Kolab Sync for Android and Outlook: Developer Preview

We are proud to announce the first developer preview for Kolab sync clients for both Android and Outlook. Both are licensed under the GPLv3. Using this software you will be able synchronize your contacts and calendar to any IMAP folder. Every item is saved in a separate Email using the Kolab Storage Format. This allows for interoperability with other Kolab Clients. Please join us on the Google code projects for the Android and the Outlook connectors. Since there are still quite a few rough edges, this is only a developer preview to publish the already done work. Read on for a more detailed status of the development so far.

Status

  • Sync Infrastructure: although the two projects are written in Java and C#, they share the basic algorithms and principles of operation. This groundwork is also shared between the addressbook and contacts synchronizers of each project. This is already stable. Some edge cases still require a second synchronization run to converge.
  • Addressbook Synchronization: being the easier part of the two, this is mostly finished and working.
  • Calendar Synchronization: Arthur is currently implementing the last piece here: reading and writing of recurrences.
  • Managing Edit Collisions: If two copies of the same item are edited and then synchronized, there is no easy way to automatically manage the merge. On the Android the server item always wins. For the Outlook plugin we plan on implementing a conflict resolution dialog where the user can pick and choose from the conflicting items.
  • Managing Duplicates: When starting to use synchronization tools, users often end up with multiple copies of the same entries (especially in the addressbook) when multiple data sources are added. Currently the only way to work around this problem is to use a third-party duplicate-detector or wipe all but one device clean before synchronizing. A way to handle this could be added similar to a edit conflict resolver.
  • Multiple Calendars, multiple IMAP Folders: planned.
  • Testing: Currently there are only manual test routines.

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