.5 for OS/X.)
I use VistoMobile to get my work email to the iPhone. Service with VistoMobile seems to be pretty consistent at this point.
(Oh no! Did I just say that out-loud?) Since VistoMobile is not a push solution, I have SMS messages sent to the iPhone if I receive a priority message (or one from my VP). This is done as a forwarding option within Lotus Notes.
I use Companion Link for Google to sync my Lotus Notes Calendar entries to a Google Calendar, one way sync only.
On my MAC, I use Busy Sync to sync my Google Calendar to ICal. I then use MobileMe to sync between my MACs and the iPhone.
Most of the time this works fairly well. These are the issues that I've run into.
With email, the biggest issue is having to reset the iPhone occasionally. This only seems to be necessary if I forget to turn off WiFi before I get to work. In these circumstance, the wifi networks at work do not allow access to email ports through the firewall.
I was unable to get Companion Link to auto synchronize on its own. So I turned it off. To that end I set up two scheduled tasks in Windows. The first does Companion Link Synchronization every 30 minutes. The second runs a program, aKill, that kills the synchronizations "Ok Dialogue" 10 minutes after the sync is scheduled.
With the calendar entries, on occasion ( once every couple weeks) entries get duplicated on Google Calendar. I haven't determined the circumstances that cause this yet. When this occurs, I log into Google Calendar and delete all the entries. Then in Companion Link I will do a "purge and reload" of the calendar entries on Google.
This was working fairly consistently. There were some old Lotus Notes repeating calendar entries that were messing up once in a while. However, we had gone through a Notes identity migration a few months back and I feel these are remnants of that process.
Overall, my time to manage this setup has reduced considerably to the point I didn't have to think about it too often. It just worked, surprisingly.
Until this week ... I had to do the purge and reload. Everything still syncs correctly to iCal and out to the iPhone and other MACs. However, when I view the calendar on MobileMe some of the custom repeat entries (Every 2 weeks) are showing up on the wrong week. I've spent a few hours chatting with Apple Support on this. It seems as though something is a wrong with the MobileMe account, which was converted from a .Mac account.
If I get a resolution to this, I'll post an update. As I said, bailing wire and duct tape!!
Cheers.
Update 9/5/2008 PM
BTW, I had also tried Lotus Notes GoBetween from PocketMAC which was touted as syncing directly from Lotus Notes to iCal. back in Feb. 2008. Unfortunately, I could never get that to work. From some of the other postings on the web it seems like there may be an update coming out later this year.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Lotus Notes to iPhone sync update
Well it's a new year. I feel I've gotten syncing to the iPhone from Lotus Notes running fairly smoothly, comparatively speaking.
For email, I've switched to VistoMobile for the iPhone. Actually, I had tried this when it was first released. It had worked pretty well for a while, but then I began to notice connectivity issues and some inconsistencies with the emails being synced to the iPhone. I've recently given it another try and once again it seems to be working fairly well. This utilizes a Windows Desktop client component which syncs email between your inbox and the iPhone.
VistoMobile also provides access to the corporate directory for looking up contacts. Comes in handy for sending an email to 1 contact, but is not integrated enough to send an email to a group of contacts at this point.
For syncing calendars, I use a combination of iCal, Live Mail, and the Httpmail plugin for Mail now that it is available for Leopard. Within Lotus Notes, I forward meeting requests to my Live Mail account. Using the httpmail plug-in I am able to update my iCal calendar with these events. For meetings that I am scheduling I include my live mail account as an attendee.
I went with Live Mail and the httpmail plugin because I can access this mail from behind the corporate fire wall. This allows me to keep my iCal calendar and iPhone sync'd during the day.
If there are events I book on my iPhone directly, I email the event to my corporate email account. Then I import the event from within Lotus Notes.
Certainly, this is not an ideal situation. I have, however, gotten the amount of rework and reentry down considerably from previous configurations.
For email, I've switched to VistoMobile for the iPhone. Actually, I had tried this when it was first released. It had worked pretty well for a while, but then I began to notice connectivity issues and some inconsistencies with the emails being synced to the iPhone. I've recently given it another try and once again it seems to be working fairly well. This utilizes a Windows Desktop client component which syncs email between your inbox and the iPhone.
VistoMobile also provides access to the corporate directory for looking up contacts. Comes in handy for sending an email to 1 contact, but is not integrated enough to send an email to a group of contacts at this point.
For syncing calendars, I use a combination of iCal, Live Mail, and the Httpmail plugin for Mail now that it is available for Leopard. Within Lotus Notes, I forward meeting requests to my Live Mail account. Using the httpmail plug-in I am able to update my iCal calendar with these events. For meetings that I am scheduling I include my live mail account as an attendee.
I went with Live Mail and the httpmail plugin because I can access this mail from behind the corporate fire wall. This allows me to keep my iCal calendar and iPhone sync'd during the day.
If there are events I book on my iPhone directly, I email the event to my corporate email account. Then I import the event from within Lotus Notes.
Certainly, this is not an ideal situation. I have, however, gotten the amount of rework and reentry down considerably from previous configurations.
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