iPhone & Lotus Notes sync

[BVsmurfette]

I can't seem to find a straight answer on this... so I'm afraid the answer is "no" - but maybe someone can save me

At work, we use Lotus Notes for our email and calendar. They provide me with a blackberry that syncs great to Lotus Notes. I can write/send emails & calender events from my computer at work and they instantly appear on the BB. And vice versa. Lovely, I've had a BB for years and so use my Lotus Notes calender for all my work stuff and personal stuff so that I could always have it accessible to me on-the-go with my BB. Fast forward a few years and I now have an iPhone 3G as my personal phone/device.

Now, is there a way to get the same type of sync with my iPhone? Right now my iPhone doesn't have my calendar and it's really frustrating to have to carry around 2 devices. of course, i much prefer my iPhone.

Thank in advance for your help on this.

 

[iFerd]

The answer to your question about whether you can gain access to Lotus Notes on your iPhone is, "Yes, sort of." IBM has made a web-based application that will allow you to get to your email and your calendar. You can read about it here.

I have this on my iPhone. It took the cooperation of the IT people, who had to do something to update my account on the server side. But once that was done and I pointed Safari to the proper mail server, I was able to get my email and see (part of) my calendar. Adding the link to the Home Screen created an icon named Lotus iNotes, which I now tap to directly access Notes. And the interface is specifically designed for the iPhone; it isn't like checking via the web through the conventional browser.

There are limitations, since this isn't an interface directly to the Mail app on the iPhone. There is no push notification, so in order to know if you have mail, you must log in to check. Once in, you can read and reply to your messages, though, which is good. The calendar is another matter. You can read your calendar one day at a time, starting with today. You can only go forward or backward one day at a time, and there are no other views available, like week or month. And so far as I am able to tell, you cannot edit your calendar, either to add new appointments or to delete or modify existing ones. It's strictly read-only.

I mainly carry only my iPhone now, and if I must, I can consult Notes from it. But if I am traveling so I will be away from the office for a few days, the BlackBerry comes along and is my preferred device for the kind of interaction with Notes that is important in those circumstances.

As for handling my Notes calendar on a routine basis, I export it as an ics file, import it into iCal, and then sync it to the iPhone, for me via MobileMe, but iTunes before that. This is strictly one way.