user connection licenses and reconnect

[Peter Wagemans]

Hi people,

A customer is complaining about his FileMaker Pro 16 application acting up: when brought back from the background, the application requires the address of the server, even when the customer is actually logged in to the server. The customer took a screen shot of this, and the application window is clearly visible behind the nagging dialog.

Clearly again a FileMaker problem, but I'm not going that way anymore, since I have to make a living as well. I was just wondering what could be done to avoid the disconnect, and on reconnect, how to help FileMaker a bit reconnecting.

The first thing I was wondering about, was App Nap. There's a FileMaker help article here: using-filemaker-networking-on-mac-os-x-with-app-nap-enabled but the last edit is in 2015 and it covers only until 2013. The second google link FMP v14 and App Napp on the FileMaker Community web site seems to confirm that it is still an issue in v14. Why did FileMaker stop editing the article then? Apple has removed the check box option from the "Get Info" window of the application, one way of enabling/disabling it today is to use the excellent Onyx freeware application. But that switches App Nap system wide, not on application level. I'm wondering if it should be off or on, the customer uses the latest MacBook with Sierra.

The second thing is the password linking mechanism that seems broken as well on reconnect. You open File A, file A needs file B and FileMaker internally passes the credentials used to open File A, to open File B. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to happen on reconnect, and FileMaker asks for the password of File B, with no option to save the password, although this option is set in the file preferences. I made the customer open File B directly, and save the password to the keychain. At least this *should* lessen the annoyances he is facing today.

Does anybody have any insights to add here?

[Claus Lavendt]

Hi Peter

Don't know if this is helpful, but the FMP for connections client, needs to connect to the server within 15 min. before you get the dialog, requiring you to enter the address to a server.
So, it seems that the client gets disconnected from the server, either with app nap or something else. While the client is disconnected, the timer in the FMP client starts ticking until it reaches 15 min.

However, I have not seen the issue you describe, where you get the message, before the client tries to reconnect to the open files.
I am wondering if the server version has a play in this ? - thinking about if it is the newest version of 15 or 16 ?

The other issue you describe, is something I see almost daily and I agree it is annoying.
I discussed it with a PM and an engineer about a year ago, and they seemed that they knew about it, but they didn't have any easy fix.
Since then, I have not pushed it as a bug in order to get it fixed, so maybe we should do that.
 

But, there is actually a way to make this issue much less of an issue... if you un-check the extended privileges set for "Required re-login after X min. of sleep".
This way, you are not prompted to login again and the client just reconnect to the server.
The places I have implemented this, it takes the issue away in about 90% of the cases.

[Peter Wagemans]

8 hours ago, Claus Lavendt said:

But, there is actually a way to make this issue much less of an issue... if you un-check the extended privileges set for "Required re-login after X min. of sleep".
This way, you are not prompted to login again and the client just reconnect to the server.
The places I have implemented this, it takes the issue away in about 90% of the cases.

Thanks Claus, that sounds like great advice. See you soon.