Synchronizing to Notes with Pylon Conduit

.FLYINGHEAD ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Synchronizing to Notes with Pylon Conduit
.AUTHOR Richard Echeandia
.SUMMARY PalmPilot connectivity has moved into the corporate world with a vengeance. The PalmPilot’s HotSync and Notes replication almost seem designed for each other. In this article Richard Echeandia looks at another solution: The Pylon Conduit.
.EDNOTE PalmPilot connectivity has moved into the corporate world with a vengeance. At first glance, the PalmPilot device and Lotus Notes seem as different as night and day. But the PalmPilot’s HotSync and Notes replication almost seem designed for each other. A small aftermarket has popped up, developing products to exploit interoperability between Notes and the PalmPilot. Lotus has it’s own EasySync product (they’re one of our sponsors this month.) In this article Richard Echeandia looks at another solution: The Pylon Conduit. –David Gewirtz
One of the most powerful features of the PalmPilot is its easy, one step integration with your PC. This HotSync feature allows you to use your main PC for large scale data entry or data manipulation and then transfer and maintain that data on the Pilot. Synchronization is accomplished through the use of an open, documented interface called a "conduit". A quick analysis shows that almost all of the available conduits for the PalmPilot are falling into three categories:

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.BULLET The conduits available from 3Com. You get these, of course, when you purchase your PalmPilot.
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.BULLET Multi-purpose conduits. A market leader here is IntelliSync. These products are a good choice if you need to synchronize with more than one data source.
.END_LIST

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.BULLET A highly capable single purpose conduit. 3rd party developers have filled the void here by offering more deeply functional conduits than are available from either of the first two sources.
.END_LIST

It is into this third category that the $85 Pylon Conduit from Globalware Consulting, Inc. falls. While extremely capable and flexible, the product is not without problems. I’ll try to fill you in on both sides of this product in my review.

I can still remember the first day that I got my PalmPilot. Having paid full retail price back then $399 I was certain that this would be the end to my disorganized ways. After tearing off the shrink-wrap, I read the list of PIMs that my hoped for organizational savior was on speaking terms with: Schedule+, MS-Mail, cc:Mail, Exchange, Outlook and others. Noticeable by its absence was my company-wide calendaring and scheduling solution: Lotus Notes. Heavy sigh. I hadn’t even replaced the batteries yet and I already felt buyer’s remorse. So like any good computing citizen I knew what I had to do – SPEND EVEN MORE MONEY to get what I wanted. A couple of Yahoos later and I had come to http://www.gc.com – the home of the Pylon conduit from Globalware Consulting, Inc.
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.H1 Pylon Conduit
Out of the virtual box, the Pylon conduit integrates the following PalmPilot and Lotus Notes databases:

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To get started with the Pylon conduit, point your browser to http://www.gc.com and go to the products section. After downloading the demonstration file from Globalware’s web site and unzipping it, you’re left with a single Notes database. The database is nicely organized into a table of contents which displays installation, detailed configuration, trouble-shooting and support information in a variety of documents. The Pylon software itself comes as an attachment to the installation/configuration document.

Be sure to unload the HotSync manager (if it’s loaded), double click on the Installation document and you’ll be presented with a screen like the one shown in Figure A:

.FIGPAIR A This is the normal Pylon installation screen.

If you’re installing the conduit for the first time, you’ll start out by confirming that the displayed information is correct, decide which applications you’d like synchronized, then click on the install button. New to the 1.03a version of the conduit is an upgrade button which does a software upgrade but doesn’t appear to change any of the configuration data. If all goes well you’ll be ready to re-load the HotSync manager and begin exchanging your PalmPilot data with Lotus Notes. If there are problems however, you may be forced to finish installing the software manually.

I’ve installed the software six times on a total of five machines and have had to do the manual installation twice. This seems to me to be one of the areas that could use some work in the current version of the product. Being written in Notes, the installation process is somewhat dependent on the workstation’s ECL (Execution Control List) configuration to work correctly. An external installation routine might ease some installation problems. If the automatic installation fails though, the manual installation process is well documented in the trouble-shooting section of the documentation. If you do have to switch to manual, the installation consists of checking the Registry for required values and adding or correcting them if required. Finally, to complete a manual installation you might have to detach the program files into the \PILOT directory on your hard drive. Reset your system and away you go.

.H1 Post installation
Once the software is installed you can configure it to meet your specific needs. During the installation process a new subform called PilotSubForm is added to the location document of your personal address book in Notes. This subform is where all of the configuration data for the Pylon conduit is stored. Each PalmPilot application can be configured individually to synchronize with a different Notes database. The available configuration options include not only synchronizing with documents in a given view of folder but truncating the imported data to a fixed number of characters. Finally, the developers of the product have added an optional advanced configuration mode which allows a Notes developer or administrator to define the names of Notes forms and their field names to sync with. For an example of these options, see Figure B.

.FIGPAIR B Once the Pylon Conduit is installed, the configuration options are extensive.

Because these configuration settings reside in your Notes location document, you can have different settings for each connectivity environment in Lotus Notes. For instance, I have a minimal configuration for when I’m on the road and a more full featured option set for when I’m in the office. To switch between these two environments for the Pylon conduit, all that I need to do is change my location in Lotus Notes.

.H1 How well does it work?
Pretty darn well. Most of my HotSyncs take about 45 seconds and that’s for all of the available applications. When there are no disruptions in your Notes environment, the conduit works perfectly. However, if you ever need to re-create a database or have copied and pasted documents, I’ve seen the Pylon conduit duplicate data on the PalmPilot. There is a workaround for this behavior documented on Globalware’s web site.

As part of implementing a contact management application, we used the Pylon conduit to allow a small sales force to synchronize contact, calendar and to do information between Lotus Notes and the PalmPilot. There was not enough space in the PalmPilot for all 6,000 contacts so using the configuration options we were able to just move each sales person’s specific contacts to his or her own PalmPilot device. They were able to add new, or edit existing, contacts on the PalmPilot and all of their additions or changes would synchronize to their laptops and then to the Notes server successfully. Each new sales person required approximately 10 minutes to configure their Notes environment to work with the Pylon Conduit.

.H1 Pylon support
This is another area where Globalware needs to change its existing policies. According to the manual:

"At this time support will be provided by sending an e-mail to pylon@gc.com or Pylon @ Globalware @ Notes Net. In the near future, a Notes discussion database will be available on the Internet for replication or for use through a Web browser."

At the time of this writing the discussion database was on their web site. Like most Notes discussion databases on the web, it operates excruciatingly slow at times and finding specific data can be a chore. In my opinion saying that you’re never planning on offering live support is unrealistic. At $85 for each copy of the software, phone support (even a toll call) needs to be available to registered users of the product.

Over the course of the last three months I’ve also had occasion to call the company four or five times and the phone has never been answered by a human being, only an answering machine. In their defense, I have called them twice for issues which were not covered in the documentation and left a message asking for assistance. On both occasions the call was returned by the main developer of the conduit the same day.

.H1 Summary
While using this product, I was consistently left with the feeling that this product was written by people who really know and use Notes and really know the PalmPilot. If an option was necessary to make the software work in a variety of situations for a variety of users, the developers of the product implemented it.

If you need to integrate your Lotus Notes mail, calendar and to do list with your PalmPilot there are only a few choices to choose from. If your needs mandate more flexibility than is available in Lotus’ offering, then the Pylon Conduit is a solid but somewhat pricey choice.

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.H1 Product availability

Pylon Conduit is available from Globalware Consulting, Inc. for $85. They can be found at http://www.gc.com.
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.BIO
.DISCUSS http://www.component-net.com/webx?13@@.ee6b7ee