Comments on: Suddenly Seeking Business Contacts for Smart Phone

By: chris

chris — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:31:19 +0000

@ John…

Issues of Palm OS and the depth of cross-platform functionality you can reasonably expect to see aside…

Even on Windows Mobile, Folder Mirror will only be able to do so much, since it is primarily a sync application/utility, and not a substitute (as in a more feature filled) version of Pocket BCM.

I’m able to get close to certain functions of BCM. On Windows Mobile, you can set Contacts to View by Company, and even set a Filter for a given Category (something like, say…Business Contacts) to mimic Pocket BCM’s excellent focus on biz contacts only. I’d be surprised if Palm OS didn’t offer this as well, but as I’d rather be shot in the head with a railgun than use a Palm OS device, I can’t say for sure.

Primary among the enhancements of using Folder Mirror has to be the ability to update Business Contact info OTA and in realtime.

Even with my original, manual sync method outlined in a previous blog post, certain info gets dumped, not the least of which is linked history items.

Folder Mirror simply won’t bring out everything that’s held in the BCM database, including linked history items.

Honestly, I have the exact same goal you have regarding the ability to take client data, including history, with me on my mobile device.

And as yet…I’m still coming up boxcars in that regard.

By: john

john — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:35:32 +0000

Chris,
I took your advice from 8/1/2007 and installed the Folder Mirror application from Chapura. I have a Treo 700P and was able to load up my business contacts to the Treo but I can’t search them by the account names because they’re only listed under the contact names. Also, it did not transfer any e-mails, calendar events, etc. that are in the Account history” section. Am I doing something wrong or is this not possible using the Treo 700P with Outlook 2003. My whole goal with the Treo and Outlook BCM is to be able to view all Accounts and be able to display by Accounts and view any history of those accounts as well. I appreciate any advice you can give. Do I need to upgrade to a 755W ??? Thanks John

By: Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 23:09:59 +0000

Hey there Chris,

I always enjoy checking into your site on occasion from up here in Denver, CO.

There is now great news for all of you mobile warriors such as myself who
have long lamented the lack of an easy way to synchronize your BCM Business
Contacts with your particular mobile device regardless of your mobile device
platform (WM, Palm, Blackberry, Symbian, etc.) Go to http://www.chapura.com and
check out their new “Folder Mirror” solution. This apparently graceful,
client side application maintains an ongoing, automatic, real-time synch
between all additional Outlook Calendar and Contact folders and the native
default Outlook Calendar and Contact folder which then flows through the
standard synch conduit to your device.

This will allow any platform of mobile device that already provides a synch
conduit to Outlook to be able to also synch with BCM. Because this works on
the PC client itself, it does not interfere with the particular device
manufacturer’s conduit synch software.

Chapura is top of the list in Outlook synchronization. They innovate and
their stuff actually works!

-THP

By: chris

chris — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 00:50:43 +0000

@ Tim

Installing BCM for Smartphone allows you to sync the Business Contacts tracked in Business Contact Manager for Outlook. Those Business Contacts are kept wholly and completely separate from the regular Outlook Contacts on the Smartphone (just like they are on the PC), and can be found under an application called Business Contacts on the Smartphone.

Key drawbacks to Business Contacts (no OTA sync, no Voice Command support, etc.) have been outlined in a previous post on BCM for PocketPC, available here: http://www.chrisrue.com/funcave/2007/06/a-mobile-app-gets-whacked.html

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 00:05:58 +0000

Chris,

Does the new BCM Smartphone synch to a separate app on the device from where the regular Outlook contacts synch to or are they all together in the same app on the device?

By: chris

chris — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:06:31 +0000

@ Mike:

The code 0×80004005 you mention usually points to a single-item sync failure. That is, a single item of a given type (in this case, the BCM data) is causing the entire type to fail. Unfortunately, the error log won’t help pinpoint the item causing the failure.

One potential fix is to completely delete the mobile device partnership on your PC, then re-set up the partnership.

If that doesn’t do it, you may have to roll up the sleeves and do some grunt work with your BCM data.

By: Michael Bryett

Michael Bryett — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:28:29 +0000

My BCM wont work on my smartphone

Everything is set up fine as all my email, contacts, calendar, tasks, mobile
favourites, files and onenote mobile (separate download) items sync just fine.

If I click on Business Contacts then the sync always errors. I have turned
on verbose logging and the log file from the device shows this

2007-06-22 00:38:02 SyncBegin
2007-06-22 00:38:03 SendStatus SyncBegin, hr=0×0
2007-06-22 00:38:04 EngineBegin desktop {8AD3A4E7-61AE-40F2-BC7F-D66613568C62}
2007-06-22 00:38:04 ConnInfo Failed (0×80004005)
2007-06-22 00:38:05 RadioInf Dormant mode on [Ping]
2007-06-22 00:38:06 RadioInf Dormant mode on [Ping]
2007-06-22 00:39:07 EngineEnd hr=0×0
2007-06-22 00:39:07 SyncEnd
2007-06-22 00:39:07 AutdMode old=2, new=2, hr=0×0
2007-06-22 00:39:07 Scheduled 2007-06-22 00:44:07, handle=0×3f000050, hr=0×0
2007-06-22 00:39:07 SendStatus SyncEnd, hr=0×0

Cant find anything useful out on the web to help describe this error code 0×80004005 in relation to active sync which is also a pretty vague error code.

Anyone with any ideas?

Cheers

Mike