N900 Maemo5 Outlook Direct Desktop Sync

[sorodoros]

Recently joined this forum after ordering an n900 (no it hasn't shipped ;)). What a great place. Looking forward to spending time here.

Having come from Palm OS and to a much lesser extent WM, n900/Maemo 5 is really exciting. However, Outlook is still my 1st choice for PIMs. WebOS (Palm Pre) can now do this easily for Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Notes with CompanionLink. http://www.palminfocenter.com/mobile/mvs.asp?ID=9947

I haven't seen anything like this on these boards, or did I miss it?

I have noticed some ML Sync possibilities, but as far as I can tell they all sync to the cloud, which, if anyone has heard what just happened to all SideKick data, then cloud sync may give some pause. ActiveSync will apparently work for MS Exchange, but apparently not for direct desktop sync. There is also the PalmOS Garnet VM, which might be a solution, but it doesn't seem to support Maemo 5 yet http://www.access-company.com/products/gvm/.

Suggestions or thoughts?

[ppppppppppp]

Nokia PC Suite should sync most basic fields.
Category field WILL NOT SYNC as it is completely not supported and recklessly disregarded by Nokia's PIM department.

I am yet to understand what sync options GPE Calendar gives for Outlook sync.

[SubCore]

Nokia PC Suite will support direct desktop synchronization with Outlook.

"Synchronise your Maemo device and your compatible home computer using PC Suite to keep all your calendar entries, tasks, and notes up to date."

source (http://maemo.nokia.com/features/calendar/)

this also has been confirmed to work in the live-blog from the summit this weekend.

[ppppppppppp]

SubCore,

Nokia PC Suite always supported "direct desktop synchronization with Outlook". It never stopped doing so. It also aways supported "direct desktop synchronization with Lotus Notes". No need to call for dev summits to confirm such triviality.
There are, however, some crippling limitations in using th PC Suite which i mentioned above.

[SubCore]

Nokia PC Suite always supported "direct desktop synchronization with Outlook".

Not for the Maemo OS it didn't :)

i agree with you on the crippling limitations, though. not to mention that it's damn slow.

[sorodoros]

Yeah, I forgot to mention PC Suite, though my past experience with it was less than wonderful, and many posts on these boards indicate consistent loss of data, buggy behavior, etc.

Regarding category sync, it seems like it will be necessary to create multiple calendars and abandon category sync. That might work, actually, especially if they can be differentiated by color. Hopefully, Maemo 5 and PC Suite will handle all this well.

[ppppppppppp]

sorodoros,

You WILL NOT be able to sync a "Sell Nokia phone for its' lousy PIM" task of category "Work:Lunchtime" on your desktop to any particular calendar created on N900.
Same goes for any PIM item on N900 of certain calendar that you would want to sync to a particular category/folder in Outlook.
Colors DO NOT SYNC.

Nokia is world famous for selling this sort of grief for nearly a DECADE.
This DECADE of history shows that some people at the top of the PIM department are clinically insane.

[Jason404]

This is a major concern for me too. I run my Outlook on Windows Server 2008 R2, so I can normally access it just as though it was running locally, from any internet connected computer, through RemoteApp, which is like Citrix.

I had been planning to connect using rdesktop, but when I resize Outlook to the N900 screen size, it is quite unusable. I am not sure this would have been feasible on a daily basis, anyway.

Do you think that Office Live Small Business could be the solution?
http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/

If I am understanding what it says, for very little money (£10.99/year), you get Exchange server hosting where you can ActiveSync Outlook email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and notes.

If I can use this by redirecting just a subdomain (http://mail.mycompany.com), this looks perfect. Seems a bit too perfect to be true really. Am I understanding this correctly?

[ppppppppppp]

Jason404,

Might be worth it if they provide Outlook Web Access (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook_Web_Access)
Limitation of OWA is that you can not create or use custom views for tasks or appointments.
You can, however, play with folder filtering rules.
OWA is great but not for everyone.

[Jason404]

It seems that you can access email accounts from the web. I've signed up, but I have changed the default domain, and now I cannot get in for some reason. I'll try again tomorrow and see if it the same as OWA.

I am not that interested in OWA anyway, as I can access my full Outlook client from anywhere on the web. I am not interested in the web hosting either, and hope I can actually turn that off.

EDIT:
It seems that the email service is just like Hotmail with the Outlook Connector. I am not yet sure if you can still use Categories and Flags with it. It does actually look like a very good way to get 500MB of free web hosting though, and you can change a setting that allows you to upload your own files, avoiding to have to use the templates. The SharePoint Office Workspace thing is good too, and synchronises with Outlook.

As it does not look like you can actually sync phones without Windows Mobile, I am thinking of setting up my own Exchange server. It won't cost me anything (MAPS), but learning Exchange will take a lot of time.

[SubCore]

You WILL NOT be able to sync a "Sell Nokia phone for its' lousy PIM" task of category "Work:Lunchtime" on your desktop to any particular calendar created on N900.

how do you know this? do you own a n900 or is it just speculation on your part?

as i said, maemo support for the pc suite is new, as well as mail for exchange support for maemo, so it may well be that nokia implemented some of those things to underline it's categorization as a "mobile computer".

[JonFowler]

sorodoros,

You WILL NOT be able to sync a "Sell Nokia phone for its' lousy PIM" task of category "Work:Lunchtime" on your desktop to any particular calendar created on N900.
Same goes for any PIM item on N900 of certain calendar that you would want to sync to a particular category/folder in Outlook.
Colors DO NOT SYNC.

Nokia is world famous for selling this sort of grief for nearly a DECADE.
This DECADE of history shows that some people at the top of the PIM department are clinically insane.

Well, I had not appreciated that this was a matter of life and death!

I have used Nokia Sync successfully for the last 5 years on various phones. It has served me well, and I have not burst any blood vessels over it.

I have a contact list which syncs nicely. I have a single calendar. I have no truck with to-dos and email sync, there are other methods working direct to the device for that.

The only radical thing I am considering is moving to Google Calendar for my master calendar.

The only issue I have with Nokia sync is that very occasionally entries seem to get duplicated. (once the whole directory which was annoying).

And on a personal note what kind of user name is ppppppppppp?

Jon

...caught in the act of being myself.

[pelago]

sorodoros, welcome to the forum!

[ppppppppppp]

SubCore,
From my brief encounter with N900 through RDA i know for a fact that N900's calendar does not support categories. I highly doubt that it will change in production firmware. Even if "the new" PC Suite would somehow support category sync - there'd be nothing to sync from N900's side.
Overall, after more than 5 years of active pushing from the community there is not a single reply from Nokia suggesting even remote possibility of category sync implementation.

JonFowler,
There's really not much i can add to your post. I'm sure you're a great man and i'm delighted to hear that your toyota camry works almost without a hitch. Now, i can only hope that somewhere in a distant corner of your mind you accept the existence of more exciting means of transportation.

[JonFowler]

Hi ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp,:D

I just think that tracking Google functionality is more important, I work for a software development company, and resources are limited so unless you can find a large posse of like minded people prepared to badger Nokia, you are doomed to long term apoplexy.

Anyway, it's an open platform, you can get the calendar source, not sure about Nokia sync, but outlook can generate export files however you like. If you care enough, write it yourself.

Jon

...caught in the act of being myself.

[sorodoros]

OK, then worst case scenario: no category sync, no color sync, limited field sync (compared to Outlook), then ends up on the desktop with what PIM client? If the answer is PC Suite, which is what I think I'm hearing here, then all I can say is PalmPilot 1st generation, 1996 - PIM apps (Datebk X.X) still one of the best around.

You'd think anyone coming out with something as tech-forward as the n900 might want a mature PIM suite. Phone side of the platform seems mature to me, even if it is only a juvenile. Why not PIM, too?

Also, Palm users could easily be lured away from Palm, even from WebOS to Maemo 5, if Nokia would give them good reason to jump ship. Same for WM. You'd think Nokia would want to attract those users and peel them off the Pre. Good for business, no?

[CrashandDie]

Really, it depends on what your criteria are and who you want to target. I work in the business world, and I see a lot of people using Outlook on a daily basis. I also see that Colours and Categories are Outlook specific; or at least, the implementation is -- if Microsoft had ever thought about providing those features in a standard manner, that would be supportable through IMAP/POP, then I'm sure almost any mail library out there would support it. What I don't see, is *everyone* using those specific features. From everything I see in Outlook, Colours and Categories are probably the least used of all features. Why? Because most people work with folders and stuff.

Also, does ActiveSync provide Category and Colour synchronisation? I think not. Well, it does, but to a point. I remember that if you wanted advanced synchronisation features, you had to use stuff like IntelliSync and other additional software.

Nokia is already working on getting Exchange support to a usable state. At the moment, only Exchange 2007 is supported (I haven't had the opportunity to try with Exchange 2003, my company server is not available from wifi/3G, but that's what was said at the Summit), but it appears to work (haven't been able to sync my GMail email yet, however Calendar and Contacts works, even though the email problem seems to come from Google, not the n900). Why would Nokia focus on doing something as specific as Categories first, when there is still a lot of work on other "more important" things. Yes, there, I said, "more important". Why? Because as I explained earlier, the number of people who use Categories is less important than the people who would benefit from a working Exchange implementation.

PIM has always been lacking on the nxx0 side, which is why people took the time to write the software additionally to what the n8x0 provided. We should be grateful that Nokia is trying to reverse this tendency rather than slamming them for not working fast enough. Again, there are priorities; if those don't compare to yours 100%, then one word: tough.

You don't have the device, but yet you're already complaining. In my book, that's a big no-no. It just goes to show how easy it is to whine and find excuses for not buying a device. Go back to your PalmPilot, first generation if some features are so important to you. In the meantime, some people will actually try and make things better, by providing constructive criticism.

</rant>

[sorodoros]

Thank you for showing me the better way to be constructive.

[ppppppppppp]

SyncML supports all sorts of syncing. Nokia supported SyncML for a long time. PC Suite sees categories being passed on to it by SyncML(from 3rd party apps on mobile devices) but can't do anything about it as it doesn't have the code to deal with them...
At the end of the day we are not talking about a huge undertaking here. It's only a couple of fields.
There are a number of angry threads around on the subject dating back 2005 with no response - primary reason for people being upset. If you look around you'll find that most threads end in people going back to Windows Mobile.
I never owned a Nokia device. I would love to but PIM is a deal breaker as it makes me money.

[sorodoros]

... but PIM is a deal breaker as it makes me money.

I gather then that you don't intend to go with an n900.

I do understand the importance of PIM. And I agree, which is why I am concerned, though it is not a deal breaker for me. I am fairly confident that solutions will appear sooner or later, probably sooner. I was just hoping that something comprehensive already existed and that I had overlooked it.

[ppppppppppp]

sordoros,

At present you can try GPE Calendar for Maemo. Sync with Outlook is done via 3rd party Funambol flavor server called Scheduleworld. The process is partly described here(bottom of the page):
http://www.internettablettalk.com/wiki/index.php/Internet:Outlook_Sync
You could also make things work by running a Funambol server on your pc with some minor tweaks.
The question of whether GPE Calendar gives you enough play remains open. In fact, I will be installing it tomorrow on RDA to see if it makes me happy.

S60 is left to something like SBSH Calendar with Funambol or AquaCalendar with a custom plugin for Outlook. Both are not mature enough yet. SBSH has some potential though.

Things are gradually progressing but need time. Give it a year and see...

edit: As far as the best around - it has been Windows Mobile + Pocket Informant and not Palm for a long time now.

[CrashandDie]

ppppppppppp,

Have you used a BlackBerry recently (Pearl 8900 or something)? What are your thoughts, or issues with the PIM?

Noting that RIM's PIM suite is quite "the industry standard" (as much as I hate that term), but noting what you like or dislike could maybe help focus the development of the current PIM suite.

That being said, I'm not saying anyone would potentially listen to you, I'm just hoping we can move the conversation into a more beneficial thread enumerating a list of features that would be requested, with concrete examples. This will be a lot easier to sell to a PM rather than just hoping they will get it right, if we do not provide them with feedback.

Thanks,

[ceroberts75]

i hope that the n900 doesnt sync with outlook the way that the e90 does.


when you enter a new address on the e90, it shows up in out look as follows:

from e90:

123 Main Street
Sarasota, Fl. 08080
USA

in Outlook:

123 Main Street
08080 Sarasota Fl.
USA


so then you have to manually go into every contact and fix the zip formating to the end so that it will map correctly on your pc and show correctly when printed or printing address labels.

[ppppppppppp]

CrashandDie,

Below are the most significant threads that give enough info which you could organize into something like www.htcclassaction.org against Nokia.

Community threads:
Started in 2005 and still going:
http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/discussions/board/message?board.id=pcsuite&thread.id=180&view=by_date_ascending&page=1
Started in 2007 and still going:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56823&page=1

Suggestion for Nokia Ovi Suite 2.0 on betalabs.nokia.com:
http://betalabs.nokia.com/forum/topic/3391
and a little more here:
http://betalabs.nokia.com/forum/topic/3211

There had been a couple of suggestions on www.symbian.com until it was scraped by Nokia.

Post from developer.symbian.org:
http://developer.symbian.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1941
Required features and possible solutions are at the bottom of the page.

A lot of posts on category sync with S60 found on SBSH Forums:
http://forums.sbsh.net/index.php?showforum=48

Alex is the founder of Pocket Informant.
Here's his take on porting Pocket Informant for Nokia:
http://www.pocketinformant.com/Forums/index.php?showtopic=15469

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BlackBerry's success has everything to do with their mail client as well as the right timing in sales compaigns focused on qwerty keyboard tied in with marginal enterprise support back in the day. Otherwise there'd been never anything special about BlackBerry.
Best PIM for BlackBerry is, guess what, Pocket Informant that has been recently ported.
A paragraph on how BB version compares to WM version can be found at the bottom of the following page:
http://www.pocketinformant.com/products_info.php?p_id=pocketinformant_bb

Enjoy the eternal Nokian ignorance.

[zerojay]

You want to organize a class action lawsuit against Nokia for not supporting your precious little colors? Seriously?

GTFO.

[pelago]

GTFO.
Woah, be nice. (Although suing does seem rather over the top to me, too).

[ppppppppppp]

Hahahah,

I sense too many blind-deaf-mute followers around.
Do i want to sue Nokia? - No.
Do i think Nokia should be sued for whatever reason? - I certainly do - great opportunities for day traders.
Hence, i'm giving suggestions that someone "could" or "should" do so.
Do i want to buy a Nokia device? - Yes, for a long time now
Can i buy a Nokia device? - No, i can't because of all the blind-deaf-mute Nokia PIM devs that don't want to listen
Have a click around the links i provided - see how many people are asking and for how long.

...Anyhow, where are Nokia's PIM people? Is anyone coming out for a chat or what?

[CrashandDie]

<snip trolling>
...Anyhow, where are Nokia's PIM people? Is anyone coming out for a chat or what?

Mostly Nokians keep to themselves, exactly because they don't want to deal with stuff like this.

Please understand that most corporations don't work on a "as-asked for" basis. Decisions of what to develop are done based on market needs, and what project/product managers believe is the best way to go. I can't say for sure this is how Nokia work, but I suspect they are driven by points which have been made a long time back, and you can't expect them to change their roadmap just because you're yelling about it.

As I said earlier, being constructive, and not attacking everyone based on your frustration will make you a lot more audible than the ranting/yelling you have been showcasing since you've joined. Create an enhancement request on bugzilla, discuss it there whilst remaining courteous and understanding.

Please understand that we are all trying to make this platform better, and your wishes aren't anyone's command. Yes, you might think that what you are asking for is excruciatingly important, but honestly, if it was, do you honestly believe they would've missed it? If you believe Nokia has made a mistake by ignoring this feature, I don't believe anyone minds you enlightening us, but please, do it an effective and non-disruptive manner.

I hope you can appreciate that with your current behaviour, the only thing you will achieve is the alienation of anyone who might be helpful to you at one point or another.

[ppppppppppp]

Fanboys, fanboys...
Hahahaha.
Why do i say fanboys - because you take it personally.
Hahah.
At least i'll get some laughs out of this...

CONstructive times on the subject were gone circa 2007.
People reported bugs (on scraped symbian.com)
People had lengthy time wasting email conversations with customer support.
People started 5 year long threads.
All with no result.
And by no result i mean utter silence. No yes. No no. No may be.

DEstructive is what it is now.
The only strategy left is to pour as much dirt as possible into the official forums so that search results start looking scary.
And no, noone interested is expecting for this to get resolved any time soon.
These interested people are now mostly using WM devices and check this scene once in a while just to make sure things are at the same convoluted spot.

The most recent example comes from Ovi Suite section of betalabs.nokia.com:
http://betalabs.nokia.com/forums/nokia-ovi-suite-20/suggestion/views/down/1
The link is a list of all suggestions Nokia received for Ovi Suite sorted by the amount of views. My category support suggestion falls well within the first 10. If you sort by comments - within first 15.
At the same time no dev comments were received.
And, guess what, it "graduated from beta"...

[handrea]

Hi,
I found this thread really interesting. I've got just a question (is an old fear from previous bad PC Suite experiences):
about your experience with N900, is PC Suite able to fully sync Contacts without break them or data loss?
I mean, for example, the fact they don't support the field "telephone2" (is just an example) so this value is not synced and, in addition, losed after a PC <=> N900 sync.

Another question is how PC Suite is able to bind contacts from N900 to Outlook. If you consider a contact in Outlook, you can have, for example, only 3 email fields: email1, email2, email3 (a perfect data model! :D)
In N900 you can have virtually infinite email fields. So when I have a contact with 4 email address how does sync behave?
What happens to email4? I loose the data when I do N900 => PC => N900 back?

Thank you for support
Andrea

[Bobbe]

My N900 is going to arrive next week, and since I will have to use Outlook to sync contacts from the iPhone I'm migrating from I'm greatly interested in that answer.

Another question: isn't there an alternate solution? Some cloud solution (like Google) we could use to circumvent PC Suite for that? (I mean usual contact info, not pretty colors, task categories and other related outlook-specific perfumery)

Thanks,

Bobbe

[handrea]

My N900 is going to arrive next week, and since I will have to use Outlook to sync contacts from the iPhone I'm migrating from I'm greatly interested in that answer.


Hi Bobbe,
I started a different topics on this community forum related to contacts sync and outlook syncronization. Finally I bought a N900 and use it daily so I can give you all the answer you need.
I must sadly underline how internet is full of enthusiast useless post focusing mainly on GUI FX or Icon colors than real device capabilities and interoperability so I was able to discover the real behaviour only when I bought it.
I can say: if you can cancel your N900 order do it, believe me.

About contacts sync
There is a big model mismatch between Outlook and Nokia. Nokia, from my point of view, has a correct approach (like the Apple iphone) allowing you to add n-details for each contact. It's really powerfull.
The problem is that syncronization fails and, as Nokia long tradition, it fails silently.
You simply have data loss without any popup or message: if you don't see device from a technical perspective you simply cannot understand or figure you'll have a big problem.
Doing some test I understood that Ovi Suite (now supports N900 too) works in this way:

Home and business phone number are linked to Outlook home and business number up to 3 entries. If you have the fourth you'll loose it syncing with outlook without any message. You have the same problem if a contact has more than 3 email addresses.
You loose any field not supported by Outlook.
If you really need to use Oulook you need unfortunately to forgot the Nokia Contacts Model and imagine you're using outlook even when you're playing with N900.

But the biggest problem is that PC Suite and Ovi Suite are not working at all.. They're really buggy and a nightmare. Even calendar and tasks syncronization fails.
PC Suite was simply terrible creating duplicates and duplicates each time.
Ovi Suite is better but is like working with an alpha/beta in a production environment.

N900 Calendar and email software is really a toy, good for spare time, bad for business or professional usage.
I think iTunes syncronization is better so I think, in your situation, iPhone could fit better your needs.

I love hardware keyboard and browser, really powerfull but N900 is really an immature device, forgotten by Nokia, not at level of other Nokia devices (specially E** series).


Another question: isn't there an alternate solution? Some cloud solution (like Google) we could use to circumvent PC Suite for that? (I mean usual contact info, not pretty colors, task categories and other related outlook-specific perfumery)

Thanks,

Bobbe

I don't use/like cloud service so I cannot give you this kind of feedback, I'm sorry.

[handrea]

Hi, in addition of software design issue, I'm unable to sync all my contacts/data/anything of my N900 by a bug freezing us from last may.
You can find details here:

http://discussions.nokiausa.com/t5/Nokia-Ovi-Suite/Ovi-Suite-2-2-0-245-error-code-8004fd02-syncing-N900-contacts/m-p/724255

I'm rolling back to my old Windows Mobile device :(, N900 remains for me a toy, nice and powerfull but just a toy.

Regards

[Sphinx780]

Their are several cloud services that have been discussed in other threads. Nuevasync with Google Calendar sync, Hotmail Mfe (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=61438&highlight=hotmail), Sync evolution as well off the top of my head. I linked the Hotmail option because it's the most direct way to sync contacts and calendar with the n900 pretty flawlessly. You can do a search for the other options but they are all pretty easy to use.

[wcyeng]

Please if anyone can help me to get all the conversations out of my N900 and into my PC, PC Suite and OVI do not sync messages.

Thanks

[handrea]

N900 is a trap. I've got the same problem :(

[PMaff]

N900 is a trap. I've got the same problem :(

I had a similar problem:
N900 synced to Outlook only once and never more.
Installed OVI suite afterwards and hoped that this will work
better - but no. Still no more sync.

Then I realized that I had done 2 mistakes:
I connected N900 to my computer already before installing PC Suite and I did that with mass storage mode.
And I used Outlook Express, somehow that got mixed up.

So I uninstalled OVI Suite.
Set back the system restore point that I made before OVI install.
Uninstalled PC Suite 7.1.51.0 .
Used Nokia_PC_Suite_Cleaner_7_1_1.exe afterwards.
But guess what: there was still stuff in the registry!
Also some .inf files from nokia were there, I removed them but be
cautious if you are using other stuff from Nokia! In my case it was easy because I never used Nokia items before.
Then I cleaned the registry from Nokia stuff. Be cautious there!

After one reboot I set a system restore point
installed PC Suite 7.1.51.0 and connected my N900 via cable as described in the manual for PC Suite (that I "forgot" to read previously ;) ).
The drivers for N900 were installed once more (probably different ones from PC Suite?).
I choose Outlook and not the Express version.
I set N900 as "master" and Outlook (Office XP) as "slave",
Outlook needed set up (I used Thunderbird email up to now)
Afterwards I was able to sync my phone contacts and calendar
with PC Suite and PC suite with Outlook XP.

What I did not test was syncing Outlook back to PC Suite
and PC Suite back to N900.

Still missing: sending SMS via PC Suite.