mac | pc New "Upload to Server" feature

[Richard Fincher]

Just been checking out the new (in 13) Upload To Server feature.  It seems to have a number of warnings and prohibitions which make sense in the context of a non-specialist FileMaker Pro user, who needs to be protected against doing things which don't make sense.

 

It seems to keep track of which of your locally stored files have already been uploaded to the server, and warns you about opening these locally (see attached), because it assumes that the master copy of the file is now the one on the server.  So far, so good.

 

However, I can envisage a situation where the client wishes to take his or her database off the server (or at least make the server copy inactive), make some intensive changes to a copy of the file locally, and then upload the updated file to the server again.

 

FileMaker Server prevents any file with the same name from being uploaded a second time (which  is normally what you'd want, as it prevents you accidentally over-writing changes), although it even prevents you uploading a new copy of the file to a subfolder (although it allows you to create the subfolder)  The "Save a copy as…." menu is also disabled.

 

So I suppose this means that someone wishing to copy the server file to their hard disk, take the server copy offline, edit it, and upload it as a new master copy, must ask the System Administrator of the server for assistance, correct?

[Wim Decorte]

You can use the "Administrator Groups" feature of FMS to give users sub-admin rights and do this themselves without having access to all the other FMS settings, or other people's files.

[Richard Fincher]

I suppose you could upload the modified one with a different filename each time, e.g. MyDB-1.fmp12, MyDB-2.fmp12 etc.. but you'd still need to remove the old ones or disable sharing on them, so that people didn't accidentally open the wrong one.

Thanks, I'll give that a try

[Richard Fincher]

Ok got it now!  You login to Filemaker Server Admin as sub-group user, pause the file, download it, modify it locally, close it on the server then remove it from the server, then upload it again from Pro 13.

 

Thanks!