SugarSync: Questions and Answers

One reader, Scott Wolfe, of Wolfe Law Group, a truly innovative law firm with offices in New Orleans and Seattle, emailed me with a few questions about SugarSync. He was in need of a more workable solution for his all-Mac small law firm.

I answered his email this morning with a fairly lengthy response. I figured that his questions were probably similar to questions that most people thinking about SugarSync might have, so I decided to post my answers to the blog as well for the benefit of everybody else. I know I’m heavy on the SugarSync posts lately, so, sorry if that’s not your thing. I’ve got plenty other stuff to write about. I have posted about SugarSync here and here.

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Question: “We will have multiple employees accessing the shared files day in and day out.  As such, I’m thinking that we should keep all of our shared firm files within the Magic Briefcase.  Is this how you set it up?”

Answer: Regarding Magic Briefcase: I never really understood what Magic Briefcase was (because I never really looked into it) until just now.  We have 3 computers syncing, and I manually set up a full sync for each computer, identifying one main folder to sync that contains all our law office files.

Having now reviewed Magic Briefcase, it seems it would have been simpler from a setup standpoint to just have used Magic Briefcase.  That said, it looks like, once set up the way I have it set up, there is no functional difference.  Magic Briefcase is just more automatic from the get-go.  Here’s what a developer said about it in the support forums:

Magic Briefcase is technically a Full Sync folder that is available on all computers on which SugarSync is installed.

The key here is _all_ computers. Let’s suppose that you have a folder to sync among 10 computers. You may do so by configuring a Full Sync on 10 computers or simply have the folder resides in your Magic Briefcase folder. The real use of this clearly depends on your specific needs. For example, if you really need to sync files and for some reasons you would prefer the files to reside in a specific folder (not in the Magic Briefcase folder), then Magic Briefcase might not be the perfect solution.

Hope this helps.

Source: http://support.sugarsync.com/ics/forum/Client/Common/ContentView.aspx?contentID=74837 [link apparently not valid after session expired - best I can do is give you a link to the support forum]

Question: “I’m worried that an employee will “forget” to open the Sugar Sync application, and accordingly, they will begin accessing files offline.  Has this happened in your experience?”

Answer: Regarding forgetting to open SS application:  This was/is a worry of mine, as well.  I addressed this by setting up SugarSync to open automatically at login.  If you go to System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items and just drag the SS application icon into the window, it will force SS to start automatically when the computer is booted or logged into (I will note that this extends the boot process by about 30 seconds, which is a small PITA, but it’s not that bad).

Question: “Let’s say I’m working “offline,” as I sometimes do.  I’m under the impression that I will have access to my folders that are synced with Sugar Sync.   If I make a change to ten things while offline….when I sign offline, I anticipate that Sugar Sync will sync the changes.  Is this correct?   What if two people make changes to the same file while both are offline?   What file takes the lead, or have you had this happen?”

Answer: Regarding offline access to files: If you forget to turn on SS, or, for whatever reason, have quit the application, and continue to add/change files, it is smart enough to sync those files when you open SS again.  Regarding what happens when offline changes are made to the same file by multiple computers, I don’t know how it handles that.  I’ve looked around the support forums and knowledge base and haven’t found an answer. I don’t think I’ve run into that problem (by luck).  Here is what they have to say about a related situation:

Full syncing a file that is open on more than one computers does not work well with some applications.  Some programs cannot handle a file being updated (ie synced from another computer) while they have the file open.  For example, if you have a Word document open on two computers and save the file on one computer, it cannot be saved on the other computer since Word has the file open.  In this case, the best thing to do is to close a document when you are done editing it and everything will work properly.

Source: https://supportcenteronline.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=361 [link apparently not valid after session expired]

I am supposed to be having a call with the Director of Marketing and Business Development at Sharpcast in the near future.  I will ask him about this and let you know what he says.

Question: “Finally, in your experience with Sugar Sync being used by a law firm, what limitations or problems have you encountered?”

Answer: Regarding limitations or problems:  I have had a couple of issues.  As I said in my post, we sync over 30,000 files.  The initial upload from my computer of all of the office files went without a hitch.  However, when I did a full sync to the two other Macs, we noticed that some files were missing from the local synched folder on the two other Macs.  The files could be forced to downloaded by going into the SugarSync application interface and navigating to the files in question and clicking restore or download.  This has to be done one at a time, as I recall.  I know that there’s no way to verify that all files have been synched and/or downloaded, and, therefore, no way to force the undownloaded files to be downloaded. So, it’s a bit of a PITA, but the files are available: provided they have internet access when they discover the files are not there. The missing files can also be accessed via the web interface.  In my experience, this has only happened with a very small minority of files, and SS is aware of the problem.  They state as a known issue that syncing more than 25,000 files can be problematic, and they’re working on it.

Also, SS does not currently support versioning of files, which would be a nice benefit.  Dropbox currently does support versioning.  By versioning, I mean that it will save past versions of a file that has been edited multiple times.  So, you could revert to a prior saved version of the file if you ever needed to.  SugarSync is aware of this feature request and has stated in the support forums that this is a feature they are considering.

Finally, there seems to be an issue with iWork files (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) being unable to sync properly to the recipient computer. We use mostly Word/Excel, so I haven’t had much personal experience with this.  The developers say that they know how to handle this problem and are working on a fix.

This email post has focused on some of my concerns with SS, but, I have to say that, by and large, SS has been a life saver.  I am interested to try out Dropbox for all of our firm’s files to see how it handles the load.  However, Dropbox does not have as nice a web interface, which is important when you have tens of thousands of files inside of hundreds or thousands of client folders.  Also, Dropbox is currently limited to 2GB of space with no ability to buy more space – for now.  I know they plan on offering more space in the future, but we don’t know when or how much it will cost.

Basically, SS is transparent, and it just works. Syncing usually happens within seconds – basically instantaneously.  I highly recommend it.  But, I wouldn’t discourage you from trying out Dropbox.