A gateway service is provided for each remote workgroup that is defined. Kicking a gateway service is equivalent to right clicking on the associated remote workgroup, in the list of remote workgroups in Supervisor mode, and selecting Merge… from the context menu. When you kick a service by selecting it from the OfficeTalk Services dialog box and pressing Kick…, it will, in most cases, display the Merge Remote Workgroup wizard.
You may choose from the following options:
Send changes made to this workgroup to the remote workgroup.
Receive changes made to the remote workgroup.
Do Both.
Choose the required option and press Finish. OfficeTalk will perform the merge.
What OfficeTalk actually does depends entirely upon the replication method used. For example, if a synchronous replication method is chosen, OfficeTalk will perform the merge there and then. If the e-mail replication method is chosen, OfficeTalk will prepare an e-mail command and store it, ready to send, the next time you connect to the Internet.
The Merge Remote Workgroup wizard is not shown for direct connections since, in this case, changes to each workgroup are not exchanged. Instead, OfficeTalk asks you to confirm that you wish to merge, so that each workgroup may exchange certain information, such as mail messages, meeting invitations etc.
Usually, you would perform such data replications on a regular basis. You can specify a schedule for replication by selecting the appropriate gateway service and pressing the Settings… button. The Remote Workgroup Gateway Settings property sheet is displayed, showing the Merge Times page.
Press the New… button to add a schedule of times for merging data.
OfficeTalk gives you the choice of treating differently attachment data, such as e-mail, note attachments, documents and mail merge documents. In the Attachments page of the Remote Workgroup Gateway Settings property sheet, OfficeTalk gives you the following choices:
Always replicate attachment data.
Never replicate attachment data.
Replicate attachment data at separate times from other data according to a specified schedule. Press the Attachment Update Times to specify a separate attachment replication schedule.