Serious question - Lotus Notes on iPad?

[kheldour]

Hey friends,

now that I think more and more how I can integrate my iPad into my business life, I come to the issue, that with my new job Lotus Notes is a must.

Does anybody else had this issue already? How do you address calender and email-sync?

TIA

Khel

 

[SerenityLodge]

Before retiring, I had the same situation. Our IT department however, said they did not support Apple products and wouldn't help. There was no way to sync calendars, address book, e-mail, or anything else.

At one point, I'd worked out a link between Outlook/Entorage and Lotus, then synched with the Entourage to MAC, but it was so "iffy" that I stopped attempting to do that. I went to the IBM/Lotus site and found some information there.

But basically, the only way I could use my work related Lotus was the web interface. That's been at least two years ago, but I doubt much has changed in this regard. At the time, it didn't appear that either Apple or IBM/Lotus was interested.

Good luck.

 

[stever]

Our organization has implemented Lotus Notes Traveler.
(free to many Lotus Notes user organizations)

I just did a quick register, and I just get it through the Mail app, and it syncs my calendar, mail, todo, etc.
Push, not just at sync times.

Check with your administrators to see if you already have Traveler.
It works with many other devices too. Phones, Windows Mobile, etc,

IBM® Lotus Notes® Traveler 8.5.1 software is a push email offering providing quick access to email (including attachments), calendar, address book, journal and to-do list for Lotus Notes mobile users. Imagine how this software could help your mobile workers respond to the needs of your business more quickly, while continuing to leverage your existing investment in Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino software.
Key features delivered in Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1 include:
Automatic, two-way, over the air synchronization of Notes email, calendar and contact data
Stay on top of your email and appointments even while offline
Scheduled synchronization and data filtering to optimize device usage
Remote wipe support for lost or stolen devices, and password enforcement and monitoring to help protect confidential data
Read encrypted email
Support for multiple device types gives users greater choice
A no-charge mobile solution for entitled Lotus Notes and Domino customers

 

[kheldour]

@Stever

I owe you a beer! Many thanks man, that probably will solve my issue. And I will meet my Notes expert later today (as well as my iPad most likely finally arrives today).

 

[brom122]

I have traveler and it works great for calendar, email, and contacts, but how are you syncing "to dos"

 

[latro]

Thanks for the tip. Work with Lotus Notes and always feel limited by its "sync" ability with Apple products. Maybe this will fill the void a bit?

 

[Mugwomp]

My organisation has yet to implement traveller. I use doublenotes to sync to outlook and iTunes from outlook to iPhone I will do the same with the ipad.

Steve

 

[kheldour]

what I heard recently on a Lotus-Notes-User-Forum was, that iNotes should work without any issues.

Emails works very well over Traveler, Calendar mostly - you can't send out invitations to others and even worse, can't accept invitations.....

 

[Road Warrior]

I wrote a very long article on this issue, which is going to be published next week. In any event, I am very disappointed by IBM's entire mobile strategy and Lotus Domino/Notes is the worst offender. The whole raison d'etre of Notes is to provide document management and workflow - of which email is just one component - and mobile is CLEARLY the most ubiquitous, most pervasive and most convenient way to share documents and workflow processes. Why they have ignore the iPhone/iPad platform completely escapes me. It has to rank up there with other incredible strategic blunders like when IBM let Bill Gates keep the MS-DOS OS for himself. What in the world is Lotus thinking??

Anyway, my rant is over...

I, too, have tried to sync Notes and iPhone/iPad. I don't have a solution for iPad - other than to do what another person in this forum suggested and access it through your Safari browser. On the iPhone, I would suggest the Exchange connector with the Notes Traveller on Domino. This syncs most things but not notebooks. It's also buggy.

Even better, my preference would be to use the middleware from CommonTime. They've been in this business a long time and they run server-side software that mediates between your Lotus Domino Servers and your iPhone/iPad devices. It will sync most of the data you need with a few exceptions (there's that notebook issue again). I have been a happy customer of CommonTime for over 8 years. I just wish that their custom design tools were easier to operate. This is useful when you want to have a custom Domino database made available to your iPhone/iPad.

One especially nice feature of CommonTime is the ability to combine the data from several server-side contacts db's into the one contacts app on the iPhone.

If you don't want to run middle-ware, then I would suggest using Google as the intermediary. I have successfully used Google to sync my iPhone back to Domino. Google supports iCal and the Mac Contacts as well, so that your Notes calendar and contacts information will appear in Google and in iCal on your Mac desktop, as well as on your iPhone. In some ways, this might be the best scenario if it remains future-proof. Google seems to be a pretty open player in this regard.

 

[kheldour]

I, too, have tried to sync Notes and iPhone/iPad. I don't have a solution for iPad - other than to do what another person in this forum suggested and access it through your Safari browser. On the iPhone, I would suggest the Exchange connector with the Notes Traveller on Domino. This syncs most things but not notebooks. It's also buggy.

Hi there,

Traveller is working very well with the iPad, except, that you can't invite others to a meeting, or accept invitations. Arrggghh.

 

[Mugwomp]

The doublenotes solution mostly works for those without travler as an option.

It isn't issue free though. I've found it most reliable if I sync one way with all updates done through notes. 2 way sync is hit and miss if too many changes in each direction. Not ideal, but gets me by.

I've also had the occaisional new calendar entry or calendar entry update not sync. I have to have a quick look at outlook to make sure the change got there. Once in 20 I need to edit the subject line or something to force a resync.

Pain in the arse, but sort of works when you can't get a server side change made.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone.

 

[NotesIn9Guy]

what I heard recently on a Lotus-Notes-User-Forum was, that iNotes should work without any issues.

Emails works very well over Traveler, Calendar mostly - you can't send out invitations to others and even worse, can't accept invitations.....

I think there are some issues with the web mail on iPad. The domino server doesn't recognize the iPad in the browser detection script because it's newer and as such down't push the iPhone mail interface. The normal webmail interface is unusable on iPad in my experience. I've not really looked at fixing it in my world because Traveler is the much better solution anyway.

 

[NotesIn9Guy]

I, too, have tried to sync Notes and iPhone/iPad. I don't have a solution for iPad - other than to do what another person in this forum suggested and access it through your Safari browser. On the iPhone, I would suggest the Exchange connector with the Notes Traveller on Domino. This syncs most things but not notebooks. It's also buggy.

Hi there,

Traveller is working very well with the iPad, except, that you can't invite others to a meeting, or accept invitations. Arrggghh.

I THINK that's slated to be addressed in the next release....

 

[y2kgtp]

I see this is an older topic, but i don't see this in the app store for iPad, just iPhone.

 

[Jdm2010]

Anyone know where I could find a "traveler for dummies" documentation? I was on the phone with my it guy from India. But I need some help figuring out what exactly has to be done.