Informant for Android and Informant for iOS have two data sources that they can use. Each one can use its own internal database or it can share the devices database.

Much like when you look at your kitchen faucet, it has hot and cold water. You can use hot water only or cold water only or both. The water comes to the faucet from two places, cold water comes directly from the tap to your house and faucet. Hot water goes from the tap to your hot water heater then to your faucet.

Cold water can never be hot water it doesn’t go through the hot water heater and hot water (stay with me on the analogy) will always be hot when its selected at the faucet, when all things are working as they should the hot water selection at the faucet is not going to give ice cold water when turned on.

In Informant for iOS if you have the application configured to use the iOS data you are viewing the iOS database directly and any data that you enter in Informant will be assigned to the devices database not the Informant database. This is important to distinguish because if your data in Informant is assigned to the iOS database it will impact how the data is synced, backed up and what its limitations are regards the use of tags etc. None of which is handled by Informant as the above items are all handled at the device level. iOS data is hot water, data assigned to Informant is cold water and while they come from different sources Informant can display the data together, giving you a blend called warm water. Your iOS data shown with your Informant data. This is when an Apple may or may not be an Apple. If you don’t know what your source is for the data you could think that you created an iOS item when in reality it is assigned to the Informant database. Whew! Theres a lot right there to tell you how to get warm water.

In Android it is quite similar. In Informant for Android your device can sync to Google Calendar, this is the built in database/sync for the Android device built in calendar.

Now here is where the fun starts. The Informant application can also sync to Google Calendar along with many other services. Doesn’t that sound like a recipe for all sorts of confusion?

Truth is though that it isn’t. When you sync Informant directly to Google you have options, first you can sync to a different Google account than what the device is defaulted to or you can sync to the same Google account that the device is using but you will be able to take advantage of the extra items that Informant can sync to and from Google that the device cannot.

If you are using the devices Google calendar in Informant but you are syncing Informant to a data source as well you will need to be sure that your data is properly assigned to use the sync service of your choice otherwise you will say “This is not the Informant Android data that I was looking for”.

In both cases as the user of Informant you will need to make sure that you know where your data is coming from or going to.

by

Wesley Sandlin

Global Support Manager