Use a free Exchange server to sync up your calendar with one person and task list with another. ~ Ask The Admin

Friday, May 09, 2008

Use a free Exchange server to sync up your calendar with one person and task list with another.

Hi boys and girls,

Do you remember when Ask The Admin covered a very interesting topic of Free Exchange services? For those who don't, you can look here, here and sometimes here.

In a nutshell, this article talked about how me and my fiance' had to plan our wedding and had tons of appointments flying in from both directions.

In order to get our two phones talking to one another and playing nicely, I used a free Exchange hosting service called www.Mail2Web.com to enable my WinMo PDA and my fiance's Blackjack to sync calendars every 10 minutes logging into the service through ActiveSync, as if they are the same phone. As a result, both phones would have the same calendar information, and keep it that way every ten minutes.

I've had this system going for some time now, and it's been working just fine. I haven't even had to login to the control panel for anything!While figuring out this howto, I noticed in my own phone that WinMo gives you 4 categories of info items to sync, (as illustrated by the image so cleverly placed on the top of this blog) - Contacts, Calendar, Email, and Tasks. I realized that my fiance's BlackJack also had the choice of 4 different points of info to sync. This meant that every WinMo device can choose which information to sync with an ActiveSync Server Source and more importantly, which information NOT to sync with an Exchange Server. So we've established that my fiance's BlackJack and my ATT 8525/Hermes were acting as if they had the same calendar - consider them synced.

So this was a real world problem solved by the fact that 2 people have phones with WinMo and Activesync, and the availability of a free exchange service @ www.Mail2Web.com.
Now onto the next real-world problem: The Admin and I have a lot of tasks involved with keeping our beloved website up and running, current and fresh. Throughout the months tasks have come and gone, but certain tasks fell through the sieve and got replaced by more current, more urgent tasks that took precedence at the time. So basically tasks were getting lost. Since neither of us used the built in Tasks application in WinMo, this presented the perfect opportunity to put my theory to the test.

I know that I already have 2 people logging into MY Mail2Web account to sync calendars. But what would be wrong with 3 people logging into that same account - except that my Fiance' will only sync Calendar information, and The Admin will only sync Tasks information (and NOBODY syncs Contact information).

So I had the The Admin log into my Mail2Web account through his ActiveSync Server Connection and sync only Tasks, and I had my own phone begin to sync Tasks with the same service it was already syncing to for Calendar information, which coincidentally my Fiance's phone was simultaneously syncing Calendar information with as well.

Problem solved:
Me and the Admin with synced Tasklist,
Me and the Fiance with synced Calendar.
Free.
Automatic.
Just the way we like it.

AskTheAdmin.com.
Free Tech Support for the Masses.

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