mGALsync anyone got it working?

[Guest chucky.egg]

I've got the trial of mGALsync, which sync's the Global Address List (GAL) from an Exchange server into your contacts.

It'd be nice if it could put them somewhere else, so as not to clutter up my contacts, but that's a limitation of Smartphone (only having the option to sync default Contacts and only one Contacts database)

But anyway, it's be even nicer if it actually sync'd something.

After 3 reboots it's gradually getting further, but it only gets as far as "Reading address list entries" (see screenshot)

I've emailed the developer, but I might get a faster answer here if anyone else is using it.... (he says hopefully!)

[Guest roma0803]

Never heard of it, but might be something I want to use. Gonna check it out and try it at work tomorrow. If your question is not answered by then, I'm sure I can give some feedback on it.

Anyway, thanks for the tip about this :D

Edit: I read Microsoft Outlook Collaborative Data Objects (CDO) has to be installed during Outlook setup. Might this be the reason for not working?

Edited March 17, 2005 by roma0803

[Guest chucky.egg]

Hmm, not sure about CDO - I'm sure I read in the version history that CDO was no longer required.

Anyway, the developer came back and said that (at least) one other person had reported this, so we'll see.

ATM I can't even tell if it's any use to me!

If I can filter out the GAL entries when looking at the phone's Contacts then fine, but I'm not 100% sure that I'll be able to do that

[Guest roma0803]

Well, I'll try tomorrow. Is it correct I read the smartphone edition syncs the GAL into your Outlook contacts, and by a normal AS you sync them to your phone? This way you can do a bit of editing before you load them on to your phone.

I think the GAL entries can be filtered out because they will automaticaly have the GAL category. I hope the filter function is good. My company has 12000 employees, my division about 1400. I only want those 1400 in my addressbook at the end.

[Guest chucky.egg]

Yep, that's right. It copies the items to Contacts in Outlook and they then get sync'd to the phone. You should be able to edit them, but what I don't know is whether it's proper sync'ing (in which case your edits get replicated to the server) or if it's just copying them.

The way I think filtering will work is by addiing a "GAL" option to the Personal and Business filters in the Contacts app on the phone, but until it actually sync's I can't tell.

My copy finds 764 entries in the GAL (which I think includes non-staff stuff like admin accounts etc), but that's as far as it gets. There is warning to tell you if there are lots of contacts, and the default is set to 100, so there may be an issue with the amount of time it takes to sync 1400 records.

[Guest roma0803]

A little update with my experience:

Installation went fine. Added a filter because I only want the addresses from my division. That would be about a 1000, so changed that warning thing to 1500.

Sync process goes well, it filters out 966 out of 15362 addresses. That could be right. And then... it stops. It doesn't do anything with it. The icon in the taskbar keeps flashing and reports 'synchronizing' but nothing happens. No contacts are added in Outlook and when I create an AS connection, mGALSync reports it, but nothing else happens.

For a moment I thought I might have the PPC version, but there only seems one version. The Smartphone setup just doesn't sync directly tot the device. So I'm a bit puzzled here since I don't know what i should do now, it just doesn't start to write the addresses in my Outlook Contacts folder...

[Guest chucky.egg]

Have you seen my screenshot in the first post?

It sounds like it's doing the same as mine.

[Guest roma0803]

Mine isn't even getting to "reading address list entries", it stops just before that. I wrote the developer about it because it could be software I really can use, if I can get it to work. I don't know of any other utilities that import a GAL to Outlook Contacts.

[Guest roma0803]

So far no response from the developer at all. Haven't got it to work either so I guess it's a dead end for this utility. Shame though.

[Guest chucky.egg]

I got an email with a new version this morning, but it didn't get any further than the last one.

Waiting to hear from them again, but not expecting anything late next week. We'll see

[Guest chucky.egg]

Ahha!

I installed Outlook 2003 the other day (for something unrelated) and for some reason it does work now. I was using Outlook 2000 before.

I'm off to clean up my Contacts cos I didn't expect it to work, so I didn't set any filters! :doh:

[Guest roma0803]

I'm off to clean up my Contacts cos I didn't expect it to work, so I didn't set any filters! :doh:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

LOL

We're working with Outlook 2002 (XP) but doesn't work here. We just upgraded from Office 97 (yeah, I know) so I don't think I can get them to go upgrade 12000 workstations to 2003 :cheesy:

Edit: No reply from developer yet

Edited March 29, 2005 by roma0803

[Guest chucky.egg]

Edit: No reply from developer yet

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No, me neither since the last update, but it has been a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK

[Guest SlipstreamSolutions]

Hi there roma0803, did you get mGALSync working with the 1.6.1 version we sent over?

If not, get in touch and we'll try and fix the problem.

Joanne

Slipstream Solutions

[Guest roma0803]

Hey there.... 8)

Haven't had another version. Is it on your site?

[Guest SlipstreamSolutions]

Hi roma0803, I'll get one of our support guys to email you. We have a version that outputs a verbose log file which should help diagnose the problem.

And as chucky.egg mentioned there's no longer any need for CDO and you shouldn't need to upgrade to Outlook 2003 to get it working...though we're not quite sure why chucky.egg's upgrade did the trick!

Joanne

[Guest roma0803]

Ok, thanks. Let's get this little problem :D

[Guest chucky.egg]

It's neat stuff when it works.

I'm hanging on for the option to set the Category for the imported contacts to be a field value from that contact (so, for example, instead of the Category of GAL it would have the value from the "Company" field of each contact). For me 700+ "GAL"-category entries is no better than having no category at all.

It 'd also be useful for me if we could add a prefix or suffix to the contact, so that they all appear at the start/end of the list

[Guest SlipstreamSolutions]

It's neat stuff when it works.

I'm hanging on for the option to set the Category for the imported contacts to be a field value from that contact...

And that's a neat idea...in fact we've already had that suggested once from someone else (unless that was your RW self). Our developers are building it in right now.

Any more ideas then send them over. We can't guarantee including them all, but all suggestions gratefully received.

Jo

[Guest roma0803]

I'm sorry Joanne for not responding for so long, had a bit of a weird time these last months.

As for mGALsync, I installed the latest build (1.7.1) and it works great now on my XP Pro machine at work. Thanks for this great tool, it saves me loads of work importing a selection of the GAL to my Outlook contacts.

I will point my colleges towards your site since most of them use a PPC or Smartphone and like to have their addresslist complete ;)