A Users Guide To Offline Files

Transcription

1 Academic Services A Users Guide To Offline Files 1 Overview If you re using a laptop then you ll probably have come across offline file synchronisation. This tool allows for a virtually seamless network environment; your home drive, configured to be cached explicitly, will be available to you whether you are connected to the network or not. Offline files are currently limited to laptops. 2 Working With Offline Files When your connection status changes, an icon will appear to indicate that you have gone offline. The icon is shown in figure 1. An information balloon is also displayed, however this can be missed! When you go offline, only the synchronised files (stored in the Client Side Cache, or CSC) will be available on the laptop. Figure 1: The Working Offline icon. Upon reconnecting to the network, the network files are synchronised with your offline files. Effectively any changes made to files offline will be propagated back to the server. However there are scenarios where this might change: A. You attempt to synchronise older files to newer files on the server for example, you have been working offline at home. You then come into the office but forget your laptop, however you must and do make changes to these files. The next day you bring your laptop; if you logon to the laptop and then plug the LAN cable in, you ll get the pop up as shown in figure 2. If you plug in the LAN cable prior to logging on, the Synchronisation Manager will notify you of a file conflict as shown in figure 3. The choices (figure 3) are self explanatory; you can keep the network file, keep the offline file or keep both. B. You delete an offline file, but as described above you are unable to synchronise this change. If you then make changes to the corresponding network file, upon synchronisation the cached file will be deleted but the network file will remain. ICS Documentation 16/11/2007 1

2 Figure 2: Figure 3: C. Scenario B can easily be reversed. For example, you have been working on your laptop and have a number of files that have changed since the last synchronisation. You then logged on to your desktop PC and decided to delete a number of network files from your desktop, including some or all of the files which you have been working on from your laptop. Figure 4 shows how the Synchronisation Manager handles this situation; again the choices are self explanatory. Figure 4: ICS Documentation 16/11/2007 2

3 D. You are working on your desktop PC and produce a number of new documents which you save in your home drive. These new files will be added to the laptop s CSC you next connect it to the network and resynchronise. 3 Manual Synchronisation To synchronise files or folders manually, right click on the desired file or folder and choose synchronise. If necessary, you can synchronise the entire home drive by choosing the root drive, as shown in figure 5. The Synchronisation Manager can also be started from the Run command by typing mobsync. Figure 5: 4 Controlling and Configuring Synchronisation As an end user, you have some control over how synchronisation occurs. You can configure the Synchronisation Manager to run at logon, logoff or both. The Synchronisation Manager can also be configured to request permission to run prior to synchronising your offline files. To configure the manager, open the Synchronisation Manager (as described above) and then click on setup. Select the appropriate network connection from the drop down list and then tick (or untick) the check boxes underneath Automatically synchronise the selected items. The following check box, Ask me before synchronising the items, will cause the Synchronisation Manager to prompt you rather than automatically synchronising. Figure 6 provides an example of these settings. Certain files won t be cached during the synchronisation process. They are deliberately ignored in order to prevent corruption of the file, as the file is part of a competing replication technology. The files are filtered by extension, and are: *.SLM *.MDB *.LDB *.MDW *.MDE *.PST *.DB? ICS Documentation 16/11/2007 3

4 During the synchronisation process, you may see warnings in the log stating that the manager is unable to make a certain file available offline. This is shown in figure 7 and is expected behaviour if the file has an extension matching the list above. Figure 6: Figure 7: ICS Documentation 16/11/2007 4

5 Version Control: Written by: Peter AJ Reid Version 0.1: initial draft. Date: 16/01/2007 Version 1.0: document approved and converted to a PDF Date: 16/01/2007 Version 1.1: updated URL Date: 12/08/2008 Document Review: Last Reviewed By: Date: Date of Next Review: PAJR 19/11/ /11/2008 PAJR 20/11/ /11/2009 ICS Documentation 16/11/2007 5