DominoKeys.com

I have now accomplished 2 of the 3 things I need in order to feel good about this purchase (since it was a work-related purchase after all). Here’s a recap:

(Please keep in mind that all of these steps are for Lotus Notes on the Mac.)
1. Lotus Notes Contacts on the iPhone

• File\Export…
• Give it a name and select the file type of “vCard 3.0″
• Decide if you want “All docs” or just the ones you selected and hit OK
• Open Apple’s Address Book
• Select File\Import\vCards…
• Find and select the file(s) you exported
• If a duplicate exists, you will be prompted with options to resolve it. Since that’s the case, you could export the entire contacts list from Lotus Notes once a week (or whatever) and deal with duplicates. This is handy for me, since I am more likely to update contact information in Lotus Notes than I am the Mac Address Book.

I know what you’re thinking … “I could set up an Automator activity for that.” You could, if Notes had Automator activities (or if you know a way around that … and if so, please share!)

2. Lotus Notes E-mail on the iPhone

This one is theoretically easier, yet took me a long time. You’ll see why in a moment…

• Enable IMAP on the Domino server that has your mail file. To do this, open your domain’s Address Book. Click on Configuration\Servers\All Server Documents. Edit the one for the server your mail file is on. Go to the tab Ports…\Internet Ports…\Mail and enable the IMAP (143) port. It would be a good idea to enable the name & password authentication as well.
• On the iPhone, set up a new mail account. Enter the name (DNS name on the internet — your Domino server needs to be exposed to the internet with an external IP, or NAT’d or something) of the IMAP server in the “incoming mail server” area (and add your Notes username and password).
• In the “outgoing” area, you need to enter the name of an SMTP server. This might be the same server or it might be a hub mail server. In my case, it was neither. We route mail through a spam filtering service and tell the ISP to pass all SMTP traffic to their servers, instead of us. Once I remembered that (and remembered the name of that server) I was able to get past this point.

Its also interesting to note that you can tell the iPhone to check for mail every X-minutes. If you connect your iPhone to WiFi hotspots that you frequent, it’ll help speed your email connectivity as well. Also, you may want to do a quick search in the Notes help files for “IMAP” for a quick understanding of how it works, especially if you’re more familiar with POP3 accounts.

… and the one I haven’t yet figured out:

3. Lotus Notes Calendar on the iPhone

Oddly enough, this is the one that I wanted to tackle first! You can export your calendar entries to .ICS files and import them into iCal, but that’s kinda a pain. I’m working on modifying my mail file to display an .ICS calendar feed that iCal can subscribe to (so that it is then passed on to my phone). I’m still working on formatting the file correctly (for iCal to read it properly) but I’m not done yet.

Other Resources:

It appears that there is already a product that would help me out tremendously. The name of the product is KissWorks which is in a transition to Seth Ober, who apparently originally worked on the product. You can purchase the product or benefit from lots of time I spent searching to find the trial link here. One important note: it doesn’t work. — I’ve tried it on a few installs with no success. I’ve tried to contact all of the email addresses listed on the various sites but haven’t heard back from anyone.