Smartconnect within Microsoft Money
Smartconnect is a technology within the product which allows the program to download and update itself automatically. This enables to product to stay up to date with new banking information or news headlines or patches to the product.
The technology has been in Money since the 98 version, and is used each time an Internet Update is performed (either manually or automatically). Over time, the system has improved, and smartconnect can now download large updates in small pieces (from Money 2002 onwards). An example of this is when the 2005 version of Money is updated to version 14.0.x.1105, the update is quite large and so comes down in bits. Modem users especially benefit from this.
Smartconnect usually takes place in the background, but occasionally will be in the foreground (for example with the Microsoft Money 2005 QFE#2 update as seen above).
Once downloads have been received, the technology installs the item and sometimes the product group put a announcement item on the Money home page (this itself, has been retrieved using the same technology).