How sync works
Your project lives in Lexbox in two copies: a FieldWorks Lite copy and a FieldWorks Classic copy. An edit reaches a colleague in up to three legs — some automatic, some not. If everyone on your team uses FieldWorks Lite, only leg 1 concerns you — legs 2 and 3 exist for teams that also work in FieldWorks Classic.
See it in action
Pick a question and step through what happens. Tap any colored trigger (automatic, the Sync button, their Send/Receive) to see where you'll find it.
An edit travels in three legs.
Leg 1: your device ⇄ Lexbox — automatic whenever you’re online. Leg 2: between the two copies inside Lexbox — someone presses the Sync button. Leg 3: Lexbox ⇄ your colleague — they run Send/Receive in FieldWorks Classic. Pick a question below to watch it happen.
Where you'll see this in the app
| 1 | In FieldWorks Lite: Synchronize in the sidebar (the item with the status dot), on the FieldWorks Lite tab. It shows Up to date or Pending, with counts of changes waiting in each direction. The button runs a sync right now. |
| 2 | The same dialog's Lexbox tab. Its two boxes — FieldWorks Lite and FieldWorks Classic — are the same two copies you see inside the Lexbox cloud in the diagram above. Between them: New data or No new data, and the button. On the Lexbox website, the button on your project's page does the same thing. |
| 3 | Nothing in FieldWorks Lite. This one happens on your colleague's computer, in FieldWorks Classic's Send/Receive. |
Under the hood
Show the technical detail
| On this page | Actually | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| FieldWorks Lite copy | A CRDT change database (SIL Harmony) | Every edit is a small change record; merging is automatic and gives the same result on every device. |
| Leg 1 “automatic” | HTTP sync plus a push channel (SignalR) | Runs after every edit, when you open a project, and when your connection comes back. A recovery loop retries every 5 minutes. |
| Leg 2 “the Sync button” | A merge job in the FwHeadless service | There is no schedule. It runs only when someone presses Sync in FieldWorks Lite or Sync FieldWorks Lite on the Lexbox project page. Jobs queue one project at a time; the very first sync imports the whole project and can take minutes. |
| FieldWorks Classic copy | A Mercurial repository (Language Depot) | The same repository FieldWorks Send/Receive has always used. |
| Leg 3 “Send/Receive” | Chorus over Mercurial | Unchanged for FieldWorks Classic users — FieldWorks Lite adds nothing they must learn. |
| “The same field” clashes | Deterministic merge rules | Between two Lite users, the most recent change wins. Between Lite and Classic (since the last leg-2 sync), the Classic value wins. Lite’s change history keeps everything. |
Full technical documentation: Sync.