Recently we had a customer contact us with a problem they were experiencing with syncing forms between two different users.
The Situation: Two people were working on the same project so they needed to share a form. The first user was responsible for filling out the first three pages of the form and the second user was responsible for filling pages four through six. They didn’t work together so they couldn’t share the same iPad. What was required was the ability to sync the partially completed form back and form between the two users.
The Problem: After setting up collaboration between the two users, syncing was only occurring in one direction. User 1 was receiving updates from user 2 but users 2 was not receiving any updates from user 1. They contacted us to find out why?
Solution 1: It was not obvious initially why syncing was not occurring bi-directionally until we realized that each user had their own Apple ID. Then we had user 1 configure the collaboration sharing for bi-directional sharing (note: the default setting for collaboration sharing is one-way). After changing the setting to bidirectional sharing, syncing between both users was initially successful but stopped working. This had us stomped for a while until we started asking questions how the user’s work was performed.
Users Workflow: Both iPads did not have a cellular connection. That meant that when they filled out the form at the customer’s site, they were offline so no syncing occurred. When they got back home where they had an Internet connection, they assumed syncing would automatically occur. This is not correct and a lot of users make this assumption.
Solution 2: Syncing occurs when the FormConnect Pro+ app is open and you have Internet connectivity. User 1 never opened the app when they got home and thus they never synced the data that they had collected the previous day. Once both users opened the app after they re-established Internet connectivity, syncing commenced and both users had the latest changes that had been made to the form.
