Lotus does a great job by supporting the modern world of increasingly mobile business users. By providing Lotus Traveler, which supports over-the-air synchronization of business critical Notes features including email, calendar, contacts, journal, and To Do for Lotus Domino 8 and later (8.5 required for iPhone), Lotus is becoming a leader in the mobile messaging and calendaring space.

However, there are still quite a number of users who are using earlier releases of Lotus, such as 6.5, 7.x, or even 8.0. Moreover, not everyone can take advantage of server-side solutions, as they require centralized deployment by corporate IT staff, which is not always possible.

At the same time, Google services — both personal, such as Google Mail, Calendar, and Docs as well as business-driven Google Apps — are gaining a tremendously increasing number of fans (I mean fans, not just users, as I personally love their applications, and I’m sure I’m not alone).

AweSync was created as a personal tool for those who wish to sync their calendar and contacts between Lotus Notes and Google. The solution works seamlessly, even with older Notes versions starting from R6.5, and it doesn’t require deployment of server-side solutions, so it’s ideal as both a personal tool and a business solution.

AweSync offers:

• One- or two-way synchronization, either manual or periodic automatic
• Comprehensive conflict handling — newer wins or defined data source overwrite
• Synchronization of selected multiple Google calendars
• Support of recurring events, including events with certain rescheduled or cancelled instances
• Selective data synchronization and data management options to ensure proper notifications handling, privacy, and access to synchronized events
• Free-of-charge product updates and support

The benefit of AweSync isn’t one-sided either. While syncing a Lotus Notes calendar to a Google calendar is obviously beneficial, the reverse is true too. Google offers so many neat features, such as shared calendars, and specialized calendars like holidays, contacts’ birthdays, etc. that having these features synced with your Notes calendar can be critically advantageous.

Moreover, AweSync’s ability to sync with Google may be extended to mobile devices supported by Google either natively, such as Android, or via Google Sync, like the iPhone.

To start synchronizing between Notes and Google, all you need is to download and install AweSync (the latest version is always available here, and get it running by passing a simple configuration wizard.

You need to select Google Calendars, which you want to be synchronized with Lotus Notes, and the default Google Calendar, i.e. the one to which events from Lotus Notes will be synchronized by default. In my example, I’ve created a separate calendar in Google to receive events from Notes for convenience, as each calendar’s settings and visibility can be managed separately in Google.

Another important part of setup is how to process contacts on the first sync. With the "Merge Lotus Notes and Google contacts" option, AweSync will consolidate contacts from both data sources. So, if you have the same contacts on both sides, you will need to clean up duplicates manually. The "Remove and overwrite" options will delete all contacts on one end, and replace them with contacts from the other (for example, remove contacts from Google, and replace them with contacts from Lotus).

The whole process usually takes less than 5 minutes, and then you’re ready to go further with your mobile device setup.

Further processes for Android phones are extremely simple, as they’re already tied to Google account on activation, and if automatic synchronization of calendars and contacts is enabled on the device, all you have to do is select those Google calendars to be shown on your phone.

For the iPhone, you would need to follow step-by-step instructions provided for Google Sync, which basically instruct you to create an Exchange account connected to the server m.google.com with your Google credentials. Please follow those accurately to ensure security of your phone data. To enable synchronization of multiple calendars with your iPhone, you will need to follow this article: — as only the primary Google calendar will be synchronized by default.

So, now the whole process from Lotus Notes through Google and to your mobile device is set up for both calendars

and contacts.

You can review information on advanced AweSync settings by reading the “How It Works” section of the AweSync Web site. Examples of advanced settings include enabling auto-run as minimized on Windows startup and auto-sync every few minutes for a set-it-and-forget-it concept. You can also select certain fields for synchronization and define privacy settings for events.