KEEPING YOUR DATAFILE IN STEP WITH THE PARISH MASTER ==================================================== A workspace has ONE master datafile on the server. Everybody's work has to reach it, and what reaches it has to come back to everybody else. The two tick boxes on the Server Actions window decide how much of that happens by itself. They look similar and they are not. One of them only ADDS things; the other REPLACES your whole datafile. That is the difference to keep in mind, and it is why they are two separate settings rather than one. Both belong to the DATAFILE, not to the computer. If the same computer is used for two datafiles - the parish's own and a copy someone brought on a memory stick - each one keeps its own answer, and a copy that should stay out of the way stays out of the way. SYNC WITH MASTER ---------------- This is the everyday one, and it is the one to leave ticked. Each time Parish Record Keeper is started, it works out what has been changed in this datafile since the last time it synced, writes those changes as CHANGE NOTES, and sends them to the workspace. Then, if you are the administrator, it takes in the change notes the others have sent and applies them here. Only the CHANGES travel - the baptism you entered, the address you corrected, the contribution you posted. Your datafile is never replaced by this, and nothing already in it is thrown away. Where two people changed the same thing, the program does not guess: it files the disagreement in a "Sync conflicts" folder beside your datafile and leaves your own version in place, so that a person can look at it afterwards. What happens to your notes depends on who you are: - ADMINISTRATOR. You take the others' notes in, and they become part of the next master you publish. That is how everybody else receives them. - MEMBER. Your notes wait in the workspace for an administrator to take in. They are not applied by every other copy one by one - there is one master, and the work comes back to you inside it. The first time a datafile could sync, the program asks whether it should, and remembers the answer. Nothing of yours ever leaves the computer before that question has been answered. The whole round runs when the program STARTS. When you leave with the EXIT button after changing records, you are also asked whether to SEND your changes straight away, so that the administrator has them the same day instead of at your next start. Answer NO and nothing is lost: they go out by themselves at the next start. Leaving only sends - it never takes anything in, because closing time is the wrong moment for conflicts or a slow line. If the program is shut down half way through sending, the next start simply sends the same work again. If the round finds nothing to do, you will not notice it at all. You are only told when it has left something for you to look at. Some changes are too big for change notes. Changing the ACCOUNTS themselves - adding an account, merging two, moving a scope - changes what a figure MEANS, and a note saying "post 50 to account 4" cannot cross that. The same is true after a repair that renumbers records. In those cases the round refuses, says so, and asks you to send the whole datafile instead. That is not a fault; it is the program refusing to post your figures against the wrong things. TAKE NEW MASTERS AUTOMATICALLY ------------------------------ This is the one to think about before ticking. When it is ticked and a newer master appears on the server, that master REPLACES the datafile you are working with, without asking. A dated copy of your old datafile is kept first, in the DataFiles folder beside it, so nothing is destroyed - but the file you go on working in is the one from the server. Because of that, the program will not do it while your datafile holds work that has not reached the server. It checks, and if there is anything here that the server has not got, it asks you instead of replacing, and tells you why. Send your version first, and then take the master. WHEN BOTH BOXES ARE TICKED. Before a new master is taken, SYNC WITH MASTER first sends what you changed since the last round. Once that has reached the workspace, the master is taken without asking, and your own changes are then put back on top of it, so you keep seeing your work while it waits for the administrator. Where the new master changed the same thing differently, the disagreement goes to the "Sync conflicts" folder as usual. If the sending fails (no connection, or the accounts of the master have changed), you are asked about the master instead, exactly as if this box were not ticked. Both answers also stay with this computer when a new master replaces the datafile: the master brings the administrator's data, not the administrator's choice of these two boxes. The safe way to use the two together is to leave SYNC WITH MASTER ticked and this one UNTICKED. You will then be asked each time a new master appears, which takes one click and leaves you in charge of the moment. Tick this one as well only where the computer is not really worked on - a screen in the office that only needs to show current data, for instance. Untick it on any computer where somebody enters records. WHEN SOMETHING GOES WRONG ------------------------- Nothing here ever deletes your data to make a problem go away. - The change notes could not be sent. They are kept on this computer and the next round sends the same work again. Nothing is lost. - Notes arrived that disagree with what is here. Your version stays; the other one is written to the "Sync conflicts" folder beside your datafile. Open the Server Actions window and use IMPORT A CHANGE FILE FROM THIS COMPUTER to look at it. - The accounts of the master have changed. The round refuses until you take that master, because change notes cannot cross a change of accounts. - A new master replaced your datafile and you want the old one back. It is in the DataFiles folder with the date in its name. Open the SYNC form and load it there to merge anything that was in it. Everything a round does is written to Logs\SyncIncorporated.txt, which stays on this computer even after the notes themselves have left the server. DOING IT BY HAND ---------------- Neither tick box takes anything away from you. SYNC ALL ON SERVER, on the Server Actions window, does exactly the same round at the moment you press it, and all the other buttons - publishing a master, sending your version, downloading one - work as they always did. See also: ServerActions.txt for the window as a whole, and UnderstandingSyncing.txt for what syncing does record by record.