Problem

Can we run fetchfiles on the client machine to pre-populate the working directory to help speed up access to files?  We have users in a remote office on a slow WAN link and we are trying to figure out ways to speed up the process for users to get the files.

Solution

Running fetchfiles on a client is possible, but will not do you any good.
The reason: When a user checks out or copies out a file, ProjectWise checks the database to see if the user already has a copy of the file in the working directory. If they do have a copy of the file then ProjectWise does a date and checksum test and updates the file if necessary.

When you run fetchfiles, ProjectWise does not keep a record of who or where the file was fetched to.  So Projectwise is not aware that the user has a copy in the working directory, and in turn it will never run the checksum\date test and just send the file.

I think the best method is to have the user copy out all the files in the project to the workdir and let the DFT do its thing.

To Speed up access to files you might consider putting in a Gateway \ temp caching server in their office and use fetchfiles to populate the cache

See Also