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DejaOffice -- super-charged contacts, calendar, tasks and notes apps for mobile professionals

Well I posted on the DejaOffice forums on the 22nd when I downloaded this app. I even started a different thread here as I didn't know about this one. ( Finally a decent business contacts app for android)

It's a pretty good product for one still in development. My major complaint is that there isn't a user guide to download to assist with all the questions which naturally arise when working with something like this. Being able to backup data is a mayor concern when dealing with something as vital as years of valuable contact information. So the sooner you can come up with a usable user guide (as opposed to the very sketchy information on your website) the better. My recommendation would be to have something in print and a companion guide posted to YouTube. You know - a kind of DejaOffice for dummies.

Still It performs very well and is miles ahead of the Android 'people' contacts manager. As I posted on the forum it still needs a number of usability features. From their response (see below) I'd say they're working very hard to get this right. When you consider it's free, personally, I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt and make all the suggestions we can. Hopefully they'll integrate them into the product to make it exactly the way we want it.

My post from DejaOffice forum -
Contacts features -
Just downloaded and started using DejaOffice and must say it's impressive. Finally a SERIOUS business application for android. Thank you.

As I'm updating and entering contacts it would be great if there were:

boilerplate entries - enabling me to enter the same city or state without having to type it over and over
online search- to enter address and phone number information automatically
maps-interfacing with google maps for driving directions
sdcard access while charging-as I often have my phone plugged into usb charging while working
merge-for duplicate contacts
preferences-boilerplate entries like (222) 222-2222 so all the numbers entered follow that style
Look forward to using your product for years to come.

Reply-
Great suggestions. I've added this to our suggestions

Maps interface should be done shortly.
Wi-Fi sync will soon supersede USB sync, which resolves the charge issue.

So, from me at least, thank you. I appreciate all the hard work and expense that goes into something like this. I hope those of us who have been early adopters and have contributed to it's development will get to keep it once you start charging (if you do).


EDIT:
How are contact photos inserted directly?
 
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Ok Im bleary eyed so forgive me if this has been already asked. I am about to take the plunge with Deja Offfice / Companion link. Do I need to delete the existing contacts on my phone before I start (probably tomorrow or the next day)? If so, HOW? One at a time or is there a way I can delete all of them.
 
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Looks nice if your not into fun looks and 100 percent professional,

Suggestion though, make it look visually appealing, for the fun young crowd AND older crowd, mainly because of the focus on white. Color schemes would make this pretty cool, seeing as not all of us use the stock Android theme, or have an HTC hero or other Sense device.
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Hi Companionlink,
Now, the native Android databases can be populated with multiple "accounts". Most phones have a "Phone" account and a "Google" account in the native contacts and calendar databases. Any contact or calendar entry saved as a "Google" record will automatically sync with Google (provided you have auto-sync turned on in the Android settings). In DejaOffice, under Settings > Sync Settings, you can specify which native Android account to integrate with (such as "Google" or "Phone").

In the Settings > Sync Settings window I have
"Sync with Android Contacts App" with "Accounts" and "Default Account" values grabbed (unchangeable) from my Google Account settings.
And no possibility to choose between [databases] Phone and Google.

And every "Read Android Data" (sync) partners the Google db.
What am I missing here ?
(Samsung Galaxy S, DeJaOffice 1.7.4)
 
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I'm running DejaOffice 1.8.3 on the Droid X. I've been using the trial version of CompanionLink to sync my Palm Desktop stuff to the Droid, which worked great. Love the functions and features. The only problem is that DejaOffice is SO slow to open on my Droid X, slow to switch between features (like from calendar to the main menu to contacts, etc). Also very slow to open contacts, calendar events, etc. Just generally REALLY painfully slow and much slower than the native Google calendar or contact app or any other app on the phone. In fact, the phone is generally very fast. So I don't know if this is a problem due to the size of the DejaOffice software which I won't be able to get around, or if I can perhaps mitigate this with a change to my settings or something. HELP!!! Ideas? Thanks.
 
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FOR THE COMPANION LINK / DEJA OFFICE MODERATOR:

JUST installed Deja Office and Companion Link, set to Sync with my former Palm Desktop for the moment.

Companion Link Build: 4036 (latest)
Deja Office v. 1.11.3

Phone: HTC MyTouch Slide 3G (Brand New)
______________________________________________

ISSUES:

1) Android calendar sync did not sync fully, only DejaOffice Calendar synced fully (3000 + events)

2) Deja Calendar REMINDERS are WAY TOO BRIEF!!! - need MUCH longer reminders with repeat capability. This is mentioned MANY times in this forum - is the developer doing anything about it???

3) In DAY VIEW (and actually in WEEK view as well), items having NO TIME show up as small buttons - thats fine and I can activate them to see the whole "event". HOWEVER items that have ANY TIME STAMP (i.e. set for 2pm, etc) show up as a VERY THIN STRIP (even in largest font it cannot be read) and 9 times out of 10 my finger ONLY ACTIVATES the BLANK FIELD for a NEW NOTE - it completely MISSES THE CHOSEN EVENT.
There is MORE ROOM for the event to show up, but it DOES NOT. It stays as a very thin stripe across the screen horizontally at the top edge of the time-slot -- it does NOT even remotely fill up the entire Time Slot Field (i.e. the whole 2pm field) so it never becomes a "pushable button." EXTREMELY ANNOYING!!!

4) In my Palm Software and on my PALM TREO I have always had the ability to set COMPLEX REPEATING / RECURRING DATES, i.e. "Repeat Every Mon / Weds / Friday until 6/20/11" or "Repeat the 3rd Saturday of every month" or "Repeat the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month," etc. I cannot find how to make such Repeating Events on DejaCalendar. It only allows me RECURRENCE of "Daily, Weekly, Monthly by Day or Date, & Yearly by Day or Date" - I NEED TO BE ABLE TO SET MUCH MORE COMPLEX RECURRENCE AS PER MY PALM TREO.

5) the small "HOME" button in the Upper Left of every DejaOffice screen works VERY BADLY - I usually have to poke the screen 9 or 10 times before it senses my touch and takes me back to the Main list of DejaOffice icons.
THIS IS ON A BRAND NEW JUST-OUT-OF-THE-BOX PHONE, and it does NOT occur in other programs!

6) Your SYNC process is a MESS!!! I have to Open CompanionLink SETUP every time, connect my phone, Tell HTC SYNC to NOT sync, and THEN I can ONLY ACTIVATE THE SYNC from the main list of Icons in the main DejaOffice start screen. The Sync Shortcut DOES NOT WORK.

PLEASE ADVISE ON ALL OF THE ABOVE!!!

I fully purchased Companion Link and so far I am seeing issues, like it is not syncing well with the native Android Calendar. I just purchased it a few days ago - what is your MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE if I am not satisfied with it???
 
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1) Android calendar sync did not sync fully, only DejaOffice Calendar synced fully (3000 + events)

To clarify, are you saying that you synced to DejaOffice via CompanionLink, then used DejaOffice to sync to the Android calendar?

2) Deja Calendar REMINDERS are WAY TOO BRIEF!!! - need MUCH longer reminders with repeat capability.

I'm assuming you're referring to the alarms? If so, we've just added an option in our latest beta (1.11.4) for custom alarms, meaning you can set it to 7 minutes or 107 minutes - whatever you like. As for repeating alarms, I'll be sure to pass your request along to our dev team!

3) ...HOWEVER items that have ANY TIME STAMP (i.e. set for 2pm, etc) show up as a VERY THIN STRIP (even in largest font it cannot be read) and 9 times out of 10 my finger ONLY ACTIVATES the BLANK FIELD for a NEW NOTE - it completely MISSES THE CHOSEN EVENT...

I'm not able to replicate what you're describing - is there any way you could attach a screenshot to show me what's going on? (You can PM/email me if you don't want to post it in the forum)

4)...I NEED TO BE ABLE TO SET MUCH MORE COMPLEX RECURRENCE AS PER MY PALM TREO.

Another good idea - I'll make sure the dev team hears it!

5) the small "HOME" button in the Upper Left of every DejaOffice screen works VERY BADLY - I usually have to poke the screen 9 or 10 times before it senses my touch and takes me back to the Main list of DejaOffice icons...

Usually tapping solidly and holding for just a second does the trick. I can ask our devs if there are ways to increase the sensitivity of the button, but we wouldn't want it to be too sensitive either!

6) ...I have to Open CompanionLink SETUP every time, connect my phone, Tell HTC SYNC to NOT sync, and THEN I can ONLY ACTIVATE THE SYNC from the main list of Icons in the main DejaOffice start screen...

This doesn't sound right - I'd suggest contacting our Technical Support team about this here: http://www.companionlink.com/support/contact.html

...what is your MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE if I am not satisfied with it???

You can request a refund within 30 days of purchase by selecting "File" in CompanionLink Setup, then choosing "License Information" - There you'll see a button to request a refund.

Hopefully this helps!


- David Z.
 
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I finally purchased CompanionLink / DejaOffice a few months ago. Everything was working like a charm until Verizon told me to run the "update" for my Droid to fix a problem. Now, it's very slow and more problematic.

1) DejaOffice is very-very slow to run - especial Deja Contacts which is most important for me. When I open DO Contacts from the shortcut on my homepage - it takes 3-4 seconds to load. Opening Contacts from w/in DO it adds another click and still takes 3-4 seconds in all. That's unacceptable.
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2) Prior to this upgrade my Outlook categories were sync'ing with Android groups and they were showing up alphabetically as expected. Now, they are showing up in random order. It's a mess and neither Motorola nor Companionlink has answers.
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3) When opening different apps in DO (sync, contacts ect) it sometimes does not respond or leaves me hanging in a black screen. This is a quite disconcerting.

4) In DO it's adding categories that don't want - such as Holiday and Personal - and the categories were previously shown in different colors to distinguish them, but that's not the case anymore.

This is all very disappointing... I hope there will be some fixes coming soon.

Version Information:
Model: Motorola Droid X
Sync: Outlook 2007
System Version: 4.5.596.MB810.Verizon.en.US
Android Version: 2.3.3
Build Number: 4.5.1_57_DX5-26
 
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@tanguera -

Sorry to hear you're having some troubles. From your comments, it sounds like you've been in touch with our Support Department already - is this the case? If so, please PM me your ticket number (if you have one) so that I can look into what's going on and try to get you some more help resolving these issues!

If I'm reading this wrong and you haven't been in touch with Support yet, let me know and we can go from there. One way or another, I want to ensure we're working to help resolve the issues.


- David Z.
 
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I agree this is a great app in the making.
The contacts database is GREAT as it allows me to add as many notes as I like to a contact and then edit them from WITHIN THE APP. Therefore I can see all the notes as I edit whereas the default Android People function only allows you to see one line at a time.
It would be nice to be able to copy contacts.
It would be even nicer to add custom fields and then RENAME the custom fields so you could have TOM MOBILE, FRED MOBILE, GEORGE MOBILE all within one company contact for example. Nokia allows this but I gather there are sync issues with Google which may mean this is not future proof.
 
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After playing with the trial CompanionLink for a week or so, I've just happily paid the licence fee.

Maybe I'm lucky in that the software has matured sufficiently to be free of major bugs by the time I started to use it.

Anyway, I followed their setup instructions exactly, including purging my phone details for the first sync. Everything transferred flawlessly, and subsequent syncs have worked fine.

I'm use outlook 2010 and desperately needed something to sync tasks (with categories), as I use that function extensively. I tried some other standalone apps, but nothing else seems to work as well or as seamlessly.

I now sync outlook to google from my PC as a cloud backup for calendar and contacts, google to phone as a secondary phone backup and outlook to dajaoffice for my primary phone usage. I do not sync the android calendar and contacts to dajaoffice on the phone and I suspect that this may cause some issues.

There are a number of gui issues that I would like to see improved, but with on-going development and an active forum I'm hopeful of a steady improvement. The company also seems very responsive to user requests, judging by the forum.

There are a lot of negative posts in this thread, which may well have been valid in the earlier versions. However, the current version is working fine for me.
 
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Anyway, I followed their setup instructions exactly, including purging my phone details for the first sync. Everything transferred flawlessly, and subsequent syncs have worked fine.

I'm use outlook 2010 and desperately needed something to sync tasks (with categories), as I use that function extensively. I tried some other standalone apps, but nothing else seems to work as well or as seamlessly.

Agree; IMO following their instructions and recommendations is the key. I had the same needs as you, except that i use Outlook 2007. Companionlink/deja has worked great and their website has lots of useful faqs that took some of the mystery out as well.
 
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I just installed dejaOffice (2.1.9(264)) on my android phone.
I like it. It is very functional.
I was looking for a agenda that take in account birthday data included in contact to create an advise, a task in widget or send an email, but I could not. I would like to know if dejaOffice has the possibility adding a task selecting birthday data in contact or I has to re-enter all the data on tasks?
Thanks in advance.ren
 
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I don't give a rip if it has Google integration, I just want to know that it's backed up and accessible somewhere else in case the Droid goes down. So if it syncs with a desktop (a la Palm), I'm sold.

In case you are still looking: You do know that there is (by the same company) a sync method which can even sync with the ORIGINAL Palm Desktop software via USB to this?
So in fact it is (almost) an exact Palm replacement!
Mostly I am pretty happy with it. (If it wouldn't be for this Software, I would still be using my trusty old Palm :) (Still using it as a GPS and Emergency Phone in my Car :)
 
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