Fellow Experts,
I work on a team with a distributed workforce: most of us either work from home or travel
to client sites, and when we are on client sites we cannot count on having access to our
network resources.
At the same time, we are trying to use a set of standard documents and templates, but these
items get updated frequently. However, since we spend s much time at client sites where we
cannot count on hitting an network share, we all have to have local copies of these documents.
Last year I developed a VB6 app (actually split into 2 exe files) that does the following:
1) User launches app when s/he has network or VPN access
2) This app looks first for an updated copy of the second app and copies it to the user's
computer; this second app actually does the heavy lifting
3) The first app launches the second, which then catalogs the "standard" files on user's
computer (all the files in specified directories) along with last modified date of each
4) Second app goes to the network share where the up to date document versions are stored
5) Whenever the 2nd app finds a network doc that either is not in the catalog or has a more
recent last modified date, the app copies the document to the user's computer
6) The two apps close themselves
The two applications work, despite the fact that it was my first effort in VB6 (I'm more of a
VBA guy) and it's probably clumsier than it needs to be. What I am looking for here is, did I
think about the problem the right way? Is there a better general approach that I am missing?
(For example, rather than comparing last modified dates, which can be tricky, should I put text
files on the network share to list files that have been updated?)
I'm not looking for anyone to develop the app for me, just broadbrush guidance on the overall
strategy. When it comes time to actually build the thing, I may open new questions to handle
the specific details.
Regards,
Patrick
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