Will DT3 Pro work for us?

I am reading this book and I have bought and downloaded the How To Back Up Your Mac too. I have also got the official documentation to work through and I bought a new e-book from the DT website about taking smart notes in DEVONthink3.
I don’t think I need the working from home book as I’ve been working from home for the past 12 years, but I will take a look, you never know!

Thanks so much
John

I have used DT for many years, its excellent for storing and finding data. I have DT to Go on iPhone and iPad, this has improved very substantially over the years, it does sync pretty well via iCloud, perhaps a solution is an iPad on your account in the possession of your son?

There’s a hardware cost and your giving access to your Apple ID and privacy issues but might work pretty well.

@hariseldon Thank you for this suggestion.
Before I asked on the forum, I did raise a ticket for help and they have now replied with a suggestion.
Use Dropbox to sync, because iCloud requires my Apple ID and, unless I want to share my ID (which I do not), it cannot be shared.

Instructions:

Seat 1 opens a Dropbox account (done), names the sync store, syncs to that account (done).
Seat 2 downloads their DT3 and follows the same procedure. They MUST give the sync store exactly the same name and they MUST use the same Dropbox account. When they are finished they sync at their end.

I have done everything my end and my end works fine. Tomorrow, I am going to my sons house to set up his end.

I will let you all know how it works out.

I will try and work out how to send you the html instruction attachment they sent me, it won’t allow me to add it to this post

I did buy the full PRO edition, some books and the other two apps DT sell to accompany DT3.

John

Or guide him (at his house that is) in setting it up himself perhaps?

Standardizing tasks so the both of you know how to do them, can be quite helpful in case one of you isn’t able to work for example. If you’re the DevonTHINK guru, there might be a continuity risk involved.

Yes, of course. From what I have read so far, I realise that it is important for both parties to know what they are doing, or some damage can be done.

:rofl:

The Dropbox solution sounds good. DT is worth the effort, the ability to find things and the ability to quickly "put things in the right place’ are invaluable.

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Long time, light user of DT3 here. Switched from Evernote to Notion about 3 months ago. It took me about a week to neer stand the power and use cases with Notion. Now it is becoming one of the core apps I use everyday. I still use DT3 bit for colloboration (and many other things), Evernote is amazing. Give it a try and PM me if you have any questions.

I purchased a years subscription to Notion, about 3 months ago, and I am struggling with it. I cannot grasp the concept of Notion, even after watching dozens of YouTube videos and creating a couple of pages, but I struggle with how to design a system that will do what I want it to do.

I don’t want to keep track of projects or build my own database/search system. I want to throw stuff into an app that has all that ready built and be able to find it later.

Trello or Clickup were not suitable for me either.

Also, I do not like a subscription system. Pay up and we are done, suits me better.

This whole thread makes me realize that Devon Technologies should offer an SaaS (software as a service) version of Devonthink.

They could run the web servers, and users like me could use the desktop or mobile app to sync data. Suddenly it becomes a resource an entire office can use!

The average home, home-office, or office user doesn’t know how to configure a webserver, but if all they had to do was open the app and enter a user name and password, well, I think it could be a very popular offering!

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Hi everyone,

All done, and it work just fine. My son uses DT3 (20 miles away) and I use DT3 here at home and it all syncs to Dropbox a treat.

I did have a bit of a fright! I was playing with the Apple email plugin and Ahhhh! it started downloading all of my emails, even my personal ones. Anyway, all sorted now.

I now need to learn how to use DT3 properly by following the book page by page.

I’m still going to look at NAS though.

Thanks one and all.

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Well I think the simplest way to do it is to use another Mac with the database shared on it and both you and your son can access it from home or from away from your own laptop. It might be the easiest to set up, and control remotely. Since I only run single user I can’t go any further.

The Dropbox solution is really easy and works great until it doesn’t. After struggling with the Dropbox integration for awhile I went the Synology route and I’m glad I did. One really nice thing about DT3 is that it supports multiple sync options in parallel seamlessly, so you can switch to it later if you like. It might be worth hiring a security pro for a few hours to help you configure it so that you can be confident it’s “secure enough.”

DT3 is a great piece of software despite a few rough edges — a time investment well spent understanding its power. Good luck!

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Hi,

I am little late to jump in on this, but I heard of this out of the weekly newsletter only :wink:
Unfortunately, I was not able to read the full thread. Please excuse me, if I duplicate anything!

I can tell you this setup basically works just fine and is ok to work with. Personally, I would not go with Dropbox or iCloud either, as it seems to be too expansive. If you are like me, you will be accumulating quite a bit of data, which serves mostly inactive archive functions.
I would (personally I have) opt for an managed NextCloud instance, that can grow with your needs. You gain control of your data, and save some money.
The syncing quality is the same as with Dropbox or iCloud. You can add users so there is no need to share personal IDs.

It is important not directly share the original files or the DT3 database, as this generates conflicts. This is due to the way DT3 works. For this DT offers to create specialised sync copies.

Works like a charm.

I would prefer a sync service over a NAS approach, as a central server is faster than a NAS stored at one occasion. The sync client sees to it that all changes propagate as fast as possible to each partner. NAS setups usually do not offer this.

I am located in germany, therefore I got my NextCloud Instance from a german hoster, Hetzner. You will probably find something comparable close to you.

I think the sync approach is best suited for working cooperatively with a DT db even with mobile clients or across some locations.

As to the webserver edition. I never worked with it, but I think it serves a different purpose. What I would check is if the data would be secure if published this way…

Regards
Jochen

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Beware of privacy issues. Depending on your line of business and the kind of files you store, you may not wish to use a standardised service. GDPR/DSGVO comes to mind…

Beware of privacy issues. Depending on your line of business and the kind of files you store, you may not wish to use a standardised service. GDPR/DSGVO comes to mind…

Absolutely. Depending on the type of data beeing shared and the location you reside as well as the location of the people you deal with, this is definitely an issue.

As an EU resident, a self or europe based hosted sync service is much better in this regard as Dropbox or iCloud, as US or ex-eu based ventures pose a potential privacy problem. I think I mentioned this as an advantage for self hosted, but if that’s an issue it is well worth to stress it explicitly.

Regard
Jochen

I don’t really understand what you mean with ‘sync service’ vs. ‘NAS approach’.

If the NAS contains the sync store, all clients are automatically notified of a change in the sync store.

Professional provider vs. privately hosted. They gave the example of the German hosting service Hetzner for the first category

With Sync Service I mean something like iCloud, Dropbox or NextCloud. You have a service run on the Internet and an app or system service keeping your local folder in sync with the remote server. All changes are synced to the clients whenever the client is online. The service mirrors a local folder.

A NAS Service ist a local machine. It allows you to mount a remote disk to your desktop. You usually do not copy files to your local machine. Speed is best, when the NAS is on your LAN. Outside of the LAN, speed drops usually massively and special technical means need to be taken to make the NAS available out of the office. A NAS does usually not provide a folder sync service using an app or something like that.

In the use case given by the OT, having the NAS in one location and accessing it remotely in the other, speed will probably be a big issue for the second location, as the NAS access takes place when DT is used, blocking the work. With a Sync service, changes are usually already synced when accessed. Data is copied to local only once which provides best speed after sync took place.

@joker thank you for your advice, I have read the NextCloud website and think it is too complicated for our needs.
Besides, I do want to get away from cloud storage completely, and it is not for security reasons.

In the industry we are about to go in to, the average, successful, person/home business runs NAS systems of 12 bays with 10TB drives in each bay, and that is just the beginning. I think it would be very expensive if they were to back up to the cloud, and that would be an ongoing cost with no assets to show for it.

The Synology NAS DS920+ or DS918+ is expandable by attaching the DX517 5 bay unit. So we can start off fairly inexpensively with a 4 bay NAS and extend it as needed in the future. A final security feature would be for my son to have the same set up in his home and we sync to each others NAS system over the internet. So we end up with exact copies in each others homes.

My first post does explain that I am not a computer/network person, so this might be unworkable, I’m sure you will all let me know :scream:

and we sync to each others NAS system over the internet.

What data and via what mechanism?