External Link to price file will only one Business Plus user to logon!?

[neilspinney]

Hi Guys and Girls

Just wondering if any of you have come across this before.

We currently have Actinic V10 Business Plus running on a Dell server.
I use my laptop to connect to Actinic and one staff member uses their PC to use Actinic as well.

This set up works okay until a user links our price file (access database) to Actinic.

When our Access price file database is linked, the only user that can log into Actinic is the user that linked the price file.

Is there any way we can have a linked price file and allow both users to login?

The reason we have a price file linked as we have 6 car manufactures that constantly change there prices.

Any feedback or suggestion are welcome.

Cheers
Neil

[neilspinney]

Hi Guys and Girls

Just wondering if any of you have come across this before.

We currently have Actinic V10 Business Plus running on a Dell server.
I use my laptop to connect to Actinic and one staff member uses their PC to use Actinic as well.

This set up works okay until a user links our price file (access database) to Actinic.

When our Access price file database is linked, the only user that can log into Actinic is the user that linked the price file.

Is there any way we can have a linked price file and allow both users to login?

The reason we have a price file linked as we have 6 car manufactures that constantly change there prices.

Any feedback or suggestion are welcome.

Cheers
Neil

Take it no one uses Actinic Business Plus the same way we do!?


Neil

[leehack]

I'd guess that the 'linker' is administrator and as you can only have one administrator, it is therefore not possible. Opening up 2 connections would probably mean 2 people could link files and that would be can open worms all over the place.

[neilspinney]

Hi Lee

Thanks for the response.

The problem I am having is we have six car franchises and they all change their prices at the drop of a hat.

Ideally I would like to have Actinic link to a "price file" so I wouldn't have to manually run a price update every few days.

Any ideas on how we could do this?

Yours

Neil

[leehack]

My initial reaction Neil is that rather than some sort of permanent link, can you instead turn to a routine you run once every couple of days. So you go in, connect, do your updates and come out, with no lingering connection. I'd liken your situation to running an actinic site in sterling and euros, i have a couple of customers that do that, they update euro prices according to exchange rates once a week, accepting that the general up and down movements will balance out over time and not worth doing it more often.

I'd have thought a master spreadsheet/database with lists from your suppliers within (and updated each time as changes occur), from that you compile a list using your product references and the updated prices from the suppliers. You then have a single action to update the products that have changed from that file, either by direct database connection (scarey), hierarchicals (woolley) or manually (stupidity).

Can you get rid of the permanent connection or does it serve another purpose? You seem to have a connection in place that is screwing you up, yet you only use it once every couple of days?

[neilspinney]

Hi Lee

We could unlink the "price file" but when we currently do this it looses all prices or reverts to the old price. I can't find a way to stop this!?

If we could get the new price to stick in actinic we could link the "price file" once a week to update pricing and then unlink to allow other users to login.


Neil

[leehack]

I'm by no means an expert in this area, but as i understand there is a price field and a linked price field, whilst linked the linked field is used and once unlinked the price field is used, sure i read that somewhere on here. I can vaguely recall a way of fixing that so the linked field content became the price field, but that could just be a bad memory on my behalf.

As i understand you need to cease using the linked price field and use a system to update the price field directly as that is then a permanent change, rather than the somewhat temporary nature of a linked file.

There are people like Jan and Fergus and Duncan are far more in tune with this area than me though, take what i say with a pinch of salt unless confirmed by someone more in the know.

[Duncan Rounding]

Lee is correct. There is a separate table created when linking. You should be able to develop a query to update the one form the other.

If it's only once a week however then you could simply create an import file to just update the pricing.

[neilspinney]

Many Thanks for all the help!!

I know this a stupid question but how do I create a file I can import into actinic?

Neil

[leehack]

If just straight products, i'd look no further than just a flat file import, inbuilt help has details and samples, that's a real easy way to update prices.

[Jan]

Hi Neil,

You can't link to an excel spreadsheet with business plus because excel is single user however you should be able to link to a table in an access database. If you can't then it will be down to permissions on the table in the access database or a bug in the Actinic.

Regards,