Justin,
The sample has not been tested in a 'disconnected' environment, however, the sample retrieves items from OnTime and then places them in the Outlook Tasks Folder -- this would allow for synchronization with a PDA, as well as accessing the items 'offline' from Outlook on a laptop, etc.
I did not write any code to take into account 'disconnected access', though I'm with you in believing this is a generic functionality of Outlook and that I would have had to write code to not support it (quite the opposite).
As for allowing disconnected access to OnTime data, with the OnTime SDK you could write custom Mobile apps that store data internally or utilize existing applications such as Outlook or Excel -- the Outlook solution uses Tasks as an example, but Defects, Features and Incidents can also be brought into Outlook as Items and placed in special folders -- using Custom Forms in Outlook, almost anything is possible.
The custom form functionality in Outlook, and the form region functionality in Outlook 2007 specifically bring a large range of functional features to the Outlook application that allow for a variety of integration possibilities.
With the right time and design, you could use Outlook as your OnTime client -- through the SDK (however, management of certain aspects would still require an official OnTime Client such as OnTime Windows or Web).
Just a side note, as I was discussing this with a co-worker the question of "What if I create a Task while on the train, will it show up in OnTime when I synchronize". The immediate answer to this is, "No", but the actual answer is "Yes". The sample provided is not exactly 'fully functional out of the box' and requires some work -- it is more or less a template for building your own Outlook integration with OnTime. As such, if you add in the ability to 'synchronize' native Outlook Tasks with OnTime Tasks and vice-versa, the answer becomes "Yes".
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David HigginsAxosoft