Question about phone and Outlook sync

[redhat]

We have just started testing Zimbra 4.5 recently. It seems to be working perfectly and we're ready to try something harder now - syncing with other applications. I want to be careful and make sure we do this right because we had some bad experiences with other applications.

First, it sounds like there's some software that provides an Outlook connector. Where do we get that? It wasn't in the network version trial software that we downloaded. Is there a separate download available somewhere? Does it work with Outlook 2007?

Second, we've never had an Exchange server so I only have experience syncing my Treo 700wx (Windows Mobile 5, Sprint) with ActiveSync plugged into my USB port. I read the wiki and it said all I have to do is add a new ActiveSync "Server source" on the Treo and use the Zimbra server URL. So here's the questions:

1) Assume the Treo and my computer (Outlook) are in sync before I start this process and they have my complete calendar and contacts. The Zimbra account is new (clean) and has no data. Should I install the Outlook Zimbra connector and sync Outlook to Zimbra first? Will that put all my Outlook data into Zimbra?

2) If #1 is correct, should I then configure the new Zimbra server source on the Treo and sync that? At that point if everything is working I assume that the Treo and/or Zimbra will recognize that everything is already in sync. (This is where I'm expecting to have trouble. For example, finding everything duplicated either on the Treo or in Zimbra.)

3) If I get the Treo syncing directly with Zimbra, should I then not sync the Treo with the USB connection on the computer any more?

4) Will I be able to make appointments on the Treo and have those sync to Zimbra, and then also show up on my computer in Outlook?

5) Am I missing any other potential problems?

I hope I'm explaining this clearly. Thanks in advance for any feedback.

[jholder]

Hi Redhat, I'll try to answer these the best I can

Originally Posted by redhat

First, it sounds like there's some software that provides an Outlook connector. Where do we get that? It wasn't in the network version trial software that we downloaded. Is there a separate download available somewhere?

You can download it from the admin UI under the Wizards tab

Does it work with Outlook 2007?

Not quite yet. We are planning this for the 5.0 release.

1) Assume the Treo and my computer (Outlook) are in sync before I start this process and they have my complete calendar and contacts. The Zimbra account is new (clean) and has no data. Should I install the Outlook Zimbra connector and sync Outlook to Zimbra first? Will that put all my Outlook data into Zimbra?

The device will sync directly to the zcs server, not outlook. Outlook will sync directly to the server.
So, if you add an item in outlook using the connector, it will push to the server, and the server will send it to the device using activesync.

2) If #1 is correct, should I then configure the new Zimbra server source on the Treo and sync that? At that point if everything is working I assume that the Treo and/or Zimbra will recognize that everything is already in sync. (This is where I'm expecting to have trouble. For example, finding everything duplicated either on the Treo or in Zimbra.)

I think I answered this

3) If I get the Treo syncing directly with Zimbra, should I then not sync the Treo with the USB connection on the computer any more?

If you only sync to outlook, then you don't need to anymore. If you have other things to sync, then you'll need to.

4) Will I be able to make appointments on the Treo and have those sync to Zimbra, and then also show up on my computer in Outlook?

Yes.

5) Am I missing any other potential problems?

Different phones operate differently. See the poll post named "Which phone works best with Zimbra Mobile

I hope I'm explaining this clearly. Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Your welcome!

[redhat]

Thanks, that was a big help. Just a couple more questions to clarify.

1) Is there any problem syncing multiple computers/Outlooks and multiple phones to the same Zimbra account? Will changes made in any one location be correctly propagated to all other devices?

2) According to the ZCO documentation it will synchronize e-mail, contacts, calendars, and tasks. How do tasks work in Zimbra? I don't see where they would show up in the web interface.

[dkarp]

Originally Posted by redhat

1) Is there any problem syncing multiple computers/Outlooks and multiple phones to the same Zimbra account? Will changes made in any one location be correctly propagated to all other devices?

No, phones using Zimbra Mobile are each tracked separately and Outlook manages its own sync state. Changes are pushed to the server and propagated to all sync clients upon the next sync.

Originally Posted by redhat

2) According to the ZCO documentation it will synchronize e-mail, contacts, calendars, and tasks. How do tasks work in Zimbra? I don't see where they would show up in the web interface.

Tasks work in the normal way. There's support for tasks in the server and the ZCO, but there isn't a tasks UI in the web client or the basic HTML client yet. You can track progress on that in bugzilla; it's planned for the next major release.

[redhat]

Making progress here, but still need help.

I opened Outlook and exported all data folders as .pst files. (I have thousands of appointments in my Outlook calendar and hundreds of contacts. The Zimbra server is new and has no data except a few test e-mails.) Then I installed ZCO and configured that. Outlook ran fine and grabbed the e-mail messages from Zimbra server right away.

Then I confirmed that the Outlook calendar, contacts and tasks were all blank.

Next I imported the .pst files for calendar, contacts and tasks and confirmed that they look correct again in Outlook.

I waited a while, but nothing seemed to be syncing with the Zimbra server so shut down Outlook and restarted it. Then pressed F9 and the sync dialog box came up. The dialog box said the two tasks completed and I confirmed that the calendar on the Zimbra server is showing all the data from Outlook. This is great!

The problem is that no contacts sync over to the Zimbra server. I get an error message now saying:

Task 'Zimbra Collaboration Server - Sending and Receiving' reported error (0x80040102) : 'The requested operation cannot be performed on this account'

Don't know what that error means, but none of the contacts are showing up in Zimbra web client. The Address Book in Zimbra is still blank.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?