Synchronizing With Your Pocket PC

***** Software On Sailboats Desktop Sales Manager v6
***** Contact management software, sales automation software, CRM software

The following example assumes you are a sales executive for Rhythm and Blues Services - a mythical professional services company that provides equipment and services to the professional touring musician. The example pipeline is based upon the Standard template, and uses either the Eastern Area or Western Area example pipelines that were installed with this program.

This example depicts a worst case scenario of synchronizing two dissimilar versions of the same sales pipeline.

Ray Charles, the Western Area Sales Executive, has just returned from a road trip. Ray travels with his Pocket PC and before he left he saved his sales pipeline Western Area.xml from his personal computer to his Pocket PC. While travelling Ray has used the Pocket Sales Manager to update a number of his sales opportunities after each of his visits with clients. Information in Ray's sales pipeline in his Pocket PC is now more current that the sales pipeline on his personal computer. Ray would just like to copy the sales pipeline on his personal computer, send it off to his manager, then head home for a well deserved rest....

But hark! Business life is just never that simple. While he was out, his office assistant received some new leads from a recent trade show, and helpfully combined those leads with Ray's sales pipeline on his personal computer. So Ray needs to combine his Pocket PC sales pipeline with his updated sales pipeline on his personal computer in a way that doesn't lose his updates from his trip nor loses his new leads from the trade show.

Combining Pipelines

The menu File -> Combine Pipelines or Combine on the Pipeline toolbar allows you to pull together several pipelines at once. Combining pipelines carefully keeps the latest version of each sales opportunity, and here is how it works. Each sales opportunity is created with a unique identifier. Any time a change is made to a sales opportunity, the date/time of the change is recorded. When combining two sales pipelines, each sales opportunity is examined. If two sales opportunities have the same unique identifier, the one with the latest change is kept, and the earlier version is discarded.

How To Combine Pipelines

Ray wants to combine his Pocket PC sales pipeline called Western Area.xml with his personal computer sales pipeline which is also called Western Area.xml.

Ray opens the sales pipeline Western Area.xml on his personal computer using Open on the Pipeline toolbar or the menu File -> Open Pipeline From --> File. With the Western Area.xml sales pipeline now open, Ray chooses Combine from the Pipelines tab.

Ray sets up the options for combining sales pipelines. He wants to combine a file from his Pocket PC with the open pipeline on his personal computer. Using options, he also wants to insure that when two sales opportunities have the same unique identifier, the one with the latest date/time is kept and the earlier one is discarded (no duplicates). Also an option, Ray needs to choose the Pocket PC sales pipeline that will be combined with his current pipeline Western.xml. Ray chooses the add button in the picture above and he can choose the sales pipeline from his Pocket PC. Ray keeps his Pocket PC sales pipelines in his "My Documents" folder on his Pocket PC.

When Ray presses the "OK" button on the form, the two pipelines are combined.

Software On Sailboats