At work, we’re using Oracle collaboration suite as a groupware tool. There are three ways to work with this tool, a web client, a fat client/standalone client from Oracle that is available for Windows and Linux, and by using the Oracle Connector for Outlook.
So far so good, but how do I sync contacts and appointments with my latest toy? Check it out, after the fold.
Googling revealed that there should be no problem, as long as you’re using version 10.1.3.0.8 of the Oracle Connector for Outlook and Outlook 2003. Well, in my case that didn’t work out-of-the box. The following steps, however, did:
- Upgrade iTunes to 7.6 (not sure that is necessary…)
- Set up the Oracle Connector to synchronize between the OCS server and Outlook correctly. Verify that it works. (nt going into details here, that should be covered by your local admin team)
- Make sure that Outlook is your default mail application. This kind of sucks, but it seems to be necessary for proper communication between Outlook and iTunes. And still, you can use Thunderbird for your daily work, you’ll just have to open it explicitly.
- Open outlook, and connect using the Oracle Connector.
- Dock your iPhone, and in iTunes, go to the “info” tab of the iPhone page.
- To make sure that iTunes will properly sync with Outlook, I first de-selected all of the sync options (Contacts, Calendars, Mail accounts … it’s probably safe to leave Web Browser on.
- Select Contacts, and first choose Windows Address Book, wait, then, go back to Outlook. I suspect this cycling forces iTunes to explicitly reinstate the connectivity to Outlook.
- Now, synchronize the iPhone, and you should have all contacts and calendar entries synchronized.
UPDATE: Hmm … this is not the most stable of all solutions. I have already experienced weird crashes of Outlook or some connector component in the handful of synchronizations I have since done. So far, no data corruption and everything was well synched in the end, but I’m not yet 100% convinced about the stability of the iPhone-iTunes-Outlook-OracleConnector-OCS tangle. Too many links, too much “near-compatibility”. And the idea of using a music management program to synchronize my appointments just keeps feeling wrong somehow.
YAU (yet another update): The solution is meta-stable. While it does crash once in a while, starting a sync right after the failed one normally leads to correct completion. But still, why do I have to use a music organizer to synchronize my updates? Presumably because that application, that dreaded iTunes, is the “One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them”
