CMAssistant: How to install an upgrade or update
Links to the latest upgrades and/or updates are obtained through Polytrope Support. This page explains how to install an upgrade or update.
Upgrades vs updates; registration codes
When you move from one numbered version of CMAssistant to a version with a higher number, for example, from version 6.0 to version 6.3, that is an upgrade. Upgrades are not free and are available only to qualifying licensees. You are a qualifying licensee if your maintenance contract is active. To find out if you qualify, or to renew your maintenance contract, contact Polytrope Support. The first time you install CMAssistant 6.3 you will need a registration code. We will send this to qualifying licensees on request.
When you move from one release of a particular version of CMAssistant to a later release of the same version - for example, from 6.3r1 to 6.3r2 - that is an update. If you qualified for the upgrade to 6.3, then your license entitles you to download and install updates to that version without additional charge and no new registration code will be required.
What gets updated?
As of version 6.2 (released January 2009), CMAssistant consists of three files. When you perform an update, you will be replacing just one of these files.
- The file CMASSISTANT6x contains all of our programming, the forms that you use to edit data, reports, etc. This is the file that you open first, the file that you do all your work in, the file that, for you, is the "face" of CMAssistant, so we call this the front-end file. This is the file that gets replaced when you do an update.
- The file cmassistant6data contains most of your data.
- The file cmassistantXimages is a data file, too, but this one contains only the cover art for your issue records. The data files are called "back end" files because, for the most part, they are invisible to you.
Normally you will be updating only #1, the front-end file named "CMASSISTANT6x.fp7". This file contains NONE of your data.
Installing an update if you are NOT using FileMaker Server
Here's how to do the update if the files are stored on a normal workstation (that is, if you are NOT using FileMaker Server). NOTE that this is a simple process and can pretty easily be done by almost anybody with access to the computer on which your CMAssistant files are stored. You don't have to have be an IT specialist to do this!
- Download the correct zip archive. You will get the link from Polytrope Support or from CMAssistant itself.
- Unzip the zip archive and extract from it the file "CMASSISTANT6x.fp7" that is inside. When you're finished extracting this new file, leave the folder that contains it open so you can come back to it easily. If you are unfamiliar with zip archives, click here.
- Close CMAssistant on any and all computers and, just to be safe, quit FileMaker Pro as well.
- Locate the existing CMAssistant folder where your existing files are stored and open it up.
- Move the existing (old) file named "CMASSISTANT6x.fp7" to the trash/recycle bin.
- Drag the new front-end file from the folder that you left open in step 2 above, into the existing CMAssistant folder that you opened in step 4.
That's it. You should open CMAssistant and make sure everything looks okay. Then go back to your computer's desktop, find the zip file that you left on the desktop in step 1, and drag it into the trash.
Installing an update if you ARE using FileMaker Server
Here's how to do an update if you're sharing your database files using FileMaker Server. Actually this is a somewhat shorthand version of the steps because there are slight differences between the way this works in different versions of FileMaker Server and on different computer operating systems. NOTE: Updating CMAssistant on the machine running FileMaker Server is not difficult, but it might require access to the server machine that only your office's network administrator has.
- Tell all the users who might be using CMAssistant to close it and quit FileMaker Pro on their workstations
- Go to the machine that is running FileMaker Server
- Find the FileMaker Server admin tool or console, log in, and close all three of the CMAssistant files. (It's not necessary to close any other files that you might also be serving on this machine.)
- Find the folder where the FileMaker databases are stored on this server. This is usually a folder named Databases that's inside the FileMaker Server application folder - but sometimes it's somewhere else. If you are the admin for FileMaker Server you should know where the files are stored.
- Drag the file "CMASSISTANT6x.fp7" out of the existing FileMaker Server Databases folder and into the trash
- Download the correct update file (get the link from Polytrope Support) and unzip it, extracting the file "CMASSISTANT6x" that's inside. If you are unfamiliar with zip archives, click here.
- Move the new file to the FileMaker Server machine if you didn't download it to that machine in the first place
- Move the new file into the FileMaker Server Databases folder
- Go back to the FileMaker Server admin tool or console and reopen all three of the CMAssistant files
You're done.
The images file
If you are upgrading from a version of CMAssistant earlier than 6.2 and you do not already have the new images file, then click to download 20090128_cmaXimages.zip.
