Declan Lynch: Get your notes calendar on the iPhone without DWA

September 12 2008

Great find, Declan:

A new application has appeared on the iPhone App Store that claims to download your Lotus Notes calendar to your iPhone without having to use DWA UltraLight. ...
The application is called NotesCal and costs $2.99 to purchase.
Now, in the comments, the application's author, Jimmy Mooney, comes along to explain some of its current limitations:
Additionally - it is a standalone app. The SDK will not currently allow you to access a user's calendar. You can be sure as soon as it does this will move from a standalone app to a conduit for syncing your Notes Calendar to your phone.

Lastly - unfortunately it is only one-way right now. I'm working on additional agent scripts that will allow for event creation and updating.
Jimmy confirms right there what I've been saying for six months -- the iPhone SDK doesn't let anyone -- not Jimmy Mooney, not IBM -- access the iPhone calendar application.

Still, for $3, this sounds like a useful additional tool for calendar access, and it's great to see something Notes-related show up on the iPhone's App Store.

Link: Declan Lynch: Get your notes calendar on the iPhone without DWA >

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8  Add/View Comments [14]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/12/2008 7:49:10 AM

    "the iPhone SDK doesn't let anyone -- not Jimmy Mooney, not IBM -- access the iPhone calendar application."

    It lets Apple access it. ;-)

  1. 2  Craig Wiseman http://www.Wiseman.La/cpw | 9/12/2008 8:20:32 AM

    @1 Nope.

    Apple doesn't use the SDK.

    It lets us eat it's dog food.

  1. 3  Sander Zwart  | 9/12/2008 8:28:59 AM

    @Nathan: And it lets MS access it :-(

    But with this fact IBM can Access it too. But! you need a mobile me account. I sync my Notes calendar and contact for a few weeks now using my mobile me account and a MS outlook client with DAMO. But I also keep my notes calander as a leading. Sometmes I see when I make an appoinment On my Iphone. It is synced to Mobile Me. From There it is synced to Outlook. But from outlook it is not synced to domino.

    So it is possible.....but i would love it when IBM or Commontime come with a solution.

    My topic about the wokaround in the Domino 8 forum

    { Link }

  1. 4  Craig Wiseman http://www.Wiseman.La/cpw | 9/12/2008 8:45:25 AM

    @3

    >> And it lets MS access it :-(

    Again, nope. Apple wrote it's own code OUTSIDE of the SDK to add ActiveSync functionality to the iPhone. Apple could do that, of course, because M$ has an API sync standard they could write to. IBM/Lotus has no comparable publicly available API or sync standard for Apple to use. So we're stuck with developing per-device applications to do this.

  1. 5  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/12/2008 8:47:47 AM

    @2 - There's a reason there's a wink and a smile at the end of my post, sir.

  1. 6  Craig Wiseman http://www.Wiseman.La/cpw | 9/12/2008 8:51:38 AM

    @5 - ah. I've always had trouble accurately translating hieroglyphics.

    I just think we need to keep making the point clear that the "open, developer-friendly" SDK... isn't.

  1. 7  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/12/2008 8:56:29 AM

    @4 Yes, but there are ways to do the same with Domino via the Traveler code. It's not the lack of code on the Domino side that is the inhibitor here.

  1. 8  Declan Lynch http://www.qtzar.com | 9/12/2008 9:46:08 AM

    I think what a lot of people are missing is the potential for this application and what it means for other developers on the iPhone who also write software for Lotus Notes/Domino.

    Yes at the moment it is simply a read only calendar that does not integrate into the native iPhone calendar application, something that cannot be helped due to the iPhone SDKs but it does show a level of interaction between the iPhone and a Lotus Domino server that might inspire other developers.

    For example you could write an app that looks at the DDM database on a server and extracts out all the info, displays it in a nice view on the iPhone and provides a way for the iPhone to post back info to the DDM database to run some of the automated fixes and bingo you have a great Domino admin app for the iPhone.

    NotesCal could just as easily do for mail, contacts and toDos what it is doing for calendar and provide a way to write stuff back to the Domino server and it could easily become a viable replacement to using DWA on the iPhone. yes, it's not using the native iPhone apps to do its stuff and that is no fault of the developer.

    NotesCal just proves that future notes/iPhone integration is not only possible but could be easier then you think.

  1. 9  Jimmy M http://iphone.jimmymooney.com | 9/12/2008 10:43:07 AM

    Thanks for all the kind words everyone.

    Indeed - I will be expanding this to include contacts, todo's and e-mails. I'm also working on a read AND write solution.

    Additionally - it only works with Notes using default browser-based auth (i.e. the little popdown that asks for username and password).

    I'm working on a v1.1 that will let users with custom login screens still use the app(s)

    Thanks for the support!

  1. 10  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 9/12/2008 11:02:15 AM

    Ed, is the Traveler protocol spec available? I know people who would write clients against it.

  1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/12/2008 11:17:43 AM

    @10 no, it's not published. I believe our development or business development teams would entertain discussions about building to Traveler, but I'm not aware of any work that has happened there.

  1. 12  Jesper  | 9/12/2008 12:23:11 PM

    @9 Look´s nice but I will not let my users create agents and no way they will have designer rights. But I probably will try this myself :)

  1. 13  David  | 9/19/2008 11:38:38 AM

    Here's a crazy idea, why doesn't Lotus license Activesync (I know, I'm talking heresy!! :-)) so that it can get integration with the iPhone similar to other email/collaboration companies such as Kerio? In the absence of IBM having a similar offering to ActiveSync themselves, and working with Apple to get it into the firmware, I think licensing ActiveSync for Notes/Domino might be a viable option (if IBM/Lotus is willing to do it). Thoughts?

  1. 14  Mike Eovino http://dominoiphone.wordpress.com/ | 9/27/2008 11:41:38 PM

    @3 - Sander, thanks for the tip. I'm using this right now, and I've blogged about it at { Link }

    @7 - Ed, when we yell at Apple to support Domino, should we mention Traveler server specifically?