In some circumstances you may find the need to 'sync' data between two machines.
For example:
You have Sitebulb installed on your office and home machine, and wish to make your audits accessible on both.
You work in a remote team, and other team members need access to the audits that their colleagues have carried out.
While it is not possible to truly sync data using a Sitebulb Desktop, there is a way to achieve a similar result, by making audit data automatically available in a cloud/network location, that can be picked up by different machines or users. The way to do this is to make use of the option to save export data to a custom folder.
Navigate to Data Export Settings
Access the Data Exports section towards the bottom of the left-hand menu when setting up your project.
This page offers two save locations - the first is for the CSV/Excel exports - but we are not interested in that for this use case.
Automatically save the .sbp file in a custom folder
In this case, we want to 'Select where to save audit project after the audit has completed.'
This option relates specifically to the audit project share file (.sbp), which you would normally get by going into the Audit Overview and hitting the Share Audit button.
By clicking Select on the right hand side you can choose where to save audit data to once the audit has completed.
You will want to set your save location to somewhere that is accessible to all users who need to sync the data, so this might be a Dropbox file or a network drive.
That this is a project-level setting, it will NOT automatically set this for every new project you create.
You can set the custom save folder either when setting up a new audit, or when you edit the project settings.
Import the .sbp file
This next part is necessarily manual - from the Project screen click the Imported tab.
On the Import tab click the blue Select file button. This will open a explorer/finder window.
Go find your .sbp file and click open.
Click the green Start Import button. The import window will load up and show your progress; once it finishes you will be able to view your newly imported audit.
View your Imported Audits
Your newly imported audit will live under the 'Imported' folder. You can convert imported audits into Projects if you wish to see them under the main Projects tab.
Please note that each Audit will convert into an individual project. Imported audits cannot currently be attached to existing projects.
Automated Sitebulb Desktop audits using scheduling & custom save folders
While the custom save location works for any audit, it is most powerful when you use it alongside recurring or scheduled audits.
The features combine to allow you to set up fully automated workflows, such as:
Set up a project to run weekly recurring audits on a website
Set up export files to save to a shared folder on Dropbox
Give other team members access to the shared folder
Every week, new export files will appear in the shared folder, allowing team mates to grab the new files and build their reports with all the fresh data.