Many professionals use handheld devices to maintain contact information while away from the office. Some devices offer wireless Internet access through which a professional may be able to view pages from the InterAction Web Client or InterAction Mobility.
Other users, however, have to rely on synchronization between Outlook and their handheld device.
Performing the Synchronization between the Handheld Device and Outlook
Users can synchronize their device with Outlook following the instructions provided with their synchronization software. Because the Microsoft Outlook to InterAction Sync happens on the Exchange Server instead of the actual Outlook client, the synchronization with InterAction does not interfere with the user’s synchronization of the device with Outlook.
Changes made to contact data on the device and then synchronized to Outlook are seen as changes made in Outlook when Microsoft Outlook to InterAction Sync runs.
Some handheld devices let each contact be assigned to only one category. InterAction and Outlook allow multiple categories per contact. For information on specifying which category to synchronize with these devices, see the Manage Categories dialog box in the InterAction Web Client.
Warning: Safe Synchronization and Your Handheld Device
Incorrectly synchronizing your phone or other handheld device can cause users to lose contact data! If your users synchronize Outlook with InterAction, instruct them on the following rules to prevent data integrity issues:
- Never synchronize a device with multiple workstations that also synchronize with InterAction. The different synchronization configurations on each machine can cause you to inadvertently overwrite and lose data.
- Carefully configure your synchronization conduit software. Most data integrity issues including duplicate contacts and lost data are caused by a poorly configured synchronization conduit between the device and Outlook.
- Verify that you are using the latest version of your device’s synchronization software.