Sync Your Global Address List with mGALSync

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/01/03/345944.aspx' target='_blank'>http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/01/03/345944.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><i>"If you have Active Directory deployed in your enterprise, you've probably noticed that while ActiveSync does a great job of syncing contacts that you have saved in Outlook there is no built in way to sync your GAL down to your Windows Mobile device. mGALSync is a cheap 3rd party app (built on .NET) that fills the gap. What I like most about this app is that it lets you define a filter so if your company has a huge GAL (like we do here), you can have it sync only the subset you want."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/Temporale-20050104-mGALSync.gif" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/> <br /><br />Robert Levy posted this on the Windows Mobile Blog yesterday. It sounds like a very handy little tool. Does anyone here have a GAL that they can try this out with and report back on it's performance? You can download a trial or purchase a copy from the developers <a href="http://www.slipstreamsolutions.co.uk/products/mGALSync.htm">web site.</a>

[nirav28]

ahh. I dunno about you guys..But where I work..The GAL is about 10,000 entries. 8O . That would take a few hours to sync up. :)

I'll give it a try during off hours and write about it here later.

[Mike Temporale]

There should be a way to filter the list....

[irishmikev]

This is only for the PocketPC Phone Edition, so I didn't really look at it too close. It works by either dropping every GAL entry into your personal contact folder (ouch) or directly to the device. How you keep those from dumping right back into your contacts folder on the next Activesync, I know not. Personally this would be a waste as I'd have to search through 1600 different names to get to my sister.

You can define a subset of names to pull based on a rule, but I didn't look too close at that. What's really needed is a 'lookup' function similar to a Blackberry if you have a Windows Mobile/Exchange relationship established on the device. For now Blackberry is still ahead of the game in this regard.

[altden2002]

irishmikev, You can use Outlook Mobile Access to lookup your Exchange Address Book.
Maybe Blackberry is more convinient (i never used one) but it is certainly not that much ahead.

Speaking of GAL sizes, where i work it's about 97000 people.
I am so much NOT syncing it up. :-)

[leslietroyer]

Well my GAL only has about 250,000 entries.

I like the ability to filter it down to something reasonable. But I'm not sure their filters would work well for me. I would want something like budget or building (Don't know if these are custom fields or not). Even there I may want to mask thing a little bit (with regular expressions) -- Budget = "66-Z6-C[0-9][0-9]"


But the real killer for the app is that it puts them in my contact list where it would get sync'd back to the PC...... Maybe if they set a special flag so I could filter them back out in the PC outlook it would be ok-- I'll have to play and think about it before I try. But sync'ing some entries would be helpfull.

Les

[irishmikev]

Hey Altden2002,

What I was referring to was the need to have recipient lookup integrated into Pocket Outlook on Windows Mobile devices. If Server Activesync is setup on the device, I think Pocket Outlook should be smart enough to let you validate recipient and do lookups to your GAL wirelessly. You rightly pointed out that OMA does this, but that's used in the context of a WAP browser and is not integrated tightly into Pocket Outlook. In the Blackberry when you go to compose a new mail with the integrated email client, you can lookup a name as you add it to the to: field. So technically, yeah, Exchange can do this but only outside the context of the preferred email client for mobile devices.

Speaking as one who prefers the UI of the Pocket PC, the Blackberry is damned convenient. The inteface still seems like it's in the stone age visually but it's very powerful. You should check one out at a wireless store to get a feel for the competition. MS could learn a lot from them and vice versa.

Mike

[dgage]

I tried it with my rather small 500 GAL but I ran into an error that the developer hadn't seen. They sent me some things to try but I have been too busy to try them and will probably run out of time on the demo before I will have time to try the proposed fixes.

David

[Mr.Phil]

Hate to toot the Voq horn again, but the Voq phone already supports GAL syncing with its own Voq Tools application :D :D One of the best unadvertised features I think.

[Slipstream]

Hi guys, just to let you know we've just released version 1.5.0 which includes Advanced Filtering. You can download a copy here...

http://www.slipstreamsolutions.co.uk/downloads/mGALSync.zip

And dgage, drop us an email and we'll fix you up with an extended trial period if you want to carry on testing.

Slipstream