Lotus Notes sync: Rescheduled meetings not updated

[Johan]

I have a short memory, a k530i and a lot of meetings -- so my life depends on the Lotus Notes sync. It works great now, (no crashing OBEX when walking from the computer) but there are a couple of problems:

The worst one:
- Rescheduled meetings is not updated in the phone. After some digging around I discovered that it seems to rely on the mail with the original invitation, not what is actually shown in the calendar in Notes. I can not do anything about the meeting until I delete the original invitation mail from Notes. Not the ideal solution.

- I'd like an option to not delete all meetings entered in the phone just because i selected sync Notes > Phone. I don't want my private events in my notes calendar but I'd also like them not to be deleted at sync

- When going to different timezones I have to turn syncing off or it will go haywire. Especially if syncing both ways: there will be multiple occurances of the same event with the timezone difference offset and for every sync you get 1 more.

Some other comments:
- Not enough of the meeting info gets to the phone, maybe there is a character limit but I often miss the phone numbers and access codes from meeting invitations.

- The dialog with the progressbar that appears as soon as a multisync is started is kind of annoying as it occurs a lot. Could we show the syncing in progress in the tray instead? or in the corner of the screen? Personally i'd prefer not seeing it at all as long as there are no problems with the sync.

All in all, it works a lot better than the SonyEricsson sync

Also, is there a better way to sync than through the fake com port?

[FJ]

1) Tested but not reproducable on my PC (Lotus Notes 6) How you reschedule the events ? I used Drag&Drop in Lotus-Calendar and Timechanging in Lotus Notes.

2) You can make exceptions so that the entry in phone keeps untouched

3) Yes, its a known problem but its hard to fix

4) There are limits on the phone: Subject: 100 chars, Locatoon:50 Chars and Description: 128 Chars. Nothing i can do against it

5) Its often requested but i don't like that MyPhoneExplorer does data-changes silently

Also, is there a better way to sync than through the fake com port?

Why "fake COM-Port" ? Every Sync-Application works throught emulated COM-Ports.

[Johan]

Thanks for the quick reply!

1) We use Notes 6.5 here. The rescueduling is done by the one that originally sent the invitation. The entry in the calendar is updated when pressing a button in the reschedule notice mail.

2) Can someone explain how?

3) I understand, we also had this problem in my companies software, it's a bitch.. SonyEricsson has the same problem.

4) Ok

5) But it isn't silent if you indicate in the tray. Let the user set this as an option.

..and re the com port. Ok. I didn't notice the new SE software using it but maybe I just misunderstood it, was a while since I tested.

[FJ]

1) hard to reproduce for me cause i have only a local Lotus-Suite. Please export such an entry as "Structured text" and send it to me zipped via mail. I cannot promise you anything but i will take a look at it.

2) Enable the confirmations-window. then you can choose for every event you want "Never sync in future"

About COM: Surely the PC-Suite uses also COM-Ports, you cannot specify a COM-Port in this software cause the PC-Suite always searches the right Port. But thats too unflexible so you can set it in MPE.

[Johan]

1) It seems the issue only occurs for rescheduled instances of reoccuring events.

2) Yes, but very annoying to get the dialog for every event. Isn't it possible to set it up so that:

a) everything in notes is synced to the phone
b) nothing in the phone is synced to notes
c) nothing in the telephone is deleted just because it doesn't exist in notes.

[FJ]

1) The only possibility i see would be to send me a exported Event( as Structured text and then zipped via mail). If there is a field which contains the current date and not the original one then it could work.

2) a and b is already implemented - c. is no solution, it would blow your memory full (you have only 300 free entrys in phone).

[Johan]

1) Ok I'll send one next time a situation like that occurs.

2) Ok so all calendar entries in the phone is deleted to avoid duplicates? Isn't it possible to detect duplicates in some other way?

[FJ]

Duplicates are not the problem. The problem is the limit of 300 events in general. If you just add new appointments from notes and you don't delete the ones which are also not existing in Notes then your Phones-Storage will be overfilled in a short time.

[Johan]

But there are already the option to limit the date range? Anyway, I may go with sync both ways, seems to be the only viable option, but I've also had problems with that before (especially when chaniging timezones) but also without chaning timezones: suddenly MyPhoneExplorer will not recognize the stuff in notes and add duplicates.

Now I can't test any more for a while - updated my thinkpad with IBMs tool and it installed a bluetooth stack with broken license...zzzZzz

[Rainer]

Hi,
FJ, I've sent an example file with a rescheduled reoccuring event to you.
I'm using Lotus Notes 6.5 as well.

[FJ]

MyPhoneExplorer is in general not able to sync moved events of a ruled events. Is this your problem ?

[Rainer]

Yes, it's a reocurring event every day for a week.
If I change the time for only one event this is not recognized.
Is it difficult to implement this? I suppose all information for syncing is given by Lotus Notes.

[FJ]

Its not possible to implement this. Especially for Lotus with their buggy datamanagment its a suicide mission to try it. It was hard enought to sync normal ruled events with Lotus.