Abacus Consulting, LLC

Implementing OTA HotSync

OK, now for the easy part. Just follow these steps to put all of the pieces together. I will refer to the Mergic VPN HotSync Guide, which contains nearly all of the steps necessary to accomplish the OTA HotSync with Time Matters, so you might want to print it out and have it on hand.

Step 1 - Setup the Time Matters Sync

If you have not done so already, Install Palm Desktop and make sure the Treo is syncing properly. Then configure Time Matters Palm Synchronization as per the Time Matters manual.

Step 2 - Setup VPN Gateway

If you are using Windows 2000 or 2003 Server as a VPN Gateway, you will need to install and configure the Remote Access Server to handle the VPN connections. This is not meant to be a guide on setting up a VPN gateway. There are numerous guides for Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 Server available on the Internet.

If your server is behind a NAT router, you will need to use port forwarding to send the VPN traffic to your VPN Gateway. In this example, the VPN is using a protocol called PPTP, which uses the TCP/IP port 1723 by default. You will need to have your DSL provider or Network Technician configure your router so that any requests coming in on port 1723 are forwarded to the IP address of your Windows Server (i.e.: 192.168.1.100).

Furthermore, if you have a firewall, you must make sure that this port is not being blocked.

Step 3 - Install and configure Mergic VPN

Download and install Mergic VPN on your Treo. Configure Mergic as per the user manual to make a connection to your VPN server. Make sure this connection is being properly established before moving on to the next step.

Step 4 - Setup the Network HotSync

The hard stuff is all done. All that remains is to configure Network HotSync as per the very detailed Mergic VPN HotSync Guide. The guide is straightforward and accurate, thus we will not repeat the steps here.

Please be aware the the OTA HotSync can take a very long time if you do not restrict the modem based HotSync to the conduits that are specifically used by Time Matters. This is detailed in the Mergic Guide. Furthermore, we recommend following the advice of the Mergic Guide regarding the use of BackupBuddy ($29.95) to disable backup during modem based HotSync. This will considerably shorten the OTA time and thus make the OTA HotSync significantly faster and more useful.

I will attempt to update and expand this guide over time, so please email your success/failure stories for the benefit of others that may following in your footsteps.