Luckily the Pilot's HotSync capabilities provide for two important features:

    1.  Backing Up "your life", &
    2.  Bigger/Better/Easier access & entry of your data (via
            the Palm Desktop).

If your like me, whenever possible (ie when your at your desk) you use the Palm Desktop with the Pilot comfortably resting in its cradle.

However, if you use your Pilot like I do, you may have noticed a small problem. Specifically, the "problem" occurs when there is more than just "you" scheduling your time. This other person (we will call them your Administrative Assistant - "Admin" for short) needs to be able to see and probably adjust your schedule "independently" from your accessibility to them.

As with any good "itch" it just awaited someone with the resources to "scratch" it. To that end, I caused to be created (John Coleman & I designed & wrote) "PilotShare".

PilotShare allows two (or more) people (PCs) to each run the Palm Desktop (NOT SIMULTANEOUSLY) and "share" the databases used!

To do this PilotShare:

    1. Places a "lock" on the shared Palm Desktop database,
    2. Copies the shared database to your local harddrive,
    3. Executes the Palm Desktop...
    4. Waits for the Palm Desktop to exit,
    5. Copies the database back from the local HD to the shared space,
    6. Removes the "lock".

To accomplish this PilotShare needs to know five (5) things:

    1. Remote Lock Folder           eg - \\NetworkFileServer\GpShare
    2. Remote Shared Data Folder    eg - \\NetworkFileServer\GpShare\SmithG
    3. Local Data Folder            eg - C:\Palm\SmithG
    4. Local Run Command            eg - C:\Palm\palm.exe
    5. Who to claim the lock for.

The first four of these are specified in a configuration file (and should be the same for all the intended PCs). The last is passed to the PilotShare program as a command line argument (as part of a shortcut):

    C:\Palm\PilotShare.exe George

The "Remote" Folders mentioned above are to point to a commonly accessible shared Network drive/folder with FULL RIGHTS (Create/Read/Write/Delete). While this drive/folder does NOT actually need to be on a separate machine from all the users, what ever machine it is on, should be up, running, and accessible at ALL times that a user might want to run their Palm Desktop.

PilotShare is offered as "Thank You Ware". What this means is that if you use it & like it, please send us a "Thank You" (and we suggest $20) to:

SNS/PilotShare
19726 170th Ave NE
Woodinville, WA 98072