How to Publish Palm PDA Data on the Web
An increasing number of people depend on PDA devices such as the Palm Pilot and Handspring Visor for managing their personal information. It is often convenient to publish the data from the PDA as a live Web database. Fortunately, with eCriteria, this is a quick and easy reality. Just follow the simple steps below to import your PDA data into eCriteria, and attach the data to a website, intranet, or corporate portal page.
Step 1 | Begin by using the HotSync feature of the popular PDA devices to coordinate the information with your desktop PC. For example, place your Palm Pilot in the cradle connected to your PC, and press the HotSync button. This will synchronize your data content. |
Step 2 | Load your desktop PC software application for the PDA device. For example, load the Palm Desktop Software. |
Step 3 | From the desktop application, select the type of data you wish to publish on eCriteria: Date, Address, To Do, or Memo. As an example, let’s chooseAddress data. |
Step 4 | From the desktop application, select the data category: All, Business, Personal, etc. from the list. For example, let’s choose All. |
Step 5 | Next, select the Export item from the File menu. Select Comma Separated (*.csv, *.txt) from the Export As: pull-down, and enter a file name for your export file. For example, use the file name: eCriteria_Palm_Export.csv. |
Step 6 | You must now select the fields from the PDA data that you wish to export. For the address data in our example, check the boxes for: Last Name, First Name, Title, Company, Work, Home, Fax, E-mail, Address, City, State, and Zip. You must remember the fields you selected for the next step because the Palm desktop application does not add a first line containing field names that is required by eCriteria. |
Step 7 | You may now close your desktop application program, and open a text editor such as Windows Notepad, or Wordpad. Open the PDA data export .csv file you just created above. You must add a new first line to this file that contains the database field name required for an eCriteria database. For our example you need a line like:
“lastname”,”firstname”,”title”,”company”,”work”,”home”,”fax”,”email”,”addr”, Remember that eCriteria does not allow blank spaces in field names. Save and close the .csv file. |
Step 8 | You’re almost done now. All you need to do is login to eCriteria, and select the Create a database as you upload text data tool in your admin area. You must go through the Web Database Publishing Wizard to create the database. When you’re prompted, you must select the PDA data export file you created above.
NOTE: you can simplify Step 8 by using the eCriteria Connect tool that allows you to directly connect to eCriteria from within Excel. |
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