Synchronising FileMaker Databases - It Can Be Done! February 25, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : Business In General, FileMaker Pro , trackbackI was asked by another Ecademy BlackStar member last week if it was possible to have a stand-alone, but synchronisable version of a FileMaker database on a laptop, for remote users, and to allow users to work on their data away from the office. After a bit of research in FMForums.com, it appeared that the answer was “yes, but it’s complicated, and very difficult to achieve (therefore likely to be prohibitively expensive”, so that was what I passed on.
However, a bit more digging around brought-up a company called WorldSync, and their product SyncDek. I requested a 30-day demo, and was contacted by a guy called, Jason Erickson - who, it turns out, is their CEO and chief architect of SyncDek, with over 10 years development experience. He knows his stuff then.
I took some time to comtemplate the opportunities that a product like this could bring. SyncDek would have been ideal for a prospect I met recently, it will be ideal for an existing client in the future, and may well aleo be ideal for another existing client fairly soon. We could use it internally, as it’s often useful to be able to take my own CRM database out on the road - so I’ve got telephone numbers of people I’m due to meet, and people I need to talk to that day without having to take bits of paper with me. OK, so I could just have the database on my laptop, but the laptop is my secondary computer, so it’s not always out, and desk space is at a premium.
The download links arrived in my inbox not long after, and after a brief look around the developer guide, it looked complicated to get working, so I put it off for later that day, when I had some time to devote to it.
It wasn’t as complicated as I first thought, and the development guide is excellent. Some changes were required to a few relationships and scripts in Knowledge Base CRM, and it took me a few attempts, and an email to WorldSync, who responded within 10 minutes (it was late at night, and they’re based in Berkely, CA), to get it right, but this evening, I got it right, and it worked perfectly. I had expected it to work, but given that I screwed it up a few times, it came as a nice surprise.
So, using SyncDek, I’m able to maintain multiple copies of a database, and synchronise them with a master copy stored on SyncDek server (no dedicated machine required), at the click of a button.
I don’t yet know how much SyncDek costs. I imagine it to be expensive, as there is no indication of pricing on WorldSync’s web site, but we shall see.
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