Review: GooSync. Look…Up In The Clouds….It’s Your Tasks…It’s Your Calendar…It’s GooSync

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Not long ago, I decided to see if I could stop using Microsoft Outlook.  This was not a knock on Outlook, which I think is a fantastic program.  I just wanted a solution which would give me more flexibility in syncing my device.  I don’t always get to connect my Mogul to my computer on a daily basis, and I found this was causing some problems with my appointments and tasks not always being synced when I needed them to be.  So, I started searching my new favorite place, The Cloud.  I tested a number of different options for syncing my PIM data.  I can tell you that syncing your Google calendar is an easy and popular option.  But what about the rest of your PIM data?  I don’t just want my appointments.  I want appointments, tasks, contacts, the whole thing.  For that, I found it was GooSync to the rescue.  A bit on the pricey side, but a true complete PIM package.  So, could I use GooSync exclusively and sync my Windows Mobile device (it is only available for Windows Mobile touchscreen devices) with The Cloud?  Well, let’s take a closer look.

Setup: To get started with GooSync, you will first want to create an account.  Just head over to the GooSync home page and sign up with your email address and password.  You can give it the information for your Google account now, or at any time once your account has been created.

Now, just tell the program what device you will be syncing and download the mobile portion of the program to your device.   I found the download page was a little bit hidden.  So, to make it easier for you, I will give you the link.  Just head over here to download the applet to your Windows Mobile device (PPC 2002 and higher).  Unfortunately, it will not work with any other devices.  One other thing that can be a bit tricky is changing devices.  Even if you download the program and load it on multiple devices, you can only sync with the device which you selected.  In order to swap to a new device, you must delete the one saved in your settings and select a new one.  This was a bit cumbersome, especially if you frequently swap devices.  It would have been nice if there was an easier way to do this.  Nonetheless, I was impressed by how easy it was set the whole thing up and get going.

Account Types: GooSync comes in two flavors.  For those of you who just need a little extra to get you where you need to be, the free option might be just what you need.  The free option offers the ability to sync a single Google calendar for up to 30 days in advance.  This is a bidirectional sync, which means that it will sync both from the calendar to your device, and from one of the hundreds of supported devices back to your calendar.  So, a change in either will appear on both.  The limitation of the free account, of course, is that you can only sync a single calendar.  No contacts.  No tasks.

If you are a more advanced user…or someone like me who is trying to kick that Outlook addiction, you will want to check out the Premium version.   The premium version allows you to sync appointments up to 365 days in advance, from multiple Google calendars.  It also allows you to sync contacts (from either the built in contacts interface, or from your Google contacts list in Gmail,) and tasks.  All of this can be done manually or, in the premium version, you can use the autosync function.  Of course, the biggest difference between the two versions is the price.  The premium versions costs 20 British pounds per year (which is just shy of $40 here in the United States).

Calendar: The main purpose for GooSync is getting your Google calendars onto your mobile device.  If you only use one calendar, and don’t share with anyone else, then the free version is going to probably work great for you.  But that is just not me.

I have a total of 15 different calendars, including one for each member of the MTS team, my JAMM calendar, Gear Diary calendar, personal calendar, work calendar, and more.  So, the free version was just not going to be close to enough for me.

To add calendars, just go into your Google calendars and hit Add calendar.  From there, you can add any calendars to which you have been granted access…not to mention a whole host of public Google calendars.

To configure your calendars, just head into the calendar options.  From here, every calendar which is connected to your primary Google calendar should appear (if they do not, just hit refresh).  From here, you can select which of you calendars will sync to your device (I tend to sync all of them) and what time frames will sync.  I tend to go seven days into the past and 90 into the future.  But you might want something more than that.

One of the critical components for me was the ability to sync all of my calendars to my device simultaneously.  GooSync did this extremely well.  Although I do wish there had been more configurable.  For example, there were some  calendars which did not require a daily sync, while others I did not need to see 90 days ahead.  So, I would have liked more control over the individual sync options for each calendar.

Tasks: What really sets GooSync apart from many other similar programs are the extra items — tasks and contacts.  Of course, right about now, you are probably thinking how the heck do I get tasks from Google.  Yeah.  That is a problem. In fact there is a real dearth of good task managers out there in The Cloud.  For the most part, there is Toodledo and Remember The Milk.  And that’s about it.

So, if there are no real task resources out there, how does GooSync connect to your tasks?  Without tasks, GooSync would really offer an incomplete package.  And they realized this fact.  In order to accommodate this need, GooSync has come up with their own unique task manager which can sync to your device using the GooSync interface.

I found the GooSync tasks interface to be a bit sparse and slow.  It accomplished what needed to be done, but not much more.

To add a task, just tap the add button and you will be taken to a new screen where you can input all of the information for your task.   I was disappointed to find no advanced features, such as recurring task scheduling or batch task entry.  As such, you must add each task one at a time.  Meaning multiple screen shifts.  This makes adding tasks a bit cumbersome.  As a result, I found that I spent a lot more time waiting for screens to load than actually entering data.

While I found that the task manager worked well and was perfectly functional, I would have preferred something a bit more than simply functional.  Hopefully, in the future, GooSync can continue to add features, or even team up with a site like Toodledo or remember the milk to use them as the online interface and sync to your mobile device from there.

Contacts: The final piece of the PIM puzzle are contacts.  Here, you have two options.  You can sync with the internal GooSync contacts, or with your Google contacts in GMail.  Each has some advantaged and disadvantages.

At first blush, syncing with your Gmail Contacts seems ideal.  After all, this is probably your main contact list, so there is no need to reenter a lot of information.  Unfortunately, this is not the perfect solution it could be, as there are some significant limitations associated with this method.  According to the GooSync website:

Google Limitations
One major limitation of Google Contacts is that it will not allow multiple contacts to share the same email address.
If a contact already exists in Google, and a separate contact is sent by the device that uses the same email address, this contact will not be added into Google. This can result in the sync process failing to add several contacts into your Google account.

This problem can also appear if no contacts exist in Google. If the device sends multiple contacts during the sync process, and they all share the same email address, Google will only add the first contact it is provided. All other contacts that share the email address will be rejected.
There are also several contact fields that are not supported by Google that may appear on your device.
Some examples of these are the Birthday, Anniversary, URL, Prefix and Suffix fields.

These fields may appear on your device but are not supported by Google so will not be stored anywhere in your Google account.
Google Contacts only provides a single “Address” field (there are no individual fields for street, city etc). This means that the address information, when sent to the device, will only appear in the “Street” section of the devices contact.

The device contact information will be sent to Google as individual fields, and GooSync will merge this into a single address for use within Google. If this contact is then modified in Google the address will be changed on the device to only appear in the “Street” field.
Contact categories (or Groups in Google) are not supported in the sync process. All Google contacts will appear on the device without a category, or in an “Unfiled” category. All device contacts will be sent to Google without any Group information.

GooSync Limitations
Due to a restriction in the vCard specification GooSync is unable to synchronise the “type” associated with email addresses (Home, Work etc).

This means that all email addresses, regardless of whether they are set as Home or Work etc, will be synchronised to the device or Google without a type (these may show as “Other” on your device).
GooSync will also only synchronise one of each phone number type (Home, Work, Fax etc) between your device and Google.
The majority of devices support only a limited number of phone numbers (maximum of two home numbers for example). To prevent confusion over why certain numbers may not be synchronised to the device, or to Google, GooSync imposes a restriction of only allowing one of each phone type to be synchronised (one Home number, one Mobile number etc).

Only the first number of each type provided by Google or the device will be synchronised to the opposite platform. All other numbers of that type will be ignored by the sync process.

Device Limitations

Certain devices have their own limitations with regards to the synchronisation of contacts.

You may find that your device provides you with several contact fields, but the sync application on your device may not send this data during the sync process.

This also applies when sending contacts from Google. Certain contact fields may be sent to the device but the sync application may not accept them.

Hopefully, these limitations will continue to be worked out both by GooSync and by Google, making a more perfect program.  More troubling, however, was the constant hanging error I got when syncing with Google contacts.   Too often, the contacts would not sync for days at a time because in of this hang.  As a result, I tended to stick with GooSync contacts.

Adding contacts in the GooSync interface is extremely easy and fully customizable, which I loved.  Every field has a pull down menu.  Just select the item you wish to add and the appropriate entry line will appear.  Don’t see what you want?  GooSync even offers a custom field option.

Although the main interface was just as sparse as the tasks, the GooSync contacts did offer some nice customization options.  Additionally, unlike tasks, there is the option of syncing with GMail if you choose to do so.  I found both options worked fine, and I was very happy to have all of my contacts easily accessible (aside from some hanging during sync on the GMail contacts.)

Mobile Interface and Syncing: Of course, all of this is pretty useless if you cannot get the data onto your device.  I mean, that is the whole point, right?  And really, I thought GooSync did a great job with the sync module (like I said earlier, you can download it from the GooSync site.)

The main interface will show you what is being synced (just check/uncheck the boxes), and the date and time of the last successful sync.  If there were any errors or problems with the sync, that will be noted here as well, with more details in the online log…

..or on your device.

There are two ways to start a sync.  You can manually sync at any time by simply pushing the start button.  In the premium version, you can also set up an autosync, which will connect and sync automatically on a predetermined schedule.  Just head to the autosync tab under settings to change the schedule.

Personally, I like to sync every two hours, so that I know things are always kept up to date and current.

You can also tap the Organizer tab to change what information is being synced.  I typically leave this on a bi-directional sync, meaning it will pick up changes on either end.  But there are some situations where I only want to sync changes from one end or the other.  Thus, you can change these settings to update only from the sever to the device, or vise versa.

Finally, GooSync is completely updatable over the air. This is a great feature, which saves considerable time, and ensures that you always have the most up-to-date features.  Just tap check for updates and GooSync will leat you know if a later version is available.  Here, I can see that there is a new version 3.0.2.20 available.  Just tap download now to install it,or head over to GooSync’s website (from your device) to read what changes have been made.

About the only thing I might have changed here would be the addition of a small Today Screen Plugin.  If I want to check the sync status or do a manual sync, it can be a bit cumbersome to find and load the program.  Not difficult.  More like the annoyance of doing in three steps what should have taken one.  So, it would be nice to have that information on the today screen, an be able to sync directly from there.

The best part about GooSync, however, is the fact that it does not store your data in it sown proprietary interface on your device.  many similar programs will sync easily enough with your device, but then require you to use the mobile version of their program to view that information.  This is problematic because it blocks numerous other programs on my device from accessing that information.  GooSync, on the other hand, syncs all of the data directly to the PIM storage location on your device.  This means that whatever programs are on your device which access PIM data (be it the built-in calendar, a PIM manager like Extreme Agenda or Pocket Informant, or even a broader program like Spb Mobile Shell) will be able to utilize this information in the same manner as though you had synced through Outlook.

Conclusion: When I set out to see if I could completely replace Outlook with Cloud applications, I quickly became frustrated.  Many of them would sync your Google calendar.  But syncing tasks and contacts was quite another story, and extremely difficult to find.  I probably surfed by GooSync a time or two before finally taking the plunge and giving it a thorough test.  And I am glad I did.  This is the complete package.  Keep everything online, and sync it straight to your device, no proprietary interface needed.  What could be better than that?

What I Liked:

• All in one package syncs calendars, tasks, and contacts
• Sync with GooSync contacts or GMail contacts
• No proprietary interface on your device.  Sync goes straight to your PIM data
• Easy to setup and use

What Needs Improvement:

• Tasks and Contacts interface are very sparse and could use additional customization and features
• Sync with Gmail contacts had some problems
• Could use a today screen plugin
• Contacts and tasks are not supportable or filterable

Where To Buy: GooSync

Price: Free version: free

Premium version: approximately $40/year

Related posts

• Windows Live Now Available As Download (0)
• Vito Releases Task2Gather Web Application. Windows Mobile and iPhone Apps to Follow Soon (5)
• Sweeter Syncs With SugarSync (9)
• Review: Developer One, Agenda One v2 (0)
• GooSync Introduces The “One Time Fee.” (0)