Hello fellow BB addicts!
Recently we had a new developer release an alpha version of OTA sync (calendar, contacts, memos, and tasks) for us BIS folks. I had purchased a monthly subscription for the software and server.
Here is my review, and I am in no way paid, or facilitated with ThinkPost in anyway shape or form.
At first I went to the website (
ThinkPost Communications - Home ) and read about the product. The website is lay out in a very excellent manner, easy on the eyes, easy to find info, and most important for me at least, easy to find contact information for support or questions on the product.
So I then decided to give it a try, I thought to myself, what’s there to lose besides a couple minutes of my time. So I signed myself up, but during the process I hit a wall... it was due to my error
.. Anyways, I contacted support via email. Within minutes of sending the email to support I received a phone call from Vincent (CEO and president) who was very professional and pleasant to talk to. We cleared up my error and he sent me a link within another few minutes to fix my mistake. Once I fixed it, the next page brought me to another page that I was suppose to enter in some more info (username, password ect ect) but for some reason it only showed a text page. So I decided to leave it for a while as I had something to do. Again after about 5 mins I got another phone call, again from Vincent to see if they sign up process went according to plan. I explained to him that the page that came up was a text only and didn’t allow me to enter any information. He promptly apologized for the error and said he will have someone look into it right away. He then collected my information to finish the sign up process. I was up and running within another 3 mins!
Next I received an email with all the information needed for me to download the app to the BB and to outlook. I then downloaded what I needed and installed everything flawlessly onto both my PC and onto the BB (was given the option of OTA or desktop loader, I chose the desktop method). Everything installed quickly and perfectly.
Now for the most important part, the app and the UI:
The outlook add-in is simple. It adds a new menu in the menu bar for easy access and runs in the background. You open the program and it’s very straight forward. You first have to go into options and enter in your user name and password, and that’s it! No needing to configure connection settings or proxy settings, nothing! Once you enter in your user name you can then choose to change the settings on the sync procedures, either one way, from outlook to the server or vice versa, or sync both way. Once that’s all set up, you go back to the main screen and simply click the big main button, sync all. And BOOM it then kicks into action. Took about 5 mins to send all my contacts and calendar items to the server, (approx 800 items combined). In my opinion that’s fast!
So I then go ahead and log into the server to see how accurate the process was. And BOOM there it all is... on the server and viewing as if I was in outlook. Excellent I was starting to think.
Now the good part... the BB app:
Once installed you the app on the BB you have a nice green icon on your home screen. you simply just click in your trackball and there you go the app is instantly open... from there you just hit your menu key and his configure and you again simply put in your user name and password, the rest is done for you... again you can choose to configure the settings for the sync procedures...
The moment of truth... I added a contact (fake) and a calendar event (fake) to the BB then opened the app and hit sync all. Away it went... took about 1 min, and sync was done... I open the page for the server, and voila, both items I added at there on the server.... so I open outlook, hit sync all, after about 30 secs BOOM! Both items showed up! I was really happy about that!
Next I tested to see how it worked from outlook back to the BB. So I delete said items, hit sync all. Next I went to check the server, both items were gone. So I grabbed the BB and hit sync all, and boom both were gone on my BB.... what else can I say besides it’s finally nice to have a way to sync all my PIM info without having to need a BES!
In conclusion I would like to say, awesome product, great application... and foremost I would like to say thanks to Vincent for the jaw dropping customer service! There were a few technical difficulties I ran into over the course of the day but that was on my fault. Vincent promptly returned my emails and phone calls within minutes to help figure out the issue, and reported it to the engineers on his team. Regardless of the problems (which was my fault as I was running an expired version of office 2007, which prevented me from syncing) everything works flawlessly... Again the customer service was extraordinary! Keep up the good work guys! And thank you for the great product!!
Review: ThinkPost OTA sync -
03-25-2008, 10:30 PM
