It’s Complicated

Joe’s blog about technology, life, and more.

I called Goodlink support yesterday to ask about a pesky issue that I’ve noticed for a while relating to ActiveSync not synching the contacts once you’ve installed the GMM client app on the phone.  Basically I have Goodlink installed for my work e-mail, and I use ActiveSync for my personal e-mail which is hosted on my own Exchange server.  I don’t know at what point the contacts stopped synching, perhaps it was a change in the GMM app, or perhaps it is something with WM6.1, I am not really sure. 

Anyway, I called support to ask about this and the rep I spoke to said they had never been asked this before.  I find this hard to believe, I can’t possibly be the only person using a device with Goodlink and also using ActiveSync for other e-mail.  So the rep tells me that the way I am using my phone is an unsupported configuration.  Basically once you install Goodlink you are not able to officially use ActiveSync to connect to other mail accounts.  The Goodlink app takes over the phone and causes issues like this.  I submitted this configuration as a feature request, however I doubt they will allow it. 

I don’t understand why this would not be a supported configuration since the GMM app is a separete suite of applications and has not in the past interferred with the Pocket Office apps, namely Pocket Outlook (mail or contacts).  I should point out that initially ActiveSync will sync the contacts folder to Pocket Contacts, but after the initial sync, Goodlink takes over and you can no longer sync the contacts.  I also noticed that the latest versions of the GMM client app seems to initially sync your contacts to the pocket contacts app, however there are no options for this and no indication that it is supposed to do this. 

So for now, if I make a change to any of my personal contacts, I have to delete my ActiveSync profile, and re-create it, which forces a re-sync of my contacts one time only.  Then after that, it will no longer sync contacts, that option is disabled (grayed out).  All other functions work ok, its just the contacts that don’t work.