I’m seeing quite a few questions on these boards about syncing. DevonThink is a powerful tool but the user experience around syncing could be easier and more pain-free.
I have, I think, a relatively simple use case.
My wife and I use DevonThink as our document archive. Any paperwork that comes in gets scanned and sucked into DT. I have a mobile sync folder set up to which I replicate documents we require to be portable: various important documents and also things like scans of bills to be paid so we have them handy anywhere we are.
Our DT database resides on a local computer and we each have an iPhone 6 with DTTG 2 on it. All I want, is to be able to sync the mobile sync folder to each of the iPhones, preferably not just over the local network, but also over the web (for instance via Dropbox or some other online account) in encrypted form.
Initially, I had hoped to use Dropbox to make this work, but it turns out that DTTG 2 can only sync to the /Apps folder in Dropbox…which is not shareable due to Dropbox constraints. This means, that my wife can’t access the folder to sync her DTTG 2 (as she has her own dropbox login and settings that I don’t want to change to my own).
Short of having to set up an online WebDAV or access to my local computer via the web, is there any way to get this to work??
We have the same setup but since I do not like to sync via the web we synch locally over WiFi.
Safer and does not cost any datadollars to Verizon.
Why do you want to use the web?
Me and my wife are most often together after work in the evenings or early mornings so we sync normally once per 24H. I can see that you might need it if you or her are traveling long times.
I have recommended DTPO and DTTG to many of my friends and they kind of like that the info for once stay inside secure networks and not in a cloud somewhere.
All other apps are going to subscriptions and clouds and I just love that at least the developers behind DT gives us the option to keep our own information for ourselves and with no fees or risk for passwords to end up on a hackers site.
When you connect to a Dropbox sync store on an iOS device, it will ask you for account info. As far as I know (I have not done this with Dropbox yet), this information - within DTTG - has nothing to do with other Dropbox activities on the phone. So I believe that your wife can connect to your account in DTTG, while using the Dropbox app connecting to hers.
Another option would be to open a box.com account (10 GB are free) just for the DTTG syncing, with a shared account. However, I’m using box.com right now, and have numerous problems. I have now seen a few other complaints in the forum that seem to hint that this could be related to box (hence I will move the other way soon, trying Dropbox, which unfortunately has not enough free space for my DBs).
Anecdotally speaking, Box has been less reliable than others and may even require you to log out of your account online, re-log in and respond to a Captcha. (This is out of our control, if it does happen.)
Strictly speaking off-topic relative to orginal question of OP, but quite noteworthy (should probably be a separate thread).
I noticed something quite similar: Suppose my Box sync is finally up-to-date. Things go OK for a while, DTPO refreshes the Box sync as expected. At some point, however, DTPO (and DTTG) get stuck, attempting a refresh, with the spinning wheel going indefinitely.
By accident, I logged into Box while this was going on, and I noted that right when the login happened, the sync suddenly proceeded. This behavior seems to be solidly reproducible. Whether I’m continuously logged into or out of Box, after a while the sync invariably stalls. Then only a login procedure can re-start the syncing (for yet another while).
If this persists, this renders Box absolutely useless for syncing purposes. From Bluefrog’s statement I gather that this only happens to some Box users?
I don’t think it’s that simple. Indeed you have no way of fixing this. However, if this is known to happen, then maybe Box should not be offered as a “ready to go” solution, or a warning should be posted.
I chose Box because Dropbox does not offer enough free space for my DBs. It’s not that I don’t want to pay, but without a trial, I would hate to sign up just to find out a few days later that that particular service does not work with DT syncing. I’ll probably try a 2 GB trial selection of DBs on Dropbox (or 3 GB on Cloudme) to establish that things work absolutely smoothly with those services. If so, I can certainly consider the 1TB Dropbox upgrade.
Based on evidence over the years, we wuld have to issue warnings for every services. Despite peoples’ beliefs, all services have weaknesses, idiosyncracies, or are administered in ways that can affect Users (and not just realted to Sync).
Thanks for your response Basil. I may have to re-think if we strictly need an over-the-web sync functionality although my feeling is that for a package like DevonThink I’d certainly like the option. They’ve included encryption now and that is awesome! Being in Europe, I pay a flat-fee for my mobile internet usage (upto 2 GB a month), so I’m less worried about Verizon. Still, I’ll certainly think on the problem.
Thanks for your response! I probably should consider more carefully if I need real-time syncing, but it’s something other applications manage just fine and it would be nice to have it it were:
Safe (i.e. Encrypted)
Shareable between 2 or more DTTG clients
In the end, I suppose I can live with once a day syncing but it does require extra effort over it just ‘being there’ (as it would be with a real-time background sync over the web). As far as I’m concerned, DevonThink can build its own sync service if none of the other suffice. That’s a monumental task, I realise, but it would be well worth the expenditure.
Hi Jim, I already have. It didn’t answer my question. Additionally, at the moment, I seem to be having trouble making direct connections from the DTTG 2 app to DevonThink Office Pro 2.9.2. If I activate Bonjour on the mobile client, it is visible to my desktop DevonThink, but I do not see any option to synchronise documents from a DB on my desktop to my mobile. For the most part, your instructions indicate how I can set up bonjour on my phone app and use my phone as a server rather than using my desktop as the central server and synchronising information from my desktop to my phone.
Still, I’ll certainly think on the problem.