Title

Asks for the name of your channel. Enter the name of your channel, or put in "Hello World" if you are using our example for your first channel.

Location

The URL of the home page of your channel Website. If you are using our example for your first channel, you would enter http://www.hwgazette.com/avantgo/index.html here.

Category (public channels only)

The Category setting is available only for public channels. The admin user creates public channel categories and subcategories. A list of all categories and subcategories is available in the Category property’s drop-down menu. This setting allows M-Business Server to organize public channels by the categories that the admin user creates.

For a test channel, you can leave this as None (Miscellaneous). If you wish to create a special category, such as test, click the Create Category link on the left.

For more information on categories, see Organizing public channels in categories.

Description (public channels only)

The Description setting only is available for public channels. The admin user types a short channel description in this field. Users browsing for a public channel see this description and it helps them to understand what kind of information is contained in the public channel.

Channel Size Limit

The maximum size in kilobytes (KB) that the entire channel can consume on a device. M-Business Server compresses web pages for efficiency; the size limit reflects the compressed size, not the original size.

Some channels are very large and consume a large portion of the available memory on a mobile device. By entering a size limit, you prevent the channel from growing beyond that limit.

If a channel's pages add up to more than the size you specify here, some pages are not downloaded during a synchronization. 100KB should be a large enough size limit for getting started with your first channel.

For more information on how the channel size limit is calculated and the trade-offs you face when you set this limit, see Size limit issues and Your channel's Channel Size Limit.

For information on troubleshooting "This page is not available on the device" messages, which are common when your channel exceeds its maximum size limit, see Channel troubleshooting and debugging tips.

Link Depth

Specifies the number of levels of links to follow from the channel's main page. If you set this to 0, for example, M-Business Sync Server returns only the page for the main location of the channel. If you set link depth to 1, it follows the links on the main page and downloads all of those pages as well. The greater the link depth, the more pages your channel downloads, which consumes more memory. Generally, do not set the link depth to greater than 1 or 2.

Include Images

If you are creating your first channel using our Hello World Gazette, even though you do not have any graphics yet, you are creating this channel with the M-Business channel limitations in mind, and will be making graphics that are nice and small. So select the Include Images checkbox.

For information on creating images for your channel site, see Designing graphics for channel pages.

Color Depth (group and personal channels only)

Sets the allowed color depth for a channel's images. The default selection is Automatic, which downloads color images to the device with the highest color depth that the device can support. Select a different setting to cap the color depth at a lower level and prevent images from exceeding channel capacity on devices that support greater color depth.

The following color depth options are available:

Lowering the number of bits allowed reduces synchronization time and saves memory on your device.

Follow Offsite Links

If your Link Depth is set to 1 or higher, Follow Offsite Links indicate whether your channel should include pages from a server other than the one on which the main page of your channel resides. An offsite link is:

Sync Only

Check the Sync Only box if you want the channel content never to expire on the device. You would only do this with a channel that you expect have unchanging content over an extended period of time. Checking Sync Only for such a channel eliminates most of the communication with the web server that is required to determine if the web pages on the device need to be updated.

With connected users, this decreases the time it takes to synchronize the device. With wireless users, it decreases the time it takes to display the page every time the user accesses it — wireless users are more likely to notice the difference.

Allow Binary Distribution

Check Allow Binary Distribution only if the channel is a binary file, for example, an .exe or .dll file. Because most binary files are applications, which do not require frequent updating, also set the refresh rate to Only once. It is also useful to check the Hide from User option.

Hide From Users (group and personal channels only)

Check Hide From Users to hide the channel subscription from a user. A user will not see this channel listed either in the M-Business Server Personal Mode interface or in M-Business Client on the device. Hiding a channel is useful when synchronizing binary files.

Web Fetch Timeout

Web Fetch Timeout is the number of seconds that M-Business Server should wait for the web server hosting the channel's content to respond when a user is synchronizing. If that web server does not respond within this period of time, the channel's content is not updated in the current synchronization. The default is 90 seconds.

Start Sync URL (group channels only)

Enter a URL in this field only if the channel is delivering a custom application that requires some type of backend processing to be performed before the channel’s web content is downloaded. For more information on using Start Sync and End Sync URLs, see Using Start Sync and End Sync URLs to perform processing before and after channel synchronization.

End Sync URL (group channels only)

Enter a URL in this field only if the channel is delivering a custom application that requires some type of backend processing to be performed after the channel’s web content is downloaded. See Using Start Sync and End Sync URLs to perform processing before and after channel synchronization.

Refresh (group and personal channels only)

Check the Refresh setting to specify the frequency of on-device channel updates.

Remember the following when considering Refresh options.