Order Manager / Business Database Linking

Hi all,

Like a few people I guess, I now need to separate the order processing from one machine to another. At present we use one PC with Business V6 to manage the site and process orders. I know one can simply install Order Manager to a second PC and import a snapsot, not a problem.

However and in a thread I read sometime ago, I learned that one needs to link OM to the Business database to manage stock on the web site as OM does not do this. The big question is how? I have dowloaded OM and read the documentation, searched this forum, searched Google, searched the knowledgebase but can't find how?

As we are gearing up for the Christmas period, my ideal would be to have multiple OM machines synchronised to the Business's database. Is this possible? Even if it were two OM machines, that would be wonderful so that one person could process even order numbers and one odd, then allowing me to continue to manage the site via Business. Is this a logical concept?

I assume this has got to be possible as I am sure Actinic must be such a scalable product, but how does one accomplish such a task?

May I ask, is there anyone on the Community Forum that can point me in the right direction or who has already setup something similar? If the latter, is it possible to run multiple machines with OM connected to one Business database and if so, if an order is processed on one OM PC, is the result instantaneously shown on the second OM PC, such as moving the order from the ‘pending’ to ‘completed’ folder? Similar, if one person is using a record, does the database lock the record?

Sorry for so many questions, but time is pressing and I need to
find such a scalable solution.

It's as if we need a 'Networked Actinic' product. An idea for the developers?

Regards,
Mark

[m@rk.to]

Hi all,

I am just wondering if anyone has such a solution to this problem please? Is there anyone out there using Actinic Business and Orrder Manager on two seperate machines with linked database? It would be great to know if this is feasible and to connect more than one OM if possible?

Regards,
Mark

[cdicken]

If you use Actinic Business rather than Actinic Order Manager, then you could link both Businesses to the same central database using the External Linking feature.

This will keep the two machines in synch and you can disable all the uploading commands on the download machine in 'Business Settings | Options'.

You could not have multiple download machines I'm afraid - but you could consider pumping all the orders into a central Accounts package like Sage which could be shared amongst multiple users.

[m@rk.to]

Hi Chris,

This is *exactly* what I want to do, though Actinic Sales tell me it cannot be done.

I have Business and a number of licenses, so running two copies of Business would not be a problem. Without wishing to sound like a complete pleb ;-) is there a step by step guide somewhere to show how to do this? I can't seem to find anything anywhere.

I have a 'today' problem to separate the design and order processing functions over two PCs and within a month or so, can think about migrating to Sage Line 50.

So, any help on this would be *most* welcome :-)

Cheers,
Mark

[m@rk.to]

Arrrggghhhh!!! (Business to Business Linking)

I have now installed two copies of Business on each of one PC. I have gone to external linking feature on the sibling PC and found the share on the parent server to be given a warning that one cannot connect to a Catalog database.

This is all very frustrating.

What am I missing or doing wrong I wonder?

[cdicken]

See my answer at http://community.actinic.com/showthr...&threadid=3176