Palm Websynchronisation Model

Being heavily dependant on my project's schedule, I always need to be clear about my daily appointments, telephone conferences, meetings, etc.
This is no big deal as long as you are managing your schedule on your own, but it really becomes a challenge, while you are collaborating with others or other groups of people.
You then need to decide on putting all information in your schedule or let them put it in for you. Another important point is that everyone is using his/her favorite calendar application and thus, there is no real interfacing and productivity on finding a suitable date for, let's say, a project review or so.

The one is using Microsoft's exchange enterprise solution together with any Windows Mobile smartphone or particularly a Palm-Treo running WM, others are using Lotus Notes together with a Domino Server and any kind of PDA or smartphone, some are using the Palm Desktop together with Palm IIIxe, Sony PDA's and Palm Centros and finally some geeks use state-of-the art linux PDA's and work with online schedulers. This is a collaboration nightmare and needs to be streamlined in order to convert synchronisation time into productivity.

The solution is simple and quite easy done.
Google's Calendar [1] is the ultimate solution and stands on top of it all. For Palm devices it is even possible to synchronise particular calendar categories and thus split work from private appointments.

The only thing needed is a google (mail) account, which allows you to access the free webbased calendar application. Assuming that all have this already, the interesting part starts with the synchronisation process of the PDA/smartphone.

For those, who are mostly working at their Desktop PC, should install Companionlink [2], which supports ACT! by Sage, MS Outlook with Business, Contact Manager, IBM Lotus Notes, FrontRange GoldMine, Google Apps,Palm Desktop (currently not Palm Desktop 6.2) and Novell GroupWise.
All major handhelds and smartphones are supported, such as BlackBerry handhelds, Windows Mobile handhelds, Palm OS handhelds, Apple iPhone & iPod Touch.

For all others, mostly working wirelessly, they need to install GooSync [3], which does the same job directly over the air.

Once the synchronisation setup works with the local calendar application, the sharing of calendars should be enabled from within Google's calendar application. This is easy, while the Google email address is the only thing which need to be specified for collaboration. By default, others can only view appointments. Therefore one should check the option "makes changes to event" from within the drop down menu next to the email address. That's it.
Now others (the ones specified by email addresses) can place own appointments in the desired schedule in order to make it available in all other Google calendars. Everyone can now sync them back into their local desktop applications and further on their handheld/smartphone device or directly wirelessly on their smartphone on-the-go. Automatic synchronisation to the Google calendar should then be enabled to always stay up-to-date.
This makes finding free dates much more easy for everyone and in case an appointment is not suitable for me, I simply drag it to antoher day or time and sync again.

2008-07-15_Palm_Websynchronisation_Model

best regards
Clemens

[1] https://www.google.com/calendar/render#
[2] http://www.companionlink.com/products/companionlinkforgoogle.html
[3] https://www.goosync.com/