I can’t claim credit for this. I have to thank Sander Zwart for his post on the Domino 8 forum at ibm.com.
While it may seem convoluted, it does work. And it’s actually not all that bad. First of all, you have to get your hands on Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook (DAMO). You’ll need to log into IBM’s Passport site to download it. You do have a user profile for Passport, right? I hope so, because you can’t have mine. And I have absolutely no idea how to get one. Honestly, I’m really not sure how I got mine. But once you’re in, I’m sure you’ll find it no more difficult to navigate than the Himalayas. Unfortunately, they don’t have any Sherpas to guide you along. I’ll do my best.
- In the left nav bar, click on “Software download & media access”
- In the Overview section, click on “Download Finder”
- In the list of entitled downloads, I chose IBM Lotus Notes with Collaboration, then click Continue
- Pick your language and click Continue
- Expand the plus sign next to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.2 for Multiplatforms English eAssembly(CR7LBEN)
- Uncheck everything other than IBM Lotus Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook 8.0.2 English(C1K37EN). I’d tell you to use the handy “uncheck all” link — but there is not one. Hope you have some time to kill
- Agree with the license agreement and click “Download Now”
Forget all of that. Look in the HTML directory of your Domino install for a DAO directory. That should be it.
There. That was easy. Before you install DAMO, do the following:
- Archive any mail you can. You’ll be copying your mail to an Outlook PST file
- Run Outlook at least once
Next, install DAMO. Then run Outlook and let it build your PST file. I would not recommend doing this at home, connected via VPN to your server, using an old 802.11b wireless network. Just guessing. Several hours later, you will have a working install of Outlook (which brings its own interesting possibilities).
While you’re getting Outlook set up, go ahead and visit me.com to set up your MobileMe account. They’re nice enough to give you a free 60 day trial. I know there have been some issues with this in the past, but my credit card has not been charged.
Once Outlook is done building your PST file and you have your MobileMe account, you can install the MobileMe sync client.
After MobileMe sync is installed, run it to sync your Outlook data (which is actually your Domino data) to your MobileMe account. If push sync is working, any data you sync to MobileMe will appear on your iPhone. Until earlier this afternoon, I had not seen where push sync was having any problems. It did earlier today, but it’s fixed now.
Once you get this going, it works fairly well. When everything syncs with everything else, calendar entries created in Notes will appear on your iPhone. And entries created on the iPhone calendar will appear in Notes. Entries created in MobileMe will appear both places. I have MobileMe set to sync automatically, which translates to every 15 minutes (hardly seems automatic to me).
Obviously, there are numerous issues with this:
- Outlook must be up and running in order to keep your PST up-to-date. You don’t need to use it, I bounce back and forth between Outlook and Notes. If you are on the road frequently, this may be a problem
- MobileMe costs money
- While generally solid, DAMO can be a bit flaky at times. Yesterday, it decided to have a problem and rebuild my PST file. But several hours later, it was working fine
- MobileMe costs money
Enterprise class? I’m not sure yet. I’d like a little more time with this to see. But other than that PST rebuild, so far, so good. Don’t be surprised if you tell someone to keep Outlook up and running that they start using it. As you’ll see in another post, I also use MobileMe to keep contacts in sync. If there were a way to change the reply-to address on the mail client when sending from the MobileMe account, I’d halfway consider forwarding my corporate mail to it. I have not had the problems with it that others have reported earlier. Then again, I’m still on my free trial.
September 30, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I’m currently working for a company that unfortunately uses Lotus Notes for email and the current version is ‘8.01′. I’ve got an iphone which I would like synced with my work mail & calendar (at least). If I ready your note correctly, it looks like this is a ‘push’ solution utilizing me.com. My question is…Is there anyway to sync directly without me.com, even if it requires a physical connection?
October 1, 2008 at 1:13 am
@Joe – You are correct, this is a “push” solution using MobileMe.
According to Apple you can sync Outlook with iTunes, then sync an iPod that way. According to a couple of other sites you can do the same thing with an iPhone. Personally, I’m not very interested in this, as we are heavy users of BlackBerry devices and I want to replicate the wireless sync capabilities of the BlackBerry. But if you are around your computer often enough, this should be a good strategy. I am interested to see how synchronizing e-mail works. Especially because iTunes says it will sync mail accounts, but not passwords or messages. I’m guessing this will work for Calendar and Contacts only.
Also, if you can get it to sync your mail, how will you reply to anything you get?
But give it a shot and let us know how it goes. If you’d like to write a guest post for the blog here, feel free to send it to meovino@gmail.com. Thanks!
October 2, 2008 at 3:17 am
@Joe – You may want to check this out: http://www.companionlink.com/products/iphone-wired.html
October 2, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The file is no longer available..
October 6, 2008 at 2:41 am
@jnox – I found out recently that the DAMO install file should be on your server, in the HTML directory. I’m going off memory here, but it should be something like /domino/data/html/dao.
Try it out and let me know what you think. Personally, it’s crashing on me a great deal and I’m not really thrilled about having to run Outlook as well as Notes. I’m going to test and post a new way (pushing contacts and calendar to Google, then using NuevaSync to sync over the air to the phone).
Stay tuned.
March 17, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I’ve had my Outlook / MobileMe / iPhone sync working perfectly for 3 months now. And yes, although Mobileme costs money I’ve been really happy with it. Until yesterday that is, despite the fact I haven’t changed any of my Time Zone settings, all my appointments in my iPhone calendar are now set one hour later than they should be. I have double checked and the time zone for my PC, my MobileMe account and my iPhone are all now set to the same destination but still no joy. Any ideas guys? Any and all suggestions will be most appreciated.
March 17, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Thanks
March 17, 2009 at 7:18 pm
After spending almost 2 hours on this I think I have just solved the problem. Here’s what happened, during a recent business trip I changed the Calendar time zone support settings on my iPhone and forgot to change it back. This setting is quite hidden so that’s why it took me a while to find it again. If you are experiencing a similar problem, here’s how you fix it: Go to – Settings / Mail, Contacts, Calendars. When you arrive, scroll all the way down to the bottom and make sure the Time Zone Support entry matches your current location. Hope this helps someone out.