Intellisync Does Double Duty
We recently had one of our clients begin using a product called AgencyWare. It’s basically a sync tool which allows a company to keep a master address book off-site. I’m not ready to commit to an endorsement at this point: it was a pain to get running and the client hasn’t been using it long enough to evaluate it to that level. So, I’ll reserve judgement for now.
However, there is one important point you will want to know about if you are doing an AgencyWare deployment. AgencyWare uses a modified Intellisync to synchronize between the client server and the AgencyWare servers. This isn’t so bad, really, but you may find yourself in a panic sort of predicament if any of the users happen to have Palm devices.
Palm uses Intellisync to synchronize between the handheld and the desktop (Outlook in our case). Ugh.
We had just set up a brand new Windows XP machine and a brand new Palm device for one user at this same company. Then the AgencyWare consultant came in and apparently assisted in the AgencyWare deployment. Once that was complete our formerly functioning Palm device stopped synquing with Outlook for that user.
We tried a lot of dubious and doubtful cures to get this Palm synquing again. All failed predictably. In the end we were prepared to conclude that, because they both were using Intellisync, AgencyWare and Palm were not compatible.
Prepared we were but conclude we did not. Once AgencyWare made its initial sync with their servers it somehow freed up the Palm to resume its normal synquing.
So in the end if you deploy AgencyWare be prepared to see your Palm devices stop synquing until AgencyWare makes its initial server sync.
Happy hunting.
