PC Suite Synchronization API/SDK?

[ashyu]

Is there any API or SDK available for adding applications to the PC Suite Synchronization application? For example, to add support for other applications beyond Outlook, Windows Address Book and Lotus Notes in the synchronization application on the desktop PC side of things?

I see that there is the PC Suite Connectivity API, but this appears to be geared towards developing stand-alone applications to access phone information. This would be fine if I wanted to write an entire sync application from scratch, but I was hoping that there might be a way to leverage the existing Nokia Synchronization desktop application?

[mayankkedia]

Welcome to the DoBo :-)

Given Nokia keen aversion of allowing 3rd party developers to touch/modify any of their existing applications I would doubt that there would be anything to allow you to add functionalities to the existing application.

[ltomuta]

I would look at the problem from the opposite angle: does your application provide any standard APIs that PC Suite can use to sync the data between the phone and your app? And is your application significant enough (market share) in order to justify the effort of implementing the needed extension?

It could be that indeed PC Suite is missing an opportunity here and they should be helped to see the light.

[ashyu]

I would look at the problem from the opposite angle: does your application provide any standard APIs that PC Suite can use to sync the data between the phone and your app? And is your application significant enough (market share) in order to justify the effort of implementing the needed extension?

Ok, I hope that I'm not seen as a problem for Nokia, but I guess just to explain a bit: I am a long time user of Mozilla Thunderbird, and its Lightning extension (equivalent to Mozilla Sunbird). I am in no way associated with Mozilla or Nokia, and am just a humble user of their products. However, to my knowledge, there is currently no direct and offline method of synchronizing a Nokia S60 phone's PIM information with Mozilla Thunderbird+Lightning/Sunbird. With Thunderbird being in the open source community, I thought that if I could some how implement it, that people would benefit and/or appreciate a way to sync their Nokia phones with their calendar on Thunderbird/Sunbird (without using OTA services, such as ScheduleWorld, which is a great service, by the way).

What I was thinking, was that since I see that when you setup PC Suite to synchronize, you are given a choice of selecting an application to sync to (Outlook, Lotus Notes, etc). I was kind of hoping that Nokia had an SDK for me to just write an interface between Thunderbird and PC Suite. Ie, to drop something in such that I could have "Thunderbird/Sunbird" appear in that list, with which you would just select and continue using your PC Suite and Thunderbird/Sunbird as per normal.

I think that Mozilla definitely has the market share that would warrant support for it. But of course, I wouldn't say that I alone have enough "market share" that it would justify Nokia opening things up to me. After all, I'm just a user in the open source world, who would like to take advantage of the fact that Mozilla would provide the means for me to interface with their PIM data.

I remember back when I was using a PalmOS device, it seems that Palm had opened up their Hotsync applications to developers, such that they could write their own conduits, providing users the ability to sync to more than just the default list of applications (for example, a company called Agilix utilized this to have their student software, GoBinder, be able to sync with Palm devices).

If Nokia doesn't have anything like this, then I guess I'll have to live with that, since I know I wouldn't carry any weight in Nokia's decisions about what SDK/APIs they provide to developers.

I'm not really looking to add functionality, per se. I think it's possible to accomplish syncing between Thunderbird/Sunbird and S60 devices through Nokia's PC Suite Connectivity API. But it just means that it'd end up being an entirely separate application from PC Suite.

I was just curious to know if I was overlooking any SDK/APIs that Nokia may have had?

[ltomuta]

As far as I know there are no APIs available for extending PC Suite but I will try to forward your request to the PC Suite team and see what they think about it.

[ltomuta]

The PC Suite sync confirms me that no API is available to allow 3rd party applications to be added to PC Suite's sync and that Thunderbird support is considered but it is not on the imediate roadmap.