Continuing syncing problems

[LeoC2]

After using Tap Forms in the field with 5 devices and a Mac all summer I have come to the conclusion that syncing is a real problem for TapForms depending on location and signal strength.

Scenario 1: Very strong private WIFI. Syncing is slow and unpredictable but does work. I wish there was a way to force a sync download and not have to wait on TapForms to sync.

Scenario 2: Strong WIFI over an outside hot spot. Syncing is slow and sometimes does not sync all devices. Some devices take forever to download the data.

Scenario 3: No WIFI but spotty cellular. Setting up an iPad as a hotspot is useless since TapForms times out with a weak signal.

Scenario 4: No WIFI or cellular: I turn off sync, keep local copies on each device and download from each with USB using iExplorer.

We have had a lot of trouble with spotty and unpredictable syncing and now have abandoned syncing and strictly use iExplorer to download the data from each device to a MacBook over USB for analysis.

I look forward to the day when I can rely on syncing again but for now it’s not reliable enough. It’s odd though because other apps seem to have no problem.

Leo

[Brendan]

Hi Leo,

It’s not possible to force a download because until Tap Forms gets notified that there’s data for it to sync, the data just isn’t there yet. I’ve described syncing in Tap Forms to some customers before as like a game of ping pong. The ball is sent from the sender to the receiver. But the receiver can’t do anything with the ball until it gets to him. So there’s no way to tell the cloud to hurry up and download the file. It all depends on the Internet connection speed and reliability and how much data is being transmitted.

You’ve probably read in other forum posts that I’m working on an upgrade that will make syncing much better. One of the features will be peer-to-peer syncing over WiFi. So you won’t need an Internet cloud connection sync your devices, just a local WiFi network.

Sorry for the troubles you’ve been having.

Brendan

[LeoC2]

“It all depends on the Internet connection speed and reliability and how much data is being transmitted.”
That’s exactly why we are having problems, outside a strong connection syncing seems to fall apart.

“So you won’t need an Internet cloud connection sync your devices, just a local WiFi network.”
If there is no WIFI access at the location how does this get set up? Will we simply name one device as a hotspot?

[Brendan]

Hi Leo,

You can easily create an ad-hoc WiFi network on a Mac by clicking the WiFi menu and then selecting “Create Network…”. Then your iOS devices could connect to that. But I’m not even at the stage of trying to get sync to work in my new update. I’ve been rewriting all the database access code, making sure everything still works as expected. It’s a huge job. Once I’ve got that done, then I’ll move on to sync, which was the whole purpose of switching to Couchbase in the first place.

Thanks,

Brendan

[LeoC2]

Thanks Brendan, can’t wait!

[Author]

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