GoZync3

Zync Options

These are the notes for GoZync 3. Docs for the latest version of GoZync--GoZync 4--can be found here. GoZync 4 is a free upgrade and is highly recommended (hint: it's faster).

Overview

Zync options are set at the layout level, and thus you can set some options at the layout level as well. Select a layout from the dashboard in GoZyncHosted, click "Integration and Options" and then select the "Zync Options" tab:

These options represent the default actions for the file, some like the actions (push, pull, round trip) can be overridden by scripts in your file.

Push

Push is the fastest way to get records from your mobile device to the host or server. When this is selected, GoZync will send changed records up to the inbox in GoZyncHosted then break the connection to the server.

This is what you'd do for anything you don't need to get modified copies back on the mobile device, or don't need them back right away. Thus "push" is ideal for surveys, building inspections, etc.

Because GoZync stops when the records are safely in the GoZyncHosted inbox, the mobile device never has to open your hosted solution (which can be the slowest part of a sync).

Record left in the GoZyncHosted inbox, can then be processed manually or with a server side script every so often.

Pull

This is the other side of push; GoZync asks for any records that have changed since the last sync and pulls them down. Along with this will come instructions to delete any records that were deleted on the host.

After records are pulled they are processed into the local mobile file and the connection is broken. Pull will update existing records on the device if the primary ID of the record is already there, otherwise it will make new records.

Pull is ideal for tables where you're never editing the records on the mobile device, such as price lists. You may also want to pull as part of doing a round-trip (see below) manually. So you might push, then wait a bit, knowing the server-side processing will process the uploaded records faster than your iPhone. You can do something else, before calling a pull thirty minutes later.

Round Trip

Round trip is definitely the most impressive action in GoZync and if you have a fast connection, it's pretty damn cool. GoZync pushes changed records to the host/server, then processes that device's inbox records on the server. Then it searches for changed records and pulls them down to process them into your mobile file.

Because the GoZyncHosted inbox is processed while you're connected to the remote files, this can be much slower than just pushing or just pulling. For that reason, round trip shouldn't simply be your default action. Think about who needs which records and script your sync ? accordingly.

Delete sent data before next Zync.

In many workflows, users receive work orders or tasks from the host, complete those, and then send the completed tasks back to the host before retrieving the next day's set of tasks. In such cases we've found it helpful to leave the "uploaded" records on the iPhone or iPad so users can see what they did that day (and see that their work was "uploaded").

When "delete sent..." is turned on, users' uploaded records will persist on their mobile device after they are uploaded, but will be deleted from the device as soon as users begin their next pull sync (even as part of a round trip) of that table.

Field Level Merge

These are the notes for GoZync 3. Docs for the latest version of GoZync--GoZync 4--can be found here. GoZync 4 is a free upgrade and is highly recommended (hint: it's faster).

For your first zync, turn field-level merge off.

Field-level merge can make first syncs slower than normal, so while you're testing, have it off unless you have a lot of container fields.

Then come back here and learn what field-level merge is all about, and when it can make your syncs faster.

What is field-level merge?

This is an optional setting on the Zync Options tab of GoZyncHosted (select a layout on the Dashboard, then click "Integration & Options" and you'll see a tab for Zync Options).

When this is turned on, GoZync will only send the fields that have been changed since the last Zync, instead of sending the whole record.

This can be a huge help if both the mobile user and hosted users are editing the same record. If you edit someone's phone number, and I edit their name, field-level merge lets both those edits get to the same record.

Or imagine that you have a collection of photos about a building on your iPad. Without field-level merge, editing the caption of one photo would cause all the photos on that record to be sent up to the server: with field-level we only send the caption.

We have some notes on this under the heading "speed", but field-level merge can also make your Zyncs much faster, as there is less data being sent. This is especially true with photos, if you're only editing some of the photos some of the time.

Field-level merge has its own overhead, so while it can really speed things up, it only does so in some cases and is less useful (and slower) on the Pull than on the Push. Read more on this here: speed.