In many ways Arc2Earth Sync was modeled after DropBox, the excellent service to synchronize files between computers. One of the best features of DropBox (besides that it *just works*) is the ability to share folders with other users. Everyone sees the exact same data and can colaborate easily without the usual friction of file downloading or emailing attachments. Likewise, the originator of the folder share has the ability to control who has access and how long that access exists.
It was this same type of frictionless data sharing that we wanted to bring to ArcGIS users looking to work on small, ad-hoc projects with a list of remote users, some of whom were not always online. For early Arc2Earth users, this was accomplished using KML files that were edited by remote users in Google Earth and then emailed and imported into the master file back at some home base. This actually worked once it was setup correctly but has a myriad of small issues that when taken as a whole, make the solution sub optimal at best.
Table Shares in Sync look to change this completely. A Share is time based access to a private table in any Sync Table Provider (Google Fusion Tables, EarthBuilder, CartoDB etc) that *just works* from the Sync desktop client. There’s not much needed to share a table, just the email address of the intended user. An notification is generated and sent automatically, they would only need to click on the link to accept the share. After that, their Sync client will add the table and immediately start downloading the latest data. If you set the Share to expire at a certain time, the table automatically disappears from their table list. All edits through the share are done via a proxy so those users never have native access to the underlying table (say, in Fusion Tables) so you can be assured that Sync is the only way they can access your data. Once the share is in place, they can interact with the table in ArcMap/ArcCatalog/models as they would with any other local geodatabase. If they went offline, they could continue making edits in ArcMap that would subsequently be synchronized when network access was restored.
Another benefit of DropBox shares is the folder is available online from the website. With Sync, this applies as well except that access is available using standard APIs instead of by download. So, if editing data via ArcMap on a laptop in the field is not available, they could use the ArcGIS iOS or Android app to collect data instead.
To share a table, open it’s main properties window and goto the Shares tab
This would generate a invite email that looks like this:
After accepting by clicking on the link, the table would immediatley appear in their Sync client. Start editing!
The best way to understand Sync Table Shares is to try it out, you can sign up for the beta here. Invite a friend or two and share a table between the group, you can all make and see edits in near real time.
