Ken Robertson's Blog

Ramblings of a .NET developer

New Project: Outlook.Sync

Since I have a new laptop on the way to replace my aging Powerbook (and so I can use Visual Studio on the go), I've been wanting something allows me to keep my appointments, contacts, and tasks in sync between two different computers.  This is one thing I love about my PDA, but I'll probably be getting rid of it since I am not using it for what I intended to do (note taking).

I've been looking around for ways to do this, but to no avail.  I could use an Exchange server, but don't want to.  Exchange took up 300mb more ram on my server when I had it on (also do to Active Directory).  It also didn't let me get mail for multiple domain names (needed to be in another domain, but can only have a machine be a single domain controller).  Exporting and importing information was not the way I wanted to do it either.  Then it dawned on me.  If you can't find something to do it for you, make it yourself!  Thus, Outlook.Sync was born.

Outlook.Sync is an addin for Outlook that gives you a “Sync” button on the Outlook command bar that will send and recieve appointments, contacts, and tasks to/from a web service.  With this, when you make changes to data on one machine, you hit the “Sync” button to send them to the web service.  The next time you hit the “Sync” button on another machine, it will get the new information and send back any new data it has as well.  This allows you to have the same information at your fingertips whether you're on your home machine, at work, or on a laptop.

The Outlook.Sync addin will support Office XP and Office 2003.  The web service will allow data storage in either XML or SQL Server, with support for MySQL and Access further on.  I'll probably be creating a GDN workspace for it once I'm closer to a release, which will hopefully be next week.  Right now, I have the addin all done and just have to implement the web service.  Though at the moment it is only storing appointments, but once the service is done, adding contacts and tasks will be quite easy.

If people are actually interested in something like this, let me know and I'll be sure to post when it is done.

Posted: Nov 06 2003, 11:43 PM by qgyen | with 26 comment(s)
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Comments

Alistair Young said:

One interested person here!

(I have a feature request already, though. My main use is going to be syncing back and forth between home and work, and it would be useful to mark some appointments, tasks, etc. as not-to-be-synced at the former end, on those occasions when the right hand probably shouldn't know about what the left hand is doing. Category syncable, perhaps?)
# November 7, 2003 4:27 AM

Ken Robertson said:

That had already crossed my mind, though I don't know how I'll do it right now. Would like to add some sort of user control checkbox or something. Figured, I don't need to know all my work tasks at home, so should be able to specify "do-not-sync".
# November 7, 2003 5:03 AM

Thom said:

I would definitely be interested. I'll be watching. Thanks.
# November 7, 2003 8:54 AM

Brian Desmond said:

Exchange allows you to receive email for as many SMTP domains as you want. The DNS for the domains will require an MX record for your SMTP, and you'll have to update the recipient policy for the domain to include new SMTP domains.
# November 7, 2003 10:05 AM

Brenton House said:

Sounds great! I'll be watching too!
# November 7, 2003 10:16 AM

felttippin said:

Great Idea... I'm very interested.
# November 7, 2003 1:13 PM

Vazz said:

Cool idea. I am interested too.
# November 7, 2003 3:15 PM

Rich C said:

Just what the doctor ordered! Looking forward to hearing more!
# November 10, 2003 11:42 AM

Richard Bornost said:

Sounds like a great project. I will be watching your progress with great interest.
# November 10, 2003 4:57 PM

Paolo Marcucci said:

Bandwagoning :)

Great idea. Sounds like Hailstorm, tho.... :)
# November 10, 2003 5:35 PM

Tim Marman said:

Awesome, this is exactly what I was looking for ("web-based synching").

I started writing something that did explicit file sync over a web-service, but my problem here was that I didn't want to host my PST (or an XML representation of ALL of it) on my web host. I'd prefer to just use SOAP as trhe messaging protocol and do a diffgram-like sync between the two (even if one has to be the "master" and the laptop is the "slave" and one or the other maintains some info about what has been done.

How are you handling the actual synchronization?
# November 18, 2003 8:30 AM

Ken Robertson said:

I got a copy of the Outlook 2003 Object Model (http://www.microeye.com/resources/ObjectModel2003.htm) and created my own serializable classes for the appointment, contact, and task objects. Then with my own classes, I could easily transfer them using SOAP and store them in an XML file. I'm also planning on doing SQL Server/MSDE support.
# November 18, 2003 11:42 AM

Tim Marman said:

Cool. Looking forward to seeing the output.

Just noticed this in the link you posted: "Some of these new properties support Outlook integration with Windows SharePoint Services."

I guess I should see what Outlook integration with Windows SharePoint Services is. If it's "collaboration" - as in, sharing calendars and folders between machines, we might be able to leverage that for synchronization. Just a thought.
# November 18, 2003 7:14 PM

Dan Bright said:

(Better late than never) Oh yeah, sounds great!
# December 12, 2003 3:18 PM

Philipp Stegmann said:

very very interested
# January 23, 2004 12:39 AM

Marcelo Jarvincesky said:

EXCELENTE! IT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR!!
# January 31, 2004 2:52 PM

Jason Buranen said:

I would be very interested in this!
# February 27, 2004 8:06 PM

TrackBack said:

# March 11, 2004 5:14 PM

Omar Salah said:

I would love this too. I have been wanting to sync 2 maiboxes in Exchange - so that the 2 always have the same info (myself and my secretary). I have not found anythign robust to do this. This would solve the solution (of course it would be great if the SYNC button could be done with a predefined time period, not just manually). I think this will be a grear program.
omar@star-brands.com
# March 31, 2004 4:56 AM

Ken Robertson said:

I released a preview of it and will hopefully get to finishing it shortly. I plan on adding the ability to automatically sync when opening and when closing Outlook. Setting it so that it syncs in the background every x amount of time is a good idea as well.
# April 1, 2004 8:53 PM

Curtis Patterson said:

Sign me up!
# April 8, 2004 5:08 PM

Wil said:

Count me in too...
# April 16, 2004 1:17 PM

Chris Yourch said:

I am very interested. There are professional products (www.synchpst.com) out there that do this but the one thing they lack is the ability to sync over the internet. This would be useful for all those road warriors that need to keep one or more PST files in sync.
# April 19, 2004 4:17 PM

Jake Aust said:

Another vote from me! I'd love this. I don't want to be tied to a proprietary database structure. I want to be able to sync with a mySQL database and choose the field mapping myself. Please notify me when you've got this ready!
# May 22, 2004 6:26 PM

Lee Nolen said:

Count me in too ..... Any update yet ???
# June 18, 2004 12:22 PM

ELFudge said:

This is exactly what I need!
Why has this not been done?
# June 19, 2004 9:20 AM
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