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June 04, 2009
New iPhone feature for Lotus Notes?
As many of you who have followed my blog know, I switched from my beloved Palm to iPhone about 6 months ago. I am still giddy and overjoyed with my iPhone--EXCEPT--for it's lack of synching to Lotus Notes where all of my lists live now.
So to bring y'all up to speed, here's what went down since I wrote these two posts:
GTD & iPhone
More on GTD & iPhone
November 2008 - I drove off the lot, drunk on entertainment features, with my new 8GB iPhone, even though I knew there was no secure iPhone>Lotus Notes (LN) sync that my IT group would approve. I kept my lists in Palm Desktop, where they happily lived for over 10+ years, for the time being.
January 2009 - Fed up with having email in LN and lists in Palm Desktop that weren't synching to anything anymore, I searched high and low and found KeyTasks for Chapura, which could sync lists on the iPhone to Outlook on my PC. I wasn't necessarily wanting to move to Outlook, but it was better than nothing. That lasted about a month before my setup with Chapura just became too frustrating. I had duplicates, their server was sometimes down (required for synching) and Outlook kept crashing. And, my job shifted such that meeting requests started coming in like a fire hydrant into Lotus Notes. It didn't work to keep Calendar data in 2 places, or even copy and paste like I used to into Palm Desktop.
February 2009 - I moved everything into Lotus Notes--lists, calendar, contacts, memos--all of it. I was never a fan of the ultra-unsexy Lotus Notes To Do's, but the eProductivity boost for Notes made it palatable (and actually fun.) Alas, still no synching option from iPhone>Notes. I recall Tweeting about my dismay with this lack of synching option and an IBM'er (who actually might have something to do with the project?) took pity on me and Tweeted back, "Coming soon." My hopes were raised for a little longer. For the last few months I've resurrected my old Palm and have been synching Palm>Lotus Notes and using my iPhone for everything else. Yes, I now have TWO handhelds. How did this happen? Ahhh...I needed to have an iPhone before the business solutions were there.
So you can imagine my glee when I saw an article today that showed "Notes Synching" as a future feature of the new iPhone.
...but something tells me they mean the Notes pad, not Lotus Notes.
Overall, I am still thrilled with the iPhone as an entertainment device. I think Palm still does an exceptional job as a productivity device. Well, I am productive on my iPhone, if bowling and Twittering count, but not in terms of my GTD workflow management. Yet.
Posted by Kelly at June 4, 2009 04:53 PM
Comments
I can't help with Lotus Notes but on iPhone the best task management apps (that I've tried) are OmniFocus, Things, Remember The Milk, Appigo ToDo (in order of preference). Unfortunately for you the best ones are Mac only (but totally worth it).
Good luck, and enjoy your iPhone!
Posted by: PhilK at June 4, 2009 06:41 PM
Kelly,
Have you looked at Daylite and Daylite touch. I think it is by far the most complete Mac/iPhone GTD ap. I'd be curious to know what you think. They have a free download and trial version.
http://www.marketcircle.com/daylitetouch/index.html
Joel
Posted by: Joel Smith at June 4, 2009 07:32 PM
I totally feel your frustration.. Although probably from a different place. I am just getting into GTD and have an iPhone that I love.. But unfortunately I have been having a hard time figuring out a good tech solution for practicing gtd. See at home I have a mac (yay!) but at work I use linux. My home email is gmail bit work is through an exchange server.. So my work email is done using outlook 2003.. It's all I have access to. So trying to find a single solution that will let me track work email and calendar, home email and calendar, and sync with my iPhone has been driving me nuts. Any suggestions?
Posted by: Jason at June 4, 2009 08:00 PM
Hi Phil, Mac would be nice, except I need to use Lotus Notes. Thanks though!
Hi Joel, Yes, I know DayLite. The developers attended a public GTD class I did in Toronto to learn GTD better. Really powerful app, from what I saw, especially for collaboration. And how great that they actually made a serious effort to learn GTD when building their app.
Hi Jason, I don't have a solution for you, but a similar discussion took place over on GTDTimes:
http://www.gtdtimes.com/2009/05/07/managing-gtd-systems-on-two-machines/
Posted by: Kelly at June 5, 2009 09:41 AM
Hi Kelly...Your wish will soon be granted! Lotus Traveler 8.5.1, which is currently in public beta, includes the ability to sync your Lotus Notes with your iPhone. You can find a little more info on the Lotus Greenhouse, which is a sandbox for current and upcoming Lotus products:
https://greenhouse.lotus.com/home/product.jsp?p=traveler
If you'd like some more info on this, please feel free to ping me or ask Eric Mack to get us in touch. I'm a big fan of eProductivity myself and can't wait for people to get this functionality on their iPhones! :-)
Posted by: Chris Blatnick at June 8, 2009 04:06 PM
Chris, a problem that business users face with the iPhone, from a GTD perspective, is that the iPhone does not support tasks. So, unless Lotus Traveler 8.51 adds a Task app to the iPhone, Kelly will still not achieve the level of productivity she seeks.
Let's talk.
Eric
Posted by: Eric Mack at June 14, 2009 11:16 PM
@Eric
I am surprised by your comment. That is not good at all.
If this is the case I would then suggest that Kelly could look into using iNotes Ultralite which has been available for a few months now. If my memory serves me correctly, it does support tasks.
If Kelly's Lotus Notes server (Lotus Domino Server) is running on release 8.0.1, then this feature is already supported.
However, if Kelly is using your eProductivity, then she will need to wait until you have built in support for the ultralite feature.
Posted by: Vaughan Rivett at June 15, 2009 05:10 PM
The iPhone may not have a native Apple tasks app but no Task support is not quite right.
I'd explore eProductivity for my iMac if I could seamlessly take my lists with me, review and update on the iPhone like I can with Omni Focus.
Be careful about getting too down on the limits of GTD on the iPhone.
Posted by: Mark Jantzen at June 16, 2009 10:22 AM
Thanks for all of your comments!
If I understood correctly from a follow-up email from Chris Blatnick, the first version of Traveler won't have Tasks support.
To Vaughan's suggestion for iNotes Ultralite, also no Tasks support yet, from what I see. Thanks though!
To Mark's comment about getting "down on the limits of GTD on the iPhone," I am specifically and only talking about the synching capabilities of synching an iPhone device to Lotus Notes Calendar, Tasks and Contacts. If I were using Outlook I would have an easier time with KeyTasks or Toodledo. If I were willing to use a cloud-based Web app like Remember the Milk, I'd have an easier time. And of course, if I were on a Mac and could sync to OmniFocus, Daylite or Things, well then I'd be all set!
Posted by: Kelly at June 17, 2009 09:42 AM
mSuite for iPhone is now available.
mSuite is very robust Lotus Notes sync.
www.commontime.com/product_25.aspx
Posted by: Phi B at July 4, 2009 08:42 AM
