DejaOffice for Android - Overview, Vision - sticky, updated

[DJOCTO]

Welcome Everyone to our Forum!

We've been developing DejaOffice for six years now. Our nemesis has finally appeared, in the form of the Outlook App for Android.

We see a lot of space between the two products. Our DejaOffice is more "Outlook-Like". For instance, we have a week view, and calendar colors; Outlook App for Android does not.

For non-Outlook features; we support Mapping and Templates, which are not found in the Outlook App. We also have Android Desktop Widgets.

I think we can continue to stay ahead of Microsoft for business people who want a full featured app on the phone.

We remain an internally funded company. Our funding comes from selling PC Sync products. So every sale helps in a small way to fund our development. Every low star rating halts our funding and makes it more difficult for us to get the sales which pays for the developers.

We truly appreciate all the support here on the forum, and all the suggestions. Our goal is to stay in development mode to make the most powerful mobile business CRM on Android App Store.

For 2016 we plan a Material Design reboot. New icons, some adjustments to fonts and colors. Hopefully this will make the calendar, and the app as a whole more beautiful and less geeky. We will be adding group scheduling capabilities so you can see co-workers calendars (supported through DejaCloud). We will be pushing widgets. My dream is to have the whole app running as a widget on the Android desktop. What could be better than to have everything available all the time. This is not possible, because widgets run in low memory, but we'll try to get as much as we can to live on the desktop.

That's all for now. Thanks for your support.

Wayland Bruns, CTO
CompanionLink Software, Inc.

[dtmfcc]

I am so excited to see this Forum, and this product. And I don't even have a Droid phone yet!

I am a long-term Palm user, with Goldmine (a contact manager) on my XP computers. I've used Goldmine for many many years. But it is no longer supported for single users. So rather than wait for a computer meltdown, a new computer with Windows 7, and no more Goldmine, I am switching to Act. That's step one.

Next step is upgrade encryption on my computer, to better comply with HIPAA regulations.

Once my brain adapts to all this, then I want a smartphone, and it will most likely be a Droid. Can't be synching my phone through Google, so hearing that CompanionLink has a USB direct sync is wonderful! Looking forward to seeing how your calendar application works. Will post on the wishlist forum -- looks like most everything is there already!

[wildwestmt]

I am excited to find out about this. I use ACT and have used Companion Link before with my Blackberry. I changed to a Droid and have been frustrated trying to sync with Gmail contacts as I can't get the physical addresses to sync. I am waiting for my first sync to complete as I have over 2,000 contacts it is taking a while to purge and replace.

[DJOCTO]

I'm very excited about making DejaOffice do basic CRM Functions like ACT!

Keep us posted how it goes.

Be sure to turn OFF your Google Contacts auto-sync, because the new data from USB is going to want to get up to Google, which sucks a lot of power and can lead to Dupes and other issues.

[JoeM]

Be sure to turn OFF your Google Contacts auto-sync, because the new data from USB is going to want to get up to Google, which sucks a lot of power and can lead to Dupes and other issues.

I have set DejaOffice to not sync to the Android apps. I thought that this would form a complete break. One of your other posts (maybe someone else at CL) seems to say that these settings only have an impact if there are more than 1500 contacts in DejaOffice.

1) Is there a way to keep the DejaOffice contact/calendar data and the native Android data totally independent from each other?

2) Is there a way to have the DejaOffice information passed to the native apps, but not the other way around? I am worried about Android's "Intelligent" Merge. I realize that this would require disabling the link between the native apps and Google contacts.

Thanks,

JoeM

[Jason]

JoeM-
The 1500 contacts limit syncing to the native apps is not longer an issue. We figured out a way around it.

re 1) When you disable the native apps sync, which it sounds like you do, it keeps DejaOffice and the native apps completely separate.

re 2) Currently the sync between DejaOffice and the native apps is a two way sync. We'll look into adding a sync direction feature. As for the "Intelligent Merge" - the native apps try and merge the same or similar contacts but it only merges them on the surface. When DejaOffice reads a "merged" contact, we read them as 2 independent records. FYI, when DejaOffice syncs to the native apps it sets a flag in native to not merge - which works 99% of the time.

[palmuser]

Palm Desktop reincarnated by DJO?

I've been so disappointed that Palm gave up on the Desktop which has never been adequately replaced. Now there is renewed hope, although you have very large shoes to fill and I admire your courage to go after it. Perhaps you can help guide me to make the big step to implement my dream plan:
- Carry the corporate Blackberry for Outlook business email as required and leave my personal stuff in the Palm Desktop 4 which still works flawlessly.
- Buy an Android phone (though my choice may not have Froyo yet). Any issues with AT&T and they way they muck with native phones? Any phones have a lot of issues with DJO or CL?
- License CL for Palm Desktop USB sync to DejaOffice on phone
- Do 2-way sync to the phone and on each of my 2 computers (Will this work?)
- Do you ALSO have to sync to native android contacts in order to call the number from the phone?
- Leave some of the old history on the desktop (11 years of calendar) - how much is practical to carry around?
- Number of contacts is no longer limited?
- What's a good practical amount of physical memory needed by the phone to do all of DJO? Does it change with Froyo? Can SD cards be used to expand DejaOffice data?
If the DJO Team could answer my questions, I can move out of analysis paralysis!!!
Thanks!

Welcome Everyone to our Forum!

DejaOffice was conceived in November 2009. After two years of the G1 phone, suddenly a flock of phones came out in October and November 2009 showing us clearly where Android was going. We realized that "social networking" is the focus, and business users were making do with non-business devices.

We decided it was time to address the needs people shared with us. We all know that Microsoft Office 2010 with Business Contact Manager is coming out. We know what old Palm, Pocket PC and BlackBerry's did. So we conceived of making an app suite that can handle everything the past organizers did. We've been hard at work for three months to create this, and still have another month to go to finish the initial phase.

Once we have all the capability of past devices, we are going to push into new capabilities of the Android platform. This includes advanced mapping, voice commands, text-to-voice functions, demon dialing, push notifications and using the power of the phone to enhance in-office and out-of-office functionality.

We recognize that Android is one of two leading phone platforms. So what we do for Android will also be available in DejaOffice on iPhone. This gives you flexibility to switch if you have to replace your phone in the future. We recognize that Android is a global platform, so our products are being localized rapidly into a number of prominent languages for local use. We recognize there are many options for synchronizing data, and we will be adding a comprehensive category management system to handle different methods; USB, Wi-Fi, Wireless, Touchdown, EAS, Google and more.

Feedback is welcome. I'll be updating this post frequently. Posted as sticky. Last update May 2, 2010.

Wayland Bruns, CTO
CompanionLink Software, Inc.

[DJOCTO]

Much Confusion surrounds the name Palm. The Palm Computing that you are referring to, was spun out of 3Com around 2003. It was combined with HandSpring as "Palm, Inc.", but then unspun two years later as "PalmSource" for software assets (Palm OS and Desktop) with the Palm Treo hardware company being called "PalmOne".

PalmSource, the owner of Palm Desktop, was purchased by ACCESS, a Japanese Company, around 2006. ACCESS still exists. It's just that their effect on the US market (and any other market) appears to be minimal.

In the mean time PalmOne renamed themselves "Palm", took on the Stock symbol, and pretended they had 14 years of history. The jig was up when early in 2010 they sold themselves cheaply to HP to avoid an unattractive buyout by Taiwan HTC or Chinese Lenovo for patent assets.

So it's not really that "Palm abandon Palm Desktop". Indeed, ACCESS still owns it. It's that the company called "Palm" has been a sham for half a decade. Most people just have lost track.

CompanionLink is combining forces with Pimlical now. We will support Palm Desktop for many years to come. We are confident that we can supply Sync and Compatibility with Palm Desktop and Pimlical data for decades in the future, to all the new phones and new technologies that await us.

And yes, some gracious people have shared their "10 years of data" and it is part of our regular QA process now.

[tbessie]

Combining forces with Pimlical, really? Well, that's good news! Although, of course, having been a long time user of software from That Other Company (Iambic), I'm biased away from Pimlico - years ago, there was DateBk(3,4,5,6) and Agendus (or whatever it was called before, I forget now :-) ), and I had to choose between them, and ending up choosing Iambic Agendus.

But I know both are excellent Palm apps, so I'll be curious to see how this work with Pimlico changes DejaOffice.

- Tim

[TommyM]

I discovered this thread as a new Android owner who is still carrying around his old trusty Treo 650 as a PIM. I do this mainly because of Datebk 6/Pimlical combo. This combo is by far the most powerful PIM I have found which is due largely because of their"floating" events feature. Will CompanionLink and DejaOffice be able to handle floating events? If so, what is the timeframe for implementation?

[nbrice]

We decided it was time to address the needs people shared with us. We all know that Microsoft Office 2010 with Business Contact Manager is coming out. We know what old Palm, Pocket PC and BlackBerry's did. So we conceived of making an app suite that can handle everything the past organizers did. We've been hard at work for three months to create this, and still have another month to go to finish the initial phase.

I started a thread that looks like i should have posted here. With my Palm Treo, when I include a contact in a calendar it inserts the contact names and phone number. DJO doesnt have that feature, it only inserts contact name. Are there plans to include this function in DJO?

Neil

[runbikeswimfly]

how to make Deja Office run faster???

Question: I really like the Deja Office software I've installed on my Droid X with one exception: it's incredibly slow to open the app on the Droid and also to switch between different parts of the app (like from Calendar to Contacts for example). I mean really, really slow. I don't think it's a general RAM problem with my phone because I don't have this problem with any other apps. It's bad enough that I'm considering finding another app to replace it. The indigenous Google contact and calendar apps, while not as functional or easy to use as Deja Office, are MUCH MUCH MUCH faster. Help! Any ideas? Thanks.

[C430]

Same question here...I really like the program (even with all it's bugs) but it's SLOOOOOW! Any plans for a fix?

[DJOCTO]

I see several field reports of slow performance. It's not something we are seeing inhouse. My reports so far involve only Droid X units. It's likely some process is "catching" and causing this. We would like to get a sample of a "slow database" so we can fix it.

If you are running slow, and can help us, please email us your data to support@dejaoffice.com To do this select Settings, General Settings, and simply hit the "Send Log" button. No log is needed. This option will email the database. Please put a note in saying "Slow database" and also your exact phone model and Android OS version. Thanks!

[runbikeswimfly]

DJOCTO:

Thanks very much for responding. It's good to hear that someone is interested in improving the product. But if I understand what you are asking me to do, I would be sending you my entire database: contacts, calendar, to do list, and notes. Please don't take it personally, but there's stuff in there that I can't send to anyone, which is one of the primary reasons I'm using your product instead of storing it in the cloud on Google. Is there any other way I can help? For example, is there a way for me to give you the approximate size of the database (it's big, by the way, like over 10 years worth of Palm stuff) and would that help?

I see several field reports of slow performance. It's not something we are seeing inhouse. My reports so far involve only Droid X units. It's likely some process is "catching" and causing this. We would like to get a sample of a "slow database" so we can fix it.

If you are running slow, and can help us, please email us your data to support@dejaoffice.com To do this select Settings, General Settings, and simply hit the "Send Log" button. No log is needed. This option will email the database. Please put a note in saying "Slow database" and also your exact phone model and Android OS version. Thanks!