SellerDeck Business Plus 2016

[Sheltons]

Hi,
I've had a look around the info relating to Business Plus and cannot find what I need to know before deciding to upgrade from Business V11 (a big decision as I am told I would have to install all version since V11 and restore, backup, restore through each version to get to 2016) So, if some current users of the Business Plus could shed some light I could make an informed decision how and when we will upgrade.

I want to know how it does it's multi-user, i.e. is the actinic.mdb and files (Site1) held in a central location (in our case it would be a Shared folder on Windows Server) and all the Desktops Clients point to this location via UNC/ Mapped Drive for it's data?

If the above is the case, has anyone tried doing this over a VPN connection, as in work from home and access the data on the server via VPN. I suspect this won't work as all the graphic files would be stored on the share creating too much data traffic to be viable.

If my assumption above is correct then I would assume you would have to make sure that no work is done on the data on the server and you would have to do a restore from a local copy when you got back into work? Or use VPN and Remote Desktop into a Works PC - Potentially workable.

I look forward to any replies.

John.

[padimark]

Hi John

Not an expert for sure! We ran on a shared network drive upto SD v2014 no problems. When we went to 2014 and now on 2016 having the sites folder on the shared network drive was painfully slow maybe minutes to complete certain basic functions!

We moved to a local drive for the Business plus machine and improved performance considerably and the User machine was just as quick connecting across the network to the Business plus machine.

Hope that helps

[Sheltons]

Hi John

Not an expert for sure! We ran on a shared network drive upto SD v2014 no problems. When we went to 2014 and now on 2016 having the sites folder on the shared network drive was painfully slow maybe minutes to complete certain basic functions!

We moved to a local drive for the Business plus machine and improved performance considerably and the User machine was just as quick connecting across the network to the Business plus machine.

Hope that helps

Hi,
thanks for the reply.

Interesting that you found a significant difference between V2014 & v2016 when using the a shared drive.

I am a little confused when you say 'Business Plus Machine' and 'User Machine'. Are you saying the Database was on another machine to the site1 data?

John.

[Sheltons]

Hi,
thanks for the reply.

Interesting that you found a significant difference between V2014 & v2016 when using the a shared drive.

I am a little confused when you say 'Business Plus Machine' and 'User Machine'. Are you saying the Database was on another machine to the site1 data?

John.

mmm, don't understand how you can search and search, not find what your looking for and then a few days later find exactly what your looking for:

http://community.sellerdeck.com/showthread.php?t=44532

I've now got a good idea of how it works, look like they will most likely be using an ODBC connection to the Access Database (actinic.mdb) which allows the Site1 data to be else where.

For a remote user this means we should be able to use the ODBC connection to the database over a VPN and have the Site1 Data local on the remote pc for speed.

Any new or changed pictures will then have to be syncd via an app like FreeFileSync to a USB Drive and then synced when brough back into work. Some my say just do a SellerDeck Backup but from experience in v11, it does not backup the design files as in Photoshop & illustrator.

We sometime use Microsoft OneDrive for tranmitting files back to the office so may have to create the same Site1 Structure in that.

Still some scenarios to think about, but on the wwhole it lookes like it could be workable.

John.

[mash]

Business Plus - synchronisation server

I had to set up Business Plus 2016 yesterday, it was easier than SD14 which was great news. The only issue was connections to/from the synchronisation server. They have different ports set for SD16 (via ports 54385 and 54386).

There is a knowledge base article outlining this: Communication with the synchronization server has failed .

Within a couple of hours I had it up and running which is great, master copy on the service, Business Plus User (BPU) on the workstations.

It was quite smooth process.

Thanks

[malbro]

Hi,
I've had a look around the info relating to Business Plus and cannot find what I need to know before deciding to upgrade from Business V11 (a big decision as I am told I would have to install all version since V11 and restore, backup, restore through each version to get to 2016)
John.

John

Whilst that is the recommended way to upgrade it doesn't require you to upload each version, just to do the upgrade on the PC. You can install all versions of SellerDeck on the same machine as they use different folders. Once you have the finished working version you can set the version to TEST MODE and upload to your site, this generates a separate web site to your live one in a folder underneath the web site. So if your main site is www.mydomain.co.uk with an acatalog folder for the shop, then the test site would be www.mydomain.co.uk/acatalog/test. you can then check out the operation of the test site without interfering with your main site.

[saucysal]

Tips from my experience

I have some tips regarding some of the points raised in this thread:

Upgrading to 2016 I found much easier than any previous version upgrades, took less than a minute per site, followed by a few extra minutes re-updating ActinicExtras.js, Actinic.pm and TestSettings.pl with my particular stuff (eg capitalisation, change of ports settings for my smtp).

The upgrade solved issues that we had previously with sync server, and strangely corrected some corruption on one site, no longer takes an hour to run Also Boughts (now 1 minute), and no longer getting error messages on each upload which we had for years.

We used to have Sellerdeck on office server, multi site and one other user. VPN at home. All slow as server was out-dated, under-spec, Windows XP. Changed to high spec lap top for main machine, using a bit like a server but not. Take lap top home each night, where have fast broadband. Considerably better. No regrets at downgrading to a lap top, should have done sooner. Slight nuisance at having to click sync server message when opening sites on Sellerdeck first time at work or home so that it finds the different ip addresses, but not major problem - takes a fraction of a second to click Yes. User has no problem at work. Don't expect user to want to use at his home. Laptop also useful if away from home or work. No vpn needed. Back up laptop every night when asleep.

Sarah