It seems it’s not very often that I find a pre-existing solution to a very specific need that I have, but this is one of those times. OggSync has been around for sometime now but I just stumbled upon it recently and It’s an amazing program that delivers incredible results. Let me begin by addressing the need I was interested in fulfilling…
What I Needed
My wife and I lead rather busy lives. We both work full-time and we have two children, things can get pretty hectic. It’s very important for us to be on the same page in terms of our schedules and we need to keep track of each other’s appointments as well as our children’s. Ideally I wanted to be able to enter appointments in one place, whether it be on my mobile phone or in Outlook, and have the ability to automatically share pertinent information with my wife. My main issue is that I didn’t want to have to enter the same information into multiple places. I’m sure there are more than a few ways to accomplish this, some less elegant than others, but my solution is OggSync.
For work I use Microsoft Exchange Server for email, calendars and tasks. At home I use Google for my personal email and calendar. The same situation applies to my wife. My wife and I are on different Exchange servers so it’s not possible to share calendars as seamlessly as I’d like to and I like to keep my work life separated from my personal life as much as possible (they do tend to overlap quite a bit though since I work from home). That’s where OggSync comes in.
The Solution
Using OggSync I am able to bridge my Exchange account with my Google account in real-time, over-the-air using my Windows Mobile Phone. Meaning that whether I enter an appointment or contact on my mobile phone, in Outlook using Exchange or on the web using Google they’re all synced. There’s a desktop version of OggSync as well, but the Windows Mobile version runs in the background on my phone at all times and I don’t need to leave my computer logged in to get sync results. Google does have a service they call Sync, but it uses the Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Protocol so I’d have to choose one or the other: Exchange sync for work or Google Sync for personal stuff… no dice. With OggSync I can have it both ways.
As you may or may not know, Google Calendar allows you to create as many different calendars as you want and share each one of them individually. The real beauty of OggSync is that it treats Google calendars like Outlook categories and vice versa. If you enter an appointment into Outlook and assign a category to it, OggSync will sync that appointment to the Google Calendar of the same name if it exists. As an example, If I create an Outlook category called ‘Family’ and a Google Calendar called ‘Family’ that I share with my wife, any appointment I enter into Outlook and assign to the category ‘Family’ will sync to my Google Calendar ‘Family’ and will be shared with my wife. Conversely, if I enter an appointment and assign it to the category ‘work’ it will sync to the Google Calendar ‘work’ and my wife won’t see it. This is very useful because it allows you to share different information with different people.
How It Works
As I mentioned before I use OggSync on my mobile device because that is what suits my needs best, you may find otherwise and they do offer different solutions. With the phone version it works like this: my Exchange server information (emails, appointments, contacts and tasks) sync to my Windows Mobile Phone over-the-air via ActiveSync. Once on my phone picks up the changes (appointments and contacts) OggSync sends them to my Google account and vice-versa for complete, 2-way synchronization.
The Remaining Problem (for me)
The main drawback to this setup is the inability to sync tasks. I’d like to be able to sync and share tasks in the same manner as appointments using OggSync and keep the platforms to a minimum, currently Exchange Server and Google. Unfortunately Google, to date, hasn’t offered much in the way of tasks or task synchronization. Tasks are thrown into the Google Calendar app almost like an after-thought which I don’t find as useful as it ought to be, especially for a task-minded person such as myself. I rely on Outlook tasks and would like to see Google incorporate more features into their tasks. I have, however, found a solution through Remember The Milk. They offer MilkSync for Windows Mobile which provides pretty much the same basic functionality for tasks as Oggsync does for appointments. The application is only available for Pro Remember The Milk accounts ($25/yr), which is one more expense I’m hesitant to add to the list. Also, it would mean adding another platform to the mix. They do have a Gmail gadget though so in reality any task I entered in Outlook, Gmail or on my phone would be synced and I could access Remember The Milk tasks from all three locations. Still debating whether I wait for Google to incorporate tasks or sign-up for Remember The Milk.
