Personal Experiences with Live Mesh

This post is not going to be about Dynamics AX. It will be about a software product I was thrilled by so much I would like to share it with all of you.

I won't post a detailed description of the product here. You can read that yourself at www.mesh.com. But here is a brief introduction, just to give you a basic idea of what the software can bring into your life.

WHAT IS LIVE MESH?

With Live Mesh, you can synchronize files with all of your PCs (and soon your WM6 phone and Mac as well), so you always have the latest versions handy. Access your files from any device or from the web, easily share them with others, and get notified whenever someone changes a file. Working on one computer, but need a program from another? No problem. Use Live Mesh to connect to your other computer and access its desktop as if you were sitting right in front of it.

Here is a screenshot of the web interface for managing your devices in the mesh:


What I would like to share with you is the personal experiences I had using this software for a month now. In 1 word - fantastic. Live Mesh is still in Beta, but already I can tell you - simplicity is the word. You set it up (takes 5 minutes and is very simple, all you need is a LiveID, which I hope all of you already have). And that's it, you are done. And from then on - it just works. Great!

And here are 2 screenshots of how I use Live Mesh in my everyday life.
Obviously, I have all of my computers meshed, available to me when I need them (they need to be turned on, and have access to internet, of course).



And so far I have 4 folders in the mesh, and I would like to discuss each of them separately:


Personal - I store a backup of my personal data in this folder, which is synced across all my PCs, so that I have it at hand in case I need it. Plus, I have my Personal OneNote workbook in there, with all info I need.
Favorites - Favorites are not synced accross all my PCs, providing the same list on all of them in IE. This is great. This was a feature most of the browsers tried to implement throughout multiple releases. And here it is, as easy as it gets. Any time I bookmark a page, all my other browsers get this page bookmarked as well.
Incoming - this is the folder for file transfer between PCs. Now I don't have to send it to my e-mail every time I need a document scan or something. And, I invite other people as members of this folder, sharing pictures and other documents with them. That easy. And, they get updates every time I add a file, without me having to notify them.
Work - This is my work folder, which I don't sync to my home PC (you can see it is a ghost folder on the screenshot). Any file I work on is automatically synced between my work PCs, so I have an up to date file any time I access it. Extremely efficient.

Well, that's about it. Now, all you have to do is go and try it out yourself.
Have fun!

AxPromptDBSync - a simple project that allows to choose whether to synchronize the AOT with the database at the moment or not.

This should be used with extreme caution and only by experienced developers (people, who know what they are doing)

Get the tool at axaptapedia

Someone may ask - why would I need to prevent syncronization? Isn't it what should be done at all times?
And the answer is, of course, YES.

But just stop for a minute and remember the amount of time you have to wait till syncronization is over after adding just a single EDT or tablefield. Or, what most people do, Break the operation and (if you managed to actually break it) do it for every field being added. Or, which is even better, export the project, modify the xpo file and then import it back into DAX. :) A nice way, no doubt.

Well, here is a small and simple solution. When syncronization is about to begin, a dialog will popup asking if it should continue. If not, the syncronization will not be performed.
Actually, you can specify the exact way the system should behave through your user settings. The 2 checkboxes are added to the SysUserInfo table: one specifies if the syncronization should be performed, the second - if the user should be prompted with a dialog.

My settings are: 1 - not checked (means should go on with Sync), 2 - checked (means the prompt dialog is going to pop up)
This thing really saves a lot of time.