[Rlin5741]

I'm wondering if anyone has used Syncamatic or Goosync to keep their blackberry synced up wirelessly with Outlook and Gmail. If you have other suggestions, please let me know. The complication I have is that I want my Outlook to be the primary source (or preferably a server "in the cloud" with data in Outlook format), since Blackberry syncs very well with Outlook over the wire already.

I know there are many programs that sync Outlook with Gmail, then I can use Google Sync or Google BIS sync with the Blackberry. However, Google Sync don't work very well for me - they would require that I use Gmail as primary source, and Gmail contacts don't sync categories and has a history of messing up fax numbers between home and work, etc. It also doesn't sync contacts created in Outlook that I synced to my Blackberry via USB - Google Sync doesn't recognize those as new items. The new Google BIS sync is even worse, duplicates galore, with addresses screwed up, mixed contact (phone from one with address from another). In the end, it would be best if the primary source is Outlook, and Gmail would pull info it needed from Outlook (or preferably a server "in the cloud" with data in Outlook format). Generally, sync with Gmail is problematic in the address field - since Gmail stores addresses as one giant field rather than separate city, state, street, etc, using Gmail as the "primary" source would result in some items getting the entire address dumped into one line on the Blackberry and Outlook.

Syncamatic appears to be relatively new - they also have a free version that does manual syncs, and syncs Blackberry with Outlook, but no connection with Gmail, although I suppose I could use GSyncit to sync Outlook with Gmail. This does use Outlook as primary, but obviously won't work if I'm on the road for some time and my computer or Outlook got shut down for some reason

Goosync also looks good - a bit pricier but I think reasonable. Unfortunately, you can't try the full contacts+calendar application, and even full version is missing memopad sync to Google Docs. What appears to be beneficial about this is that it does store data "in the cloud" in a server which you can sync Outlook, Blackberry, and Gmail with, and the server acts as the primary information store. My question would be in how accurately it syncs with Outlook - does it pull in categories, etc very well - and also sync those items accurately with Blackberry?

Thanks for your help.

[Rlin5741]

I stumbled upon another solution - using this service called ScheduleWorld. Cost is $25 per year, and there is a two week trial period. It appears to work rather well so far - you sync with a ScheduleWorld server, which then acts as the primary depository of information between your mobile device, Google and Outlook. The cool this is that it appears to use an open sync standard called SyncML, and it appears that there are a couple applications out there than will do the actual syncing. I used the Funambol appliaction, because I was familiar with it from a prior email service that I used before switching to Gmail. It actually syncs contacts rather well - including categories.

I'm pretty paranoid about getting duplicates, so this is what I did:
0. Sign up for Scheduleworld - it will send you a password. Sign in and reset the password to something that you will keep - this is needed in the sync process to remember it
1. Make sure Outlook had the latest and greatest Contacts, Calendar, Memo and ToDo list
2. Clear the Address Book, Calendar, Memo and Tasks database on Blackberry by using the advanced backup/restore fuction in desktop manager
3. Clear my Google contacts list, then set up the Groups that will correspond to the contact categories in Outlook
4. Download the Funmabol Client for Outlook version ScheduleWorld suggests (Main Page - Sw, left side of the page), I tried the newer one diret from Funambol and had some issues
5. Configure the plugin settings - your username is the email you signed up with, password is the password you selected. The UBI (sort of the calendar and contact IDs) that Funambol defaults to should be the same as what ScheduleWorld stores stuff as (Contacts = scard, Calendar = scal, Tasks = stask, Memo = snote)
6. Run a "reset" or "recovery" sync (I forget the exact term) in the Outlook to Server direction - this essentially will allow you to force overwrite anything on the server with your Outlook information
7. Log onto the ScheduleWorld server and check to make sure all the information made it in.
8. Set up the Google link with ScheduleWorld (Green box on the bottom left of Main Page - Sw has howto's on setting up Gmail contact link and calendar link). For Calendar, remember to hit the radio to overwrite the Google calendar with ScheduleWorld data - this will only take effect for a single sync and will help to minimize duplicates as it puts everything on the same initial footing.
9. Download and set up the ScheduleWorld Funambol client for Blackberry. For some reason, the latest version of Funambol for Blackberry does not work - use the one posted under the "Blackberry" link in Main Page - Sw in the green box on the left side under Blackberry. For your reference, ota download link is http://www.scheduleworld.com/sw2/swblackberryos42.jad
10. Input the user name and password in the Blackberry client. Run a "Clean" sync for all the contacts, calendar, etc (need to run each separately, client won't let you run all of them at once) but hitting the menu putton and clicking clean and server to BB. This will download all the ScheduleWorld information into the Blackberry.

Note: The last step will take a very long time if you have many contacts - it took almost 1.5 hours for me and I have about 650 contacts. Best to do that at the end of the day and just let it run overnight. It could be better if your berry has more memory - what was holding it up on mine was the dreaded clock hang that would happen every 10 contacts or so.

Bit of a pain to set up like this, but subsequent syncing has been seamless so for. I haven't tested it a bunch, but subsequent syncs appear fine - I just set the Blackberry and Outlook to autosync every 2 hrs, and it appears to work well. As far as I can tell, it is autosyncing to Google Calendar, although I'm running into an issue where events going into the Google calendar an hour early - I think it could be a DST issue.

There are several limitations, as you can read on the wiki site. Gmail contact sync does not appear to be automatic, I think you need to go into ScheduleWorld and manually start a sync. The main limitations I've seen so far are more Gmail contact limitations - inability to delineate a specific first and last name (Gmail just has one name field, ScheduleWorld will put things in the "Last Name, First Name" format) and inability to have the various correct address fields (Gmail has a single field for address, this causes contacts that you create in Gmail to put the entire address into the "Street Address" field of Outlook or the Blackberry). However, since you're using ScheduleWorld as the intermediary, it will keep everything in a format very close to Outlook or Blackberry, isolating these Gmail quirks to contacts created in Gmail.

There's also an artifact of the "Lossless Contact Sync" that ScheduleWorld employs with Gmail - I believe it makes deletions never sync up. Essentially, the ScheduleWorld server will check for additions and changes with Gmail, but will never delete contacts. Kind of annoying, I guess its by design.

[Rolandh]

I came across this site this morning, you sync to your account that you set up on there website. Once registerd you get an email with the download url of a small app that connects you Berry to your online account, you can manage your Contacts, SMS, Calendar, Call log and your Pictures and Videos from you account, there are other features that I haven't explored yet. The plus points are that it works and it's free.
Free mobile phone contact, photo, video and text message backup :: mIQ

[Rlin5741]

Made a couple of edits to my ScheduleWorld directions - it appears to be best to use the suggested Funambol Outlook client version. Plus I discovered that Gmail contacts sync indeed is not automatic, and there appears to be a DST bug in the sync with Google Calendar.

[Rlin5741]

I came across this site this morning, you sync to your account that you set up on there website. Once registerd you get an email with the download url of a small app that connects you Berry to your online account, you can manage your Contacts, SMS, Calendar, Call log and your Pictures and Videos from you account, there are other features that I haven't explored yet. The plus points are that it works and it's free.
Free mobile phone contact, photo, video and text message backup :: mIQ

I saw the Crackberry article about this a while back - but I was under the impression that it is meant as a replacement for Outlook, etc - i.e. you import your contacts once but there is not sync capability between it and Outlook or Gmail...is this right? No offense to any ScheduleWorld employees or customers out there, but I know more about Best Buy than ScheduleWorld...