POLYTROPE Support: File Transfer |
Do you need to read this article?You need to read this article if we specificaly ask you to send us your database files. This is something we do (a) if we agree to perform maintenance on your files and/or (b) if it is necessary for us to update or upgrade your solution files. Note: Most of our solutions can be updated by the client (you) most of the time. If you are in doubt about whether you need to send us your files, ask! This article is addressed both to our consulting clients and to licensees of EXTRA! and CM Assistant. Please comply with these requests. Every day, we receive and process many files from many clients. We need to have a system. It will help us - and thus help you - if you can comply with a few simple requests about how to package your files for upload. If we get confused about where your files are, well, it slows us all down.
Summary of most important pointsHere is a quick overview of the most important points on this page. Please review these points again even if you have read them before:
The paragraphs below go over the summary in greater detail.
Make arrangements with Polytrope before sending files!Files are accepted by appointment or prior arrangement only. No exceptions can be made. Send mail to support-at-polytrope.com to schedule an update. You will not be able to enter or edit data in your solution files while we have them, so we make every effort to accommodate your schedule. We usually ask that you give us at least twenty-four hours to perform a same-version update; and for major upgrades, we may need more time, often including a weekend. We will explain the turnaround time when we schedule the file transfer.
Getting your files to Polytrope: The optionsThere are four ways to get your files to us:
Generally, the fastest and most reliable ways to get your files to us are those described in options 1, 2 and 3 above. We prefer that you use YouSendIt. YouSendIt is an excellent online service that lets you use its servers rather than yours or ours. Go to YouSendIt's web site, create a free account, and follow the instructions. Send your files to Polytrope Support's email address. If your company has its own FTP server and you or your IT expert can access it, we're happy to have you put your files there, send us an email with the URL, and let us download the files. If you don't want to use YouSendIt or your own ftp server, you can upload your files to our FTP server. If you don't have fast reliable Internet service, you can send us the files on a CD. For info on these options, go here. As for sending your files as an email enclosure, don't! We mention this only because people think of it and we want to discourage you from using this method. Please do not even think about sending us an email attachment unless it is under 1 MB in size. Email was never intended to be used to send very large files. As your message makes its way to us, it has to pass through scores of intermediary servers, and some of these may choke on a large enclosure. Spam-traps sometimes strip attachments from email. Additionally, faulty or inappropriate encoding of email enclosures can occasionally make it impossible for us to open the files that we receive from you. Regardless of the method you use to get the files to us, we will almost always return your files to you via the Internet. We will send you a CD only if you specifically request it and there may be a small charge for this service. What files should you send?We ask that you always compress the files you send into a zip archive and send us just that one zip archive. What goes into the zip archive? Unless we specifically tell you otherwise, we will need you to upload all of the primary files in the folder for your database solution. NOTE for CMAssistant 3 and 4 and EXTRA! 1 and 2 licensees: There are about a dozen of these files (the exact number depends upon the version of CM Assistant or EXTRA! that you are using) and they are sitting all together inside the same folder. If you have any questions about what files to send, by all means ask! Please do not send us your backup files unless we ask you for them specifically. No matter how you get the files to us, please do the following.1. If you are sending us your solution files for maintenance or upgrade, start by closing the solution on all machines and, if you share the solution on your LAN, take it offline, that is, close it on the host or server. Copying open Filemaker Pro files may cause damage to the files. 2. Use a file-compression utility to compress your files into a single-file archive. We must insist that you send us a .zip format file. These can easily be produced in Microsoft Windows or in Mac OS X.
3. The archive's file name must indicate (a) the date on which you created the archive and (b) who its coming from. Please use this format: 20040217_ithakaweekly.sit This tells us that the file is from the Ithaka Weekly and was sent on Valentine's Day (February 14) in 2007. Use only letters, numbers, the underscore character and the period in the name of this archive. In particular, do NOT use any of these characters: "/" (slash), " " (space), ":" (colon), ";" (semicolon), "#" (the number symbol) or hyphen ("-"). Use of illegal characters may cause your upload to fail or may keep us from being able to download it. If you send us your files on a CD or DVD, be sure that you also write the date and your publication's name on the disk. It is probably okay to use spaces in the name of your archive, but it's safer to avoid them. NOTE: Do not rename the solution files themselves before you bundle them into the archive.
Copyright © 2008, Polytrope Solutions, Houston, Texas. All rights reserved. This page last modified: July 30, 2008 10:29 AM |