Search Results for 'bento'

[Rick Marolt]

Hi,

(Brendan: I continue to be impressed and pleased with Tap Forms. In general, it exceeds my expectations. I’m very happy that its development has progressed so far and that it has become an excellent and enjoyable successor to Bento.)

When I edit a date/time field, wanting to create an alert, the field label “Alert” is dimmed, though I can still check the box. Is the dimming meaningful or a mistake?

The listing of alerts within Tap Forms under “Favorites & Alerts” works differently from how I expected it to and how I would like it to in several ways …

The record counter next to the listing of alerts under “Favorites & Alerts” remains at 0 even when an alert is displayed.

An alert is listed until the scheduled time, then the listing disappears.

Most important, Tap Forms does not actually issue an alert.

So an alert is set; there is no visual cue that an alert exists; the alert remains in a list until an alert should be triggered; but an alert is not triggered; and then the evidence that an alert had been set disappears.

It would be more helpful if an alert were actually issued at the scheduled time and/or if the alert record would remain so I would know which alerts I have not acted on yet.

When I click on the “Add to Calendar” button, an event is added to my calendar, but Tap Forms usually, but not always becomes non-responsive with a spinning beachball.

In my calendar, the event appears with the contents of the first field in my form. I need that field to be first for the most useful display of data in a table format. But it is not useful in an alert. So it would be nice if I could choose a different field to display in the calendar or if the contents of the “Notes” field were displayed.

If I have misunderstood something or if there is a better way to manage alerts, please let me know.

Thanks!

Rick

[thinkingcat]

Well, let’s see if we can tease some of this apart — I believe:

1/ Some of these issues will persist no matter what sync service is used, because the inherent problem is the processing power of the i-devices.

2/ Some of the solutions may be in getting messages tied more closely to the actual events (e.g., when is Tap Forms actually done processing the sync), or at least getting us users to know what to look for for “completion”.

If “1/” is true, then it suggests you don’t need to waste cycles learning some other sync service that people won’t want to use, anyway. :-)

So, things I’d really like to know at this point are:

+ what is the timestamp that Tap Forms uses to measure whether it has more recent data than the sync file — is it the timestamp of the file, or something internal?

+ how can I keep an i-device app in the foreground long enough for it to process the database file?

+ how can I know if it actually failed (which is what I begin to suspect happened on my iPhone, which still does not have an entry in the TFSyncDevices in dropbox)?

+ And, if it fails, should I tell that particular device to re-set its sync? (That ties to the first question in my list — if it is an internal timestamp, I may have to reset all devices, always, until they all succeed).

BTW, saying “you only have to go through the long sync once” doesn’t really fly, because the reality is we have to do it whenever one of the devices complains about a failed sync. As long as the sync’ing is fragile and our understanding of how to not cross it up is limited, this is an ongoing problem.

Fundamentally, I suspect that rather than pursuing other sync services, it would be better to put energy into breaking up the database files per form, or some such, as you discussed in another thread. I.e., making smaller chunks. Because users will have big data in ways you can’t begin to predict. Pesky users. :-)

Again — I *really* like what you’ve done with Tap Forms, and think it’s gotten to be far better than Bento. So, I’d like to get these issues resolved not just for myself, but so that they can stop being a distraction for _you_!

[thinkingcat]

Nope, not the only one having problems with sync & dropbox.

I have Mac, iPhone and iPad.

I did a reset of the sync’ing yesterday evening (20 hours ago). I first re-enabled sync’ing on the Mac. It wrote the Device and the TFSyncDoc files to the dropbox folder. The TFSyncDoc file was timestamped as 19h58, the time at which it started. It remained 0 bytes for the 30min it took for Tap Forms to process the database and write out the actual details. At 20h28, I had 34Mbytes of TFSyncDoc _still_ timestamped 19h58 (as created and last modified. I think that’s odd (bad) behaviour).

Having anticipated that as an issue, though, I did not attempt to re-enable sync’ing on the iPhone or iPad until that file appeared on all the devices (in Dropbox).

At that point, I re-enabled sync’ing on the iPhone. Here’s where it gets… odd. The iPhone Tap Forms claims that sync’ing is enabled and that the iPhone is a registered device. It doesn’t see the Mac. The Mac doesn’t see it. And NOTHING is added to Dropbox sync folder — not on the iPhone, not anywhere.

This morning, I decided to see if it was just an iPhone thing or what (since nothing had changed) and I re-enabled syncing on my iPad. Same stuff — it thinks it is registered, sees nothing else, nothing appears in Dropbox.

Needless to say, there is no sync’ing going on.

An hour ago (10 hours after re-enabling sync on the iPad), a new TFSyncDevice file appeared in Dropbox — timestamped from the morning. Thirty minutes after that, the iPad acknowledged that there is a Mac that is a registered device. I hold out hopes that there is sync’ing going on now — the top bar of the iPad’s display says “21323 rows remaining”.

Still no sign of the iPhone, but I imagine it might show up presently.

What I _assume_ is going on is a lot of background processing of the files in Tap Forms before files get written to Dropbox. And, as I don’t know how to keep Tap Forms in the foreground on the i-devices for anything like “long enough”, it’s taking a day to catch up. There seems to be a difference between the Mac version and the i-versions in terms of when a file gets created in Dropbox, so it’s impossible to tell when “nothing” is happening.

But, if I have to keep everything open and carefully sequence registering my devices in sync’ing, that kind of timeframe is not especially workable more than once — on setup. Standing in the aisle of a store trying to lookup something from my database is not when I want to see “updating rows 22,832”, for eg.

The only thing that is needfully large about my database is the photos (and I *looooooove* that Tap Forms lets me set them up to be scaled down automagically on entry!); there are only about 4,500 records across a dozen forms. I struggle to believe mine is an exceptionally difficult case.

This sync’ing thing is really killing me, especially when it seems completely opaque and mysterious. I am grateful that it doesn’t appear to have lost data yet! But it’s frustrating. And it’s interrupting my steady stream of statements to my husband about how *awesome* Tap Forms is, and the latest feature I’ve uncovered, and how this has gotten to be *way better* than Bento was!

[Brendan]

Hi Chrmln,

Just covert the encrypted fields to plain Text fields in Bento before you export the template. Then import that template into Tap Forms. Tap Forms will never be able to read the Bento encrypted fields, so you need to do this step first.

Thanks,

Brendan

[chrmln]

Just downloaded TapForms version 3.5 because my Bento has been giving me a scare lately. Noticed the encrypted field option is available but Bento template didn’t bring in the passwords. Is there an easy fix to bring them over yet?

[John Fineberg]

Well, it’s now come back to me how I originally managed to create Saved Searches from my Bento Smart Lists. It was all pretty manual and time-consuming. From what I remember, I asked for help in universally pasting search words down an entire column of the spreadsheet view. And, from what I remember, that was not possible at that time. So I had to individually paste search words, one contact at a time, all the way down the long, long, long list. Looks like it was taxing enough that I just put it out of my mind and forgot about it. ;-)

Anyway, now I understand how to move people into and out of Saved Searches. Thanks for jarring my memory.

[Brendan]

Hi John,

Well, yes, the example was different then your specific use case, but the concepts are the same. You just want to be able to filter your records into smaller lists while maintaining the main list with everything in it. That’s what Saved Searches do.

Tap Forms doesn’t have those kinds of collections that Bento had where you could just drag a record into another list. Tap Forms has what Bento called “Smart Lists” where the records to display are determined based on fields and values that you search in order to filter the list.

[John Fineberg]

Sorry, not really. Way too different from my example.

Could you look at my uploaded screen shot again and just tell me what to do from what you see? For clarification, I did change the second of two items called Contacts to Forms, to use your terminology.

In Bento, I would just go to the spreadsheet view and drag an individual record into another folder, or Saved Search List, to use your terminology. Then it would be in two Saved Search Lists, unless I deleted that person from the original list.

[John Fineberg]

Okay, to be clear, I have 3,622 people in my Tap Forms, and I have 28 saved searches, so I’m not starting from scratch. Far from it.

As one who was quite proficient in ACT (the best of all contact management programs, until ACT stopped supporting Mac users), Eudora and Now Contact/Now Up-to-Date, all before discovering and converting to Bento, I’m not a rookie when it comes to contact management programs. I would never have left Bento if FileMaker had not pulled the plug on supporting it. But it did, and so we have to move forward with what’s currently available.

In my opinion, Bento was so much simpler and more intuitive to use than Tap Forms. This means asking questions that could appear to be ridiculous to one who has written the program. And it means sometimes needing to ask the same question more than once to finally reach the answer.

[Anthony Davis]

I just bought TapForms and whenever I do ANYTHING it immediately crashes on my iPad. I bought this because it was supposed to be a good replacement for Bento but this thing won’t let me do anything with.

Is anybody else having this problem? I spent $9.00 for…what???

[Rick Browne]

And it is working! There was a delay in the sync, perhaps the initial sync? But still quite useable.
Thanks Brendan for another enhancement to a great program. By now I am glad Bento died!

Rick

[Kirk Steward]

I’ve recently imported data records from Bento 3 via csv files and the templates created within TF are placed in the “uncategorized” category. I have created a new category but have not figured how to move templates from “Uncategorized” to another category. Any suggestions?

[Brendan]

Hi Vicky,

Well I know that Bento for iPad has an “Email Library” feature, but I don’t see that in Bento for iPhone. So I’m really not sure how you can get your data out. Do you have the iPad version with your data?

Thanks,

Brendan

[Vicky Andrew]

I want to stop using Bento as its dead and go onto Tapforms but cannot get data off mobile device onto mac (Ive added about 200 entries so cannot loose the phone data).I had Bento on Mac too but it will not sync. Can anyone help me get the data off my phone?

[Leif Hansen]

Though I’m new, I was a pro Bento user and have gotten the gist of TF in the last day. I’ve had a few issues (sent emails), but would love to test the BETA as long as it won’t mess up current data :)
Here’s my UUID: 0AC87687-F5BE-5F44-99E0-1A1BB06B0EDA

Cheers,
Leif