Sync alternative

[kofi1990]

hi,

I’m using Tap Forms for my company and at first I want to thank you for the amazing app. It’s worth the money!

I’ve just got one thing:
I need one database wich i can access with 3 iPhones and 3 iPads.
iCloud sync is nice and i like the (easy) way it works, but there are different iCloud-Accounts on the Phones/iPads.

Do you have a solution for this case?

For example:
I’m using invoice2go for the invoices and they offer a 1-year-account, and then I can access the data with this account on everey i-device. So i don’t have to use my iCloud account, they offer me a invoice2go account.

I hope you know what I mean.

[Brendan]

Hi,

Tap Forms supports sync only via iCloud, which means all your devices need to have the same iCloud account. It would be nice if Apple allowed apps to use different iCloud accounts per app. Then you could have a shared account with other people without affecting syncing of your other apps, like Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. But unfortunately they don’t. Invoice2go must be providing their own server infrastructure to provide sync services for their app. I don’t have the resources to setup and maintain something like that. However, in a future update, if Dropbox sync improves over time, I will see about implementing sync using that.

There was another sync service that I found which looked very promising. It’s called Zumero (http://www.zumero.com) but unfortunately they don’t do file sync. So one thing I was thinking of doing is requiring the use of Dropbox to facilitate file sync (photos, file attachments, etc.) and then also Zumero for the database sync. But requiring 2 different accounts to facilitate sync isn’t an ideal solution. With iCloud I get file and database sync, although with the tradeoff that it’s really a single-user sync system.

Thanks,

Brendan

[kofi1990]

Ok, but I think creating such a multi-user database woud fill a big market gap. I used bento before and it has just a wifi sync for 3 devices…
There is no app in the appstore…

By the way, is it possible to male the icloud sync easier? For example a pull-to-sync like in mail.app?

Thanks for the fast support :)

[Brendan]

I agree, a multi-user sync system would be great. But there would be more chances of encountering conflicts by people editing the same records. Right now Tap Forms just uses a last-one-in wins approach.

Thanks for the feature suggestion. That sync button on the iCloud Sync screen is more of an “Upload to iCloud” button. I really should change the icon for it. What you’re doing there by tapping that is to upload your changes on that device to iCloud. But then your other devices will automatically update so you don’t have to tap the sync button on your other devices. It will happen whenever iCloud finishes transferring the files I generate over to your other devices. That might take a couple of minutes or 20 or 30 minutes or more. It all depends on how iCloud is performing at the time. Out of my control.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Author]

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