Importance of Snapshot Syncing

[Charlesn]

I've just uploaded a site on behalf of a client (www.ahapremier.com) which I have upgraded from their old V6 version of Developer into V7. They are now managing the orders successfully using V7 and I am updating the content.

I wanted to know just how much I can do on the site (and upload) without it having any unwanted implications on my client downloading the orders.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Charles

[Bruce]

Charles,

If they / you have stock monitoring enabled, then it will be necessary to regularly pass snapshots between the two PC's to maintain correct stock quantities. If Customer Accounts are being created on the Download Machine then you need to get a snapshot and update the site for them to become active. If the setup is such that in Business Settings | Options | Allow on this PC, your machine is set to 'Catalog Maintenance', 'Design Changes' and 'network Setup' and the download machine is set to only 'Order Processing' then you can make any changes necessary, add or remove products, change sesign etc without having to necessarily pass over a snapshot for the customer to be able to process orders. If any of the first two scenarios are happening then the synching is really necessary.

Hope this helps,

Kind regards,

[Charlesn]

Nice one Bruce, this is spot on.

Thanks
Charles

[advwebsys]

and a related topic....

we are currently running developer v7.03 build fbia (US) and we've recently downloaded the latest upgrade - 7.05fjba, although we've not installed it yet.

we have a customer who just ordered an order manager license, which i assume is at the fjba level.

now then......

when we finish this customer's catalog, will their fjba order manager be able to accept our fbia snapshot? or will we have to upgrade first?

and......

after we upgrade, i assume we need to tell all our other customers who we do work for to upgrade as well?

this has always confused me!

[TraceyHand]

Can I just add.... working this way does cause problems with processing OFFLINE orders though!
If your clients PC is set to order processing only and (s)he doesn't have a regularly updated catalogue content then, if a customer calls them up to place an offline order, they may find they don't have the item they need to process it in their catalogue!
Does that make sense?
I found that out the hard way this week!

[Bruce]

David,

when we finish this customer's catalog, will their fjba order manager be able to accept our fbia snapshot? or will we have to upgrade first?

If you want the transition to be smooth and flawless, I would suggest upgrading to FJBA

after we upgrade, i assume we need to tell all our other customers who we do work for to upgrade as well?

Spot on, you got it right. With v7, downgrades within version releases are possible, meaning you can send them a 7.0.5 snapshot and on them importing it, it would downgrade it to the installed version etc but to be on the safer side it would be better if they too upgraded to the version you are on.

What you could also do is to install the FJBA on a seperate system so that it does not necessarily mean an upgrade for all your other clients as some of them may not be too willing to upgrade just because you have.

Kind regards,

[advwebsys]

Spot on, you got it right. With v7, downgrades within version releases are possible, meaning you can send them a 7.0.5 snapshot and on them importing it, it would downgrade it to the installed version etc but to be on the safer side it would be better if they too upgraded to the version you are on.

I recall trying to do this with an earlier v7 release - we uprgarded our developer code, then sent a snapshot to a customer with an earlier level of catalog, and it didn't import, so the customer had to upgrade.

We'll see what happens......