Maintain Project Files Remotely
This software enables you to maintain a project (.vce) file remotely on an external service, such as the Connected Community (TCC), thereby sharing access to that file over the Internet with others who have been granted access. The discussion below notes issues that you should be aware of when managing remote files on the TCC and accessing them from within this software.
After you specify your TCC user profile (by selecting Options, clicking External Services, and filling out the fields in the Options dialog), the Open Remote File command can be used to open a remotely-stored file as if it was located on your local hard drive. Before opening the file, you should decide whether or not you need to check it out in TCC to prevent others from editing it while you are working in the file. Only the user who checks the file out has the ability to edit it and save the results. If you intend to edit a file that is maintained on TCC and save the results, you should always check it out. You can then check it back in after you have saved your edits, making it available for others to check out.
When you check out a file from TCC, the original file is locked, and an editable copy is made. You can then make the desired edits on that editable copy. When you check the file back in, TCC overwrites the original with the editable copy, saving the changes that you have made and unlocking the original.
Another factor to consider is that the TCC maintains a version history of each project file. Every time you save a file on TCC, the edits you have made are saved in a copy of that file, allowing you to revert to an earlier version if needed. Therefore, the disk space used is affected by how many times the file is saved. Space can therefore be conserved by saving new versions of the file only when you achieve milestones in your project.
When you use the Open Remote File command to open a file on the TCC from within this software, it makes a copy of the remotely-stored file on your local hard drive. That file is located within the project management folder that you have designated in the File Locations page of the Options dialog. The Save Project command is used to save the project data in memory to that local file. After opening a remotely-located project file from TCC, when you routinely save your work-in-progress while editing the project, your changes are saved to the local file. Doing so has no effect on updating the file version history that is stored remotely on TCC. Therefore, you should routinely save the file locally in this manner as you work, until you have achieved a milestone in the state of the project, and you wish to make that result available to others via the TCC. This is the case whether or not you have elected to check the file out when you opened it from TCC.
When you save the file back to TCC using the Save File Remotely command, you first browse to the file space and folder on TCC in which you wish to save the file. If you are saving a file that you previously opened from the selected TCC folder, you will see the file present in that folder, but you need not select it as the file name of the file being saved is already known. In reality, the operation taking place is that of copying the local copy of the project on your hard disk onto TCC, overwriting the existing copy, if applicable. Therefore, if you have not previously saved the project in memory to your local copy, this software will automatically do so before copying the local version to the TCC.
The end result of the Save File Remotely command is that identical copies of the current project are located remotely on TCC and on your local hard drive. The local copy remains in place after the remote save operation. As a result, if you subsequently execute the Open Remote File command once again, and open that same file, this software will once again attempt to place a copy of the remote file in the currently specified project management folder on your local disk. Since that file will already exist in that instance, you will be asked to verify your intention to overwrite the existing file. Normally, you should agree to allow the local copy to be overwritten, since the remote version on TCC may have been edited and saved by someone else since the version on your local disk was copied to TCC.
When you open a remote file from within this software, after selecting the file in the Open Remote File dialog, you can right-click and opt to check the file out from TCC (as described above). This action locks the file so only you can edit it. As previously noted, when that occurs, TCC makes an editable copy of the locked file, for which the term "-EditCopy" is appended to the file name. For example, if you were to check out a file named Sinclair Hills.vce, the editable copy will be named Sinclair Hills-EditCopy.vce; this is the copy that you should open, thereby copying it to your local machine, and it is this renamed file that you will be editing until you elect to save it back to TCC and optionally check it back in.
As described above, when opening a remote file, TCC enables you to check it out (lock it) before opening it, if desired. However, when saving the remote file, you will want to complete the copy operation (that is execute the Save File Remotely command) prior to unlocking the resulting file on TCC. The Save File Remotely command does not currently provide an opportunity to unlock the file as a part of the save operation, as the associated dialog closes immediately on saving the file. As a result, you might elect to check that file back in from within the TCC itself. However, you can rather easily accomplish that from within this software using the Open Remote File command, browsing to the subject file, clicking on the actual file name (not the editable copy that was made when you checked it out), right-clicking to access the context menu, and selecting Check In. The file will be unlocked. The editable version of that file will be removed, and you can elect to cancel the Open Remote File operation.
