Question about Calendar and Contacts

[honyock]

I'll be buying and Android phone with Verizon sometime soon. The one issue stopping me at the moment has to do with the capabilities of the calendar/contacts apps, and I'm hoping someone who is familiar with the android OS can give me a workaround (so I can justify buying one sooner rather than later.)

I've been using Palm Treo's for years, and use my phone for running my business, including scheduling clients and making notes about client sessions. With the Treo, and using a third party calendar app (Datebk), I can link someone in my contacts/address book to an appointment. So when I look at my Wednesday 1pm appointment with John Doe, with one click I can go to a list of all appointments I've had with him over the years, and can easily go to any of them and find session notes, etc. It basically links my contacts and calendar so I have access to all the info on that client easily. (The old Palm PIM when was genius).

Is it possible to do anything remotely like this with Android? In the little playing around with Google Calendar, and in playing with the Droid and Eris at the Verizon store, I couldn't see that there's any way to do this, without manually creating a list of session dates for a client every time I make an appointment. I know that the Datebk creators have talked about an Android app coming later in the year, so I may have to wait till that happens. Much as I'd love to upgrade now, I run my business on my phone, and having the capability to handle client/session info in a way I can easily access is near the top of my priority list.

Any feedback on this? Thanks!

 

[brykins]

Right now, the built-in PIM applications are very basic and nothing like the functionality of older PalmOS or current Blackberry, etc, devices. There *may* be third party utilities that will do what you want, but until something like DateBk or Agenda Plus or Agendus comes to Android, it's a bit cr@p for business.

 

[honyock]

Thanks. I was afraid of that. I guess I'll wait a bit longer.

 

[thecrazing]

DateBk and Agendus have made whispers about things coming through the pipes, but no one has dated anything. As an FYI, there are a couple of problems, both on Google Calendar's backend, and on the SDK level. People are working on it, and more Android ownership will up the pressure on Google, but there are difficulties that need to be overcome.

 

[brykins]

Agendus don't seem to know whether or not they ARE developing it for Android when you read their own forums - one person says yes, but no news, whereas another says that they have no intention at all.

Currently all waiting on DateBk.

 

[thecrazing]

My reading of their forums is that they'd like to do something, and are sorta testing the waters, but found it too difficult to really commit to a timeline. The last post by the chick who says 'I know this sucks, but we have no news' clarifies to say 'I can't say anything now, but there is some news coming down the pipe'.

 

[donwool]

Honyock, you and I are in the same situation. I've used the Palm for about ten years and I have hundreds of memos, 1000s of contacts with additional data for many, Quicken, nine plus years of calendar... it's bad. I don't feel much better after reading the posts here. I have to make the jump from what I perceive to be a sinking Palm ship. The longer i wait the worse it gets. I'm new to Android and this site. HELP!!!

 

[chrs]

In another thread (http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid/14737-droid-calendar.html), Redflea recommends these:

- Laik Agenda Widget - free (my fav)
- CalWidget - free
- Pure Calendar widget (Agenda) - 1.5 euuros (Might be a free trial)

I don't have an android device so I haven't tried them...

 

[brykins]

@chrs - they are all widgets I think, just a way to display calendar entries on a homescreen. They don't add any fuctionality to the actual calendar application.

 

[chrs]

@byrkins - Thanks. I guess that means I continue to wait...

 

[lekky]

Would it be worth speaking directly to Datebk to see if they have any plans for an android version?

 

[lobug]

I had. They said they're... Evaluating it... Something like that... : )

 

[honyock]

Honyock, you and I are in the same situation. I've used the Palm for about ten years and I have hundreds of memos, 1000s of contacts with additional data for many, Quicken, nine plus years of calendar... it's bad. I don't feel much better after reading the posts here. I have to make the jump from what I perceive to be a sinking Palm ship. The longer i wait the worse it gets. I'm new to Android and this site. HELP!!!

donwool, I feel your pain. I shudder to think of either losing thousands of memos and notes that are attached to client appointments and contacts, or of having to manually recreate them in a new smartphone os. Yecch!

I'm pinning my hopes right now on Pimlico. They at least are indicating that they could have their Datebk replacement, Pimlical, adapted for Android, maybe sometime this year. If they do that, and provide a transition to allow conversion of all that Palm info to Android, I'll be all over it. My plan right now is to give it until maybe spring or summer, and if nothing is out or seems on the way, maybe considering just biting the bullet and going with an Android phone and figuring out how to manually transfer as much of the old Palm data as I can. I'll probably just backup and save the rest on my laptop, probably on Pimlical, and hope that at some point it can be converted and transferred.

Then I'll give a toast to Palm for their genius pda, which no one has come close to touching, and curse them for their business ineptitude over the years, which helped make it obsolete.