droidStory

It took more than a little effort, but I finally got the Motorola Droid to work with Lotus Traveler in order to access my corporate Lotus Notes/Domino email.  It required the use of an application named Touchdown and the careful adjustment of settings.

First, some background.  IBM Lotus released Lotus Traveler for mobile email use.  The product now supports Microsoft ActiveSync and, as announced, works with Windows Mobile devices, the Apple iPhone and a Nokia Symbian device.  That leaves many Android users out in the cold — especially those who migrated to the Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid.  (Ed Brill wrote in his blog that Android support for Traveler is coming.)

The Droid has a built-in free email application that works with ActiveSync.  So, with hope, I attempted to set things up.

• I learned the hard way that you must not confuse the Domino Domain with a Windows Domain and set-up your user name in the following manner for Domino to see you:

First_Name  Last_Name/Domino Domain

• Use your Notes password
• Leave the (Windows) domain field blank
• Use your traveler URL for the server URL.

Everything logs in and authenticates just fine.  But, the Droid built-in mail insists that it knows better and adds a backslash character in front of your name to signify no domain.  It shows up as:

\First_Name  Last_Name/Domino Domain

Clearly, this does not work.  I tried to create an alias this way.  But, no luck.

Now, on to 3rd party applications.

My second choice was RoadSync from DataViz, the folks that make DesktopToGo.  I already use DesktopToGo, so I have some trust for them.  The application also looks well integrated with the Droid.  It also states in the documentation that it supports HTML mail, attachments and appointments.  All of these are important.

Unfortunately, I kept getting a 404 error.  The documentation for RoadSync does have some limited suggestions, which did not work.  DataViz phone support is also available only from 9AM to 3PM.  So, I missed the window to call.

Courtesy of AppNoodle

Finally, I moved to Touchdown from NitroDesk.  I must give credit to Goutham Sukumar, the founder of NitroDesk.  He provided significant personal support.  We had several false starts and setting adjustments.  But, he worked with us every day — several times a day — to get things right.  Now, the product appears to be working well.

Touchdown does quickly sync and show the messages, appointments, tasks and contacts.  So, it is useful.   However, it does not work with HTML messages nor with appointments.  These are severe limitations that create concern every time I use the application.  It is much better than nothing.

The interface does not look like the rest of the Droid.  Note the Windows style icons and page formatting.  The new mail icon in the status bar is also very large — which creates problems for other icons looking for a place to live.

Frankly, I will consider a switch when one of the other solutions works properly.  In the meantime, I am jumping up and down with glee over Touchdown support.

I am thrilled to report that the Motorola Droid phone now works with IBM Lotus Domino via ActiveSync and Traveler, with a little help from Touchdown from NitroDesk.