A guide to Filr Synchronization

Transcription

1 A guide to Filr Synchronization A GUIDE TO FILR SYNCHRONIZATION 1 Syncing to your desktop 1 What is synchronized and when 2 Home space (H:\ drive) overall number of files and performance 3 Housekeeping 3 Archival 3 Net Folders: Access to files on shared network drives (J:\, U:\ etc.) 3 Causes of files not synchronizing 3 Understanding Pending Actions 3 Resolving Document Conflicts 4 Syncing to your desktop Make sure to upgrade any new versions of the Filr (currently 1.1) as these provide feature/performance/stability enhancements. You will have an alert in the Filr console when a new version is available. When thinking about file synchronization it is important to keep the number of files being synchronized to a reasonable number. This will improve performance and reliability. In an ideal world you would keep the total number of files to be synchronized to less than a few thousand. For optimal performance, the Filr application should not be configured to exceed the following synchronization limits: Recommended Maximum Number of Total Synchronized Files: 25,000 Maximum Size, Per Individual File: 5 GB When synchronizing files it is not the size of files, but the quantity as each individual file must be checked and compared to see if it needs synchronizing. Part of these checks is to detect document/file version conflicts. With this in mind it is highly recommended you create a folder, which will contain just the files you need to synchronize. You can also carefully select existing folders that contain the files you need, however you should perform some house keeping by removing redundant or duplicate files. For example you could create a folder called sync, either in the root of your home space (H:\sync) or in your My Documents (H:\My Documents\sync) Remember to configure the Filr application to synchronize the correct folders rather than the default My Files, which is the whole of your home space (H:\).

2 Please see the following image: What is synchronized and when Filr Client updates uploaded immediately Share Network space Changes made outside of Filr Web Browser Filr Mobile Filr Server Periodically scans network storage for changes made outside of Filr h:\ Home space School NetStorage Remote Filr will only synchronize files that are 5GB in size or less. The Filr application will check with the server every hour to see if any files have changed. When you make changes to files on your desktop, the Filr application will automatically detect the changes within a few seconds and will immediately upload the files. On-demand synchronization: To detect changes made by other Filr clients and directly to the network store/home space simply run Synchronize now via the Filr icon.

3 Home space (H:\ drive) overall number of files and performance Housekeeping It is worth performing a clean up of your files, deleting unused and duplicate files/folders even if you are not planning on synchronizing them as they will still be scanned by the Filr server. Archival If you have files that are not actively used and being retained for archival purposes, these could be compressed/zipped up into one large archive file with WinZip or 7zip. By doing this you retain the information and can compress hundreds or thousands of files into one. You could also look to move those files to a shared network drive like Storage On Demand. Net Folders: Access to files on shared network drives (J:\, U:\ etc.) Shared network areas are configure as Net Folders within Filr. By default not all shared areas are available. They must be requested, as users and teams need them. Net Folders follow the same rules regarding frequency of synchronization and files size limits as home spaces. Net Folders should target small well-defined sub folders of shared areas that are needed for synchronization or sharing. Causes of files not synchronizing The folder you are syncing is at the root of a volume or drive. The desktop app should be configured to use a sub folder for example c:\filr If Filr detects a conflict between the version of a document on the server and your local machine it will stop synchronizing that file. It will wait for you to resolve the conflict. See the Resolving Document Conflicts section below. The file is larger than 5GB. If you need to move files large than 5GB you can use 7zip to archive them and split into several files. Guides can be found on the internet 7zip split to volumes or try The file is still open in an application on another machine and has locked the file. You must close the program and allow the file to synchronize. Multiple users sharing a synchronized folder can cause conflicts if both edit and upload the document. This is especially true when one person edits a local synced copy and another user edits the file outside Filr via direct access to the H:\ or shared area drive. Understanding Pending Actions You might encounter any of the following synchronization issues, indicated by one of the following icons:

4 : There is an upload error. : There is an upload warning. : There is a download error. : There is a download warning. : There are upload and download errors. : There are upload and download warnings. : The client has not yet attempted to upload or download the file. If you are unsure why a document is not downloading or uploading, view the recent activity, as described in Viewing Recent Activity Some times these errors can be resolved by renaming the file or can be a sign that Filr has an incorrect/corrupt index of your files. The Filr administrator will need to run a re-index on the affected user or Net Folder Resolving Document Conflicts If a document is edited at the same time from various locations, conflicts can arise. To resolve document conflicts: 1. Right-click the Filr icon in the notification area. 2. Click Open Filr console. 3. Click Pending Changes.

5 4. Next to the conflict that you want to resolve, click Resolve, then choose one of the available options: Keep your version: Replaces the file on the Filr server with your version. Keep the server version: Discards your file and replaces it with the version on the Filr server. Keep both files: The file on the Filr server is saved as the original file, and your version of the file is renamed.