Stuck With Lotus? mNotes 4.0 Released.

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.commontime.com/mNotes%20-%20Windows%20Mobile%20Pocket%20PC.aspx' target='_blank'>http://www.commontime.com/mNotes%20...ocket%20PC.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Get fully functional Lotus Notes email, calendar, tasks, contacts and even journal with the best Notes/Domino mobile messaging product available anywhere!"</i><br /><br />Well, if you're stuck with Notes instead of Exchange (Now I'm not saying Exchange is superior, I have a friend with an x30 &amp; preference for Notes!), you'd be interested in the latest version of mNotes released from CommonTime. Even the most loyal Notes user knows that a Pocket PC isn't exactly built for Lotus - so this might help you get your PPC a bit more use with your Notes setup.

[JvanEkris]

Be aware though: it is NOT compatible with Windows Mobile 5. Although it installs, it generates a continous notification that basically blocks your calander. Also i did get an error message when trying to sync my Calander, Contacts and tasks....

jaap

[ale_ers]

I have been curious about this product, but have been unable to find answers to a few questions, even on their website.

Does this product work with the integrated Windows Mobile Applications? For Example, can you use the WM In-box and Pocket Informant contacts?
Also, Is there a way to get your E mail on a phone device?

My company uses Notes and I hate it. I currently use Outlook connector for Domino's to sync to my PPC, then I have a T-mobile device (HP6315)that pushes my Notes e-mail to it. It works OK, but my device is buggy and dated, so I want to switch to the Cingular HTC Wizard when it comes out. I'm worried about finding another option for Push e-mail (I have to research Cingular's Express Mail) as I am limited by what my company has.

[wiz]

It actually IS compatible with Notes, but you just need to download the right version. The download is avaliable, but not published on the site yet.

(Jon, when you run a newsflash on my tip, then be a bit more complete, it's version 4.1 that brings WM5 compatibility, not 4.0. ;-)



Quote:


Hi Willem,

CommonTime is pleased to announce the immediate availability of mNotes
version 4.1 which includes support for Windows Mobile 5 devices.

You can download it from:

Desktop/laptop installer (for individual users);
http://www.commontime.com/downloads/4.1.0/mNotes_ceEN.exe

General purpose installers (for server installations):
http://www.commontime.com/downloads/4.1.0/mNotesEN.exe
or
http://www.commontime.com/downloads/4.1.0/mNotesEN.msi


If a previous version of mNotes is already installed on your PC, you should
uninstall it (from Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs) before installing
version 4.1.

Please note: your first replication may take longer than normal and may
even appear as if it has frozen part way through. *Please let it continue
(do not tap the Stop button or soft reset the device) - the replication
will complete and your second and subsequent replications will be
considerably faster.

mSuite: *CAB files for mSuite users will be available for download within
the next 24 hours. *If you are a corporate customer using mSuite (as
distinct from mNotes), as wish to be notified when the mSuite CAB files for
WM5 are available, please reply to this message using the subject "mSuite
CAB files for WM5".

A copy of the release notes can be downloaded from the following url.
Please read this.

http://hosting.commontime.com/downloads/support/release/mnotes4.1.0.001.pdf

Regards,

Kevin

[wiz]

Does this product work with the integrated Windows Mobile Applications? For Example, can you use the WM In-box and Pocket Informant contacts?
Also, Is there a way to get your E mail on a phone device?


Yes. Acrually, there is only one location for data to be put on a Pocket PC device and that is the integrated contac, appointment etc databases.

Pocket Outlook as well as Pocket Informant get their data from the same source, and it is those source databases that are sycnrhornized with the PC. Through Activesync with Outlook and through mNotes with Lotus Notes.

I too have been using the MS Notes connector for Outlook as a workaround, but I can can tell you that mNote is 1000x the better solution. As you already stated, the MS Outlook Connector for Domino is flaky at best, and has given me grey hairs as well.

You other question can only be answered by yes if your company actively supports it and is willing to put the required infrastructure in place to make htis possible. There are no synchronisation clients that out of the box provide this feature and all of them will require at least a certain minimum infrastructure to be set up, either at yoru company's end or your provider's end. There are however providers that do offer mail push functionality as part of a pricing plan but you will have to inquire.

[ale_ers]

Thanks Wiz,

So mNotes installs on you desktop/laptop? Do you put an application on your PPC also?

Now that you use mNotes, Do you use Lotus Notes on your Desktop/Laptop and forgo Outlook?

As for my second question, I guess that is better addressed in another thread. T-mobile has a great web based solution, I don't know how it works other than to say that it somehow gets our mail from Notes' web access, then forwards it to me. I hope that Cingular's Express mail is similar, as the major advantage to me is that I don't have to deal with my company's IT department. I just set it up and away I go.

[Doug Raeburn]

Thanks Wiz,

So mNotes installs on you desktop/laptop? Do you put an application on your PPC also?

Now that you use mNotes, Do you use Lotus Notes on your Desktop/Laptop and forgo Outlook?

Yes, it installs several applications on the PPC, the key ones being mCenter (configures the product, allows for watching the progress of replication, among other things) and Meetings, which as you may guess is used to manage invitations and such. The latter is a major change from the pre-4.x versions of mNotes, which dealt with meetings through extensions to the Pocket Outlook Calendar app. I just upgraded to mNotes 4.1 (my first 4.x installation), so the jury is still out on how well the Meetings app works.

As for your second question (your actual second question, that is), my only choice of desktop/laptop PIM is Lotus Notes, so yes, I forego Outlook. mNotes makes the distinction pretty seamless on the Pocket PC.

[wiz]

Thanks Wiz,
As for my second question, I guess that is better addressed in another thread. T-mobile has a great web based solution, I don't know how it works other than to say that it somehow gets our mail from Notes' web access, then forwards it to me. I hope that Cingular's Express mail is similar, as the major advantage to me is that I don't have to deal with my company's IT department. I just set it up and away I go.

I know that in the Netherlands, for the Blackberry Connect client, the T-Mobile web interface that is used to configure Blackberry connect (not to be confused with Blackberry Enterprise Server or BES) actually does allow one to setup some degree of Lotus Notes connectivity so my hunch is that if T-Mobile already offers a Lotus Notes connection through their web interface, it would only be a small step to bring that onto your device through an BB Connect client. You would however have to take that up with your T-Mobile contact.

(I am running an O2 XDA IIs Pocket PC Phone with Windows Mobile 2003SE and a BB Connect client on T-Mobile Netherlands, my O2 XDA Exec under WM5 has no BB Connect client yet)

* Note: I do not know to what extent this will prove to be a real issue, but it appears that the mNotes 4.1 on the device side (WM5) may have an important memory leak ... I have fed back my 1st experiences to Commontime and am anwaiting their feedback.

[wiz]

Update: the first bugs have been spotted *and* corrected. I was informed of the following:

Dear Willem,

We have identified and fixed some issues in the Windows Mobile 5 version of
the mNotes/mSuite client software (see bug list below).

If you have already downloaded either the Windows Mobile 5 mNotes /mSuite
(version 4.1.805) CAB file(s) and/or any of the mNotes version 4.1
installers, please download them again.

IMPORTANT: If you have already installed mNotes or mSuite on any WM5
device(s), you should upgrade them with this latest version as soon as
possible. However, before installing this version, you MUST do a Reset of
all the replicators in mCenter on the PDA (Calendar, Contacts, Mail. Tasks
etc.). This will remove all mail and PIM data from the device. It will be
reloaded from Lotus Notes after the upgrade.

Failure to do this will result in all data on the PDA being seen as
"modified" and being sent back to Notes and this could have highly
undesirable effects - especially on the Calendar.

To perform the Resets, go to the mCenter application, tap and hold on the
first replicator in the list then tap Reset and tap OK on the warning
message. Repeat this for all replicators in the list.

Remember to do the Resets immediately BEFORE installing the new version
and do not perform any further replications until you have installed the
new version onto the PDA.



The updated mNotes v4.1 installers are available at:
Palm desktop installer:
http://www.commontime.com/downloads/4.1.0/mNotes_PalmEN.exe

WM/Pocket PC desktop installer:
http://www.commontime.com/downloads/4.1.0/mNotes_CeEN.exe

Combined (general purpose) installers
http://www.commontime.com/downloads/4.1.0/mNotesEN.exe
http://www.commontime.com/downloads/4.1.0/mNotesEN.msi

The bugs fixed in this version are:

A time-zone change between two replications caused all
appointments/meetings to be rescheduled
When launching mail from New-Mail-Notification, the Inbox wouldn't
necessarily switch to the correct mail account
Empty Notes Birthdays/Anniversaries appear on PDA as 01/01/1994
Empty PDA Birthdays/Anniversaries appear in Notes as 01/01/4501
Comments on Lotus Notes Contacts were not replicated to the PDA

Known Anomalies
mNotes SP 2005 (Smartphone) sometimes fails to uninstall. To work around
this, leave mNotes in the remove programs list when prompted to remove
it, Power cycle the phone &amp; try again.
If you have any further queries do not hesitate to contact us again.

Mark

[wbuch]

Their website doesn't seem to be very helpful so maybe someone who's used this can help. Is it basically primarily an activesync conduit? I understand the Meetings app is separate, but other than that, can I use Pocket Informant still for my contacts, calendar, tasks, and WebIS Mail for my mail?

How much does it cost? When I click on "Buy it" to try to find the cost, they want me to register. :evil:

Is there a way to keep all the Notes-based info in a single category on my PPC, and only upload and download things in that category? i.e. I don't want to upload all my personal info to my employer.

Thanks in advance for any answers.

[wiz]

Prices can be found at http://www.commontime.com/Downloads/Marketing/CommonTime_Retail_Prices.pdf

I believe the retail price (including 1 year support) is around $80. Renewing the support every year ($20) means free upgrades instead of $40 per upgrade.

Anyway, you will never be able to do without Activesync, because mNotes uses that mechanism to communicate between PDAand desktop.

What does it do? Essentially the same as Activesync, but whereas Activesync gets it's info from Outlook/Exchange, mNotes gets it from Lotus Notes.

The target databases on the PDA side however are the same. THese centrally located databases are the ones all the info is stored on the PDA, regardless of who puts it there (Activesync or mNotes) and regardless of whether this information is accessed through Pocket Outlook, Pocket Informant or Agenda Fusion. It's all located in the same set of databases.

As for your question about private data versus corporate data. I believe it is not possible to selectively synchronize through for instance the use of categories etc. There is only one contacts database and one appointments database on a pocketpc. These are the ones that will be synchronized, period.

Having said this, in my situation I must add that my calendar data is synchronized with my publicly accessible calendar residing on a server, but my address book is synchronized with my personal address book located in Notes on my laptop and as such private.

[Zarathustra]

Let me qualify this with I am one of the unfortunate souls who actually prefers Domino to Exchange. That said mNotes is a great product if you are trying to take advantage of the Domino infrastructure from a PPC. The better you are with Domino the more you will get out of mNotes though.

First you can deploy it in 2 different ways, either personal or enterprise. If you deploy it in personal mode (or workgroup mode which I have not used) you deploy the mNotes application on a PC where Notes client is installed. mNotes will then use this PC to communicate with the Domino server and your PPC. You do not have to use activesync however. You can also connect over TCPIP either using wireless or GPRS. This mode is nice if you are doing a small deployment or do not have any control over the Domino servers.

In enterprise mode the mNotes application sits directly on the Domino Server and communicates with your PPC from there, generally using wireless or GPRS. This is how i have it deployed and do not use activesync at all for communication. The only time I use activesync is when I need to install a new application.

In either install mode, given sufficient rights on the network, you can set up mNotes to do a push to your PPC. In order to do this though you will need a data service. I have set this up with the Verizon equivalent to a BlueAngel (model name escapes me) and a PDA2K with Data service on T-Mobile and it works quite well, provided your connection is consistent.

Mail is just a small part of what mNotes can do though, it integrates with domino calandering, todo, and freetime databases. If you do not use these features then that may not be of interest to you, but they are great for me. There are a few other features i have not tried yet like the "eBook" feature which is poorly documented but as near as I can figure allows you to push files to and from your PPC.

You can prevent certain calendar or contacts entries from syncing with Notes by giving them the category of "No Notes Sync". alternatively you can selectively sync just certain categories up to the server but it takes a bit more configuration on your PC/Server depending on installation type. I only sync the last 14 days worth of mail and 7 days back and 31 days forward of calander and todo as an example since my mail file is now multiple gigabytes in size.

Finally someone also asked if it intigrates with Pocket Outlook and PI. mNotes uses the same contacts and mail databases, contacts are shared and are indistinguishable from any other contact on your PPC. Mail is just like another pocket outlook mail. Additionally there are some options available for mNotes (such as follow up), as well as mCenter and meetings functions that have no corresponding feature in PO.

I can't say enough good things about mNotes, it gives me real time, bidirectional access to my corporate mail through a combination push technology and replication. On the other hand I am a fairly advanced user (dual PCLP R4, R5, and R6) and have administrative rights to our mail server even though I am not the main administrator, so I was able to set it up to exactly meet my needs. The less access you have to your corporate infrastructure the less you can do with mNotes.

With all that said, I have not tried 4.1 yet. I have a new K-Jam but am going to wait a week or so to make sure nothing major creeps up. They do not seem to have added anything major from 4.0 to 4.1 though other than Windows Mobile 5 compatibility so I will stick with my PDA2K for a while more.

[wbuch]

Thanks for the great responses...I might just give it a try.

[bhoopty]

Zarathustra,

I think you should skip 4.1 all together. We have used every version that has been compatible with WM5 (even pre released beta's) and 4.1.2 by far is the best yet (of course). Although there are still some bugs, like mCenter crashing for no apparent reason...there are some good things too. The integration of soft keys allow you to replicate and view menu items without having to use the stylus...closing mCenter closes it out of memory so it isn't just sitting there running....it has better support for attachments, MIME encoding.....all around it is a better product...now if i could get it to work flawlessly like yours seems to be working for you, Zarathustra...that would be nice.

4.1 is super buggy in the fact that it forgets to include attachments with the emails, converts emails to some just random jumble of letters and numbers....it crashed quite freequently....frequent problems with making a connection to CMS which would cause you to have to soft reset...and it really cratered my k-jam...don't think the device with it's wimpy 195MHz proccessor can handle everyting the phone is trying to do....especially when mCenter is running...

All in all, 4.1.2 is golden compared to 4.1

I would wait if you already haven't downloaded and are using 4.1

those are just my thoughts...
Thanks,bhoopty