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SmartTracking

SmartTracking is used when synchronizing two locations, and new or updated files can be expected on both sides. SmartTracking can detect on which side a file has been changed, moved, or deleted.

SmartTracking uses a local database in order to track changes that have been made between the various invocations of the profile. That way, the software will know whether a file has been moved on the left side, or on the right side. It can also detect whether a file has been deleted on one side, or whether the file has actually been added on the other. SmartTracking should always be used whenever you want to keep two locations in sync, both of which are being used for work. SmartTracking is not needed when you do a backup or mirror, or any other case where you synchronize in one direction only. SmartTracking has various additional features which you will see in the SmartTracking dialog box.

SmartTracking keeps information in a database linked to the profile name. On the first run, SmartTracking will record the state of each file. Starting with the second run, the SmartTracking settings will become active. Do not rename the profile, because then it will not be able to find its original database. Do not use more than one profile for synchronization of the same folders.

The SmartTracking dialog has four tab sheets:

Detection of Moved Files

"Moved files" refers to files that have been moved into a different folder on one side, but not on the other. By looking at these files only, it is not possible to determine on which side the file has been moved - in other words, it is hard to tell which of the folders the desired new location for the file is. SmartTracking solves this problem by comparing the current locations against the previous locations stored in its database. That way, the software can find out on which side the move has been performed, and it can then perform the same move on the other side as part of the synchronization process.

Files Deleted On One Side

In many cases, when the synchronization is started, there will be files that exist only on one side of the synchronization. These files are usually new files that should be copied over to the other side. But sometimes, this situation occurs because a file has been deleted on one side. The user will normally not want to have this file copied back from the other side. The desired action is often to have it deleted on the other side too.

SmartTracking can detect these cases, but ultimately you are responsible for what the synchronizer does, so please verify the actions in the Synchronization Preview before starting it. To ensure that no important files can get lost accidentally, the software will not actually delete these files. It will move them into a special folder which you need to specify as the last setting in this dialog box. That way, you can always retrieve files that have been deleted but for some reason shouldn't have.

Files Changed On Both Sides

Traditionally, when synchronizing bidirectionally, this synchronization software would always copy the file with the latest timestamp to the other side, overwriting the older file that is already there. This is usually fine, but in some cases it may be a problem: what if the file has been edited by two different persons on both sides of the synchronization? One of the files may have a later timestamp, but it is not clear that this is the (only) version that should continue to exist on both sides.

So, you can choose to have such files be labeled as CONFLICT. Then, you will need to look closely at the Synchronization Preview window and resolve these conflicts manually by specifying a copying direction for each file. Or you can specify that both versions of the file, from the left and right sides, should be kept. To keep both versions, one of them is renamed and then both are copied.

Consider different files with the same name, not present in database, a conflict

This covers a very specific case, where a file exists on both sides, but it is not identical, and it's not in the database either. Normally the program would simply copy the newer version of this file and overwrite the older version on the other side with it. To prevent that, you can use this checkbox. It will make the program consider these files a conflict and treat the conflict according to the settings in the upper part of this tab sheet.

OPTIONS

Detect Unchanged Files

Some storage locations, such as FTP or WebDAV servers, always give uploaded files the current system time as Last Modified timestamp. This is generally a problem for synchronization, because you can never get the timestamps to match on both sides. If you are synchronizing in both directions, to and from the problematic server, then you may want to have SmartTracking detect whether files with new timestamps are really changed or not. It does so by querying the timestamp of freshly uploaded files immediately after the upload. This timestamp is stored in the SmartTracking database. On the next run, if the timestamp is still the same, the program will know that the file has not changed.