Some of my productivity-minded friends are attempting to use an iPhone to get things done with Lotus Notes. My friend, Kelly Forrister, of the David Allen Company, has been blogging about implementing GTD on her iPhone and I have enjoyed learning from her experiences. Unfortunately, many of the solutions we've tried to connect the iPhone to Notes so far haven't worked out very well for us and it's been a rough road to integration.

At Lotusphere 2009, IBM announced that they would integrate ActiveSync into the IBM Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 platform offering so that iPhone (and presumably Windows Mobile,too) users could natively sync their iPhone with their Lotus Notes Mail., Calendar, and Contacts. Fellow Notes blogger, Gregg Edlred points to the news surrounding the announcement of the forthcoming iPhone OS 3.0 release with respect to support for synchronization with Lotus Notes. So far, things appear to consistently suggest that we can expect to see this functionality mid-year.

This is encouraging news.

eProductivity for Lotus Notes

I've explored the idea of writing or partnering with someone to write an iPhone-specific version of eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes but to really make things happen, we'd like to see a few things in terms of developer support.

Here are some of the things that I'm still looking for, hoping for, waiting for:

  1. Full Sync of Tasks to a suitable onboard task manager (Notably missing in the ActiveSync announcements or any press that I have seen is any mention of Tasks, but that's another post for another day.)
  2. Better support for on device application management with sync to external databases wired/wirelessly so we can write our own task app (see #1)
  3. Multitasking - so that we can run multiple apps/threads concurrently and have stuff happen in the background
  4. At least minimal security/remote admin - important for enterprise users.

What are you most waiting for in terms of integration between the iPhone and Lotus Notes?

Discussion/Comments (6):

Kelly Forrister (): 3/18/2009 4:28:27 PM
iPhone 3.0 - One step closer to GTD in IBM Lotus Notes?

I will be so happy when a secure, elegant solution is figured out for iPhone to Lotus Notes synching for Calendar, Tasks and Contacts!


Casper TFG (): 3/20/2009 7:09:28 AM
iPhone 3.0 - One step closer to GTD in IBM Lotus Notes?

Sync of "Notes" is offered but so far no mention of Mac"ToDo"s (the Mac Tasks app)

One observation. The iPhone 3.0 developers kit is said to offer a LOT more 'hooks' into iPhone's own apps - so hopefully it may be possible to grab text and input it to something like Omnifocus - directly from iPhone Mail - and not have to cut & paste the text..

On my Blackberry 8900 - in the mail menu I have FIVE apps ready to grab email text - (REX Connect, REX Idea Matrix, vLingo, XTemplate, Antair Spam killer)

I feel this sort of core application cooperation would be a milestone in iPhone GTD. I predict its coming and I am planning to jump off the Blackberry ship this summer to iPhone 3.0 to use it...

Fingers crossed!


Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 3/20/2009 9:34:27 AM
re: iPhone 3.0 - One step closer to GTD in IBM Lotus Notes?

Thanks for the info, Casper. Please keep me posted of your iPhone & Notes adventures.


Linda (): 4/9/2009 6:50:29 PM
iPhone 3.0 - One step closer to GTD in IBM Lotus Notes?

Would love to be able to synch ical on iphone with Lotus Notes. Currently, I can synch with Outlook - or buy software that has its own calendar system that will synch with Lotus Notes - but then that doesn't synch with my mac at home. I'd love something that doesn't need a separate calendar application - but synchs with Notes. Current inotes program is fine for mail - but the day at a glance feature is not very helpful. Need to be able to add and change calendar entries remotely.


Betty (): 5/30/2009 7:30:29 PM
iPhone 3.0 - One step closer to GTD in IBM Lotus Notes?

This would be great! If there is an eProductivity app for iphone it would be great if it could also allow you to sync not just with Lotus Notes but also with Outlook and others may appreciate Entourage as well. This is because a few people use Lotus Notes at work they are likely to use Outlook on at least one home computer as well.


Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 5/30/2009 8:08:14 PM
re: iPhone 3.0 - One step closer to GTD in IBM Lotus Notes?

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