Connect products while Work from Home

I am curious what everyone is doing who don't use ProjectWise and still have their staff working from home and from the office using MicroStation & OpenRoads Connect edition with a networked workspace.  Currently, we have the majority of the staff WFM (Working From Home) and a couple who are in the office.  The WFH staff access the corporate network over VPN.

We have the products configured to look to a specific network location for Configuration (i.e. J:/Configuration/) in ConfigurationSetup.cfg that is pushed to each users C:\ProgramData\Bentley\<PRODUCT NAME>\Configuration folder by IT using AD/Group Policy.

The staff who are working in the office have no issues however, the WFH staff experience extreme latency in file access and general operation when in a file while on the VPN.  Some of the WFH staff occasionally go to the office.  To help with some latency, I have setup a BAT file that copies the network version of the environment to the WFH folks local workstations (C:/)

Aside from manually copying a local version of ConfigurationSetup.cfg that points to the local Configuration folder, what else can be done?

Is anyone else working in a similar situation  and what are you doing to help with the latency issues?

Thanks in advance

Chuck

Parents Reply
  • David,

    Thank you for the very useful information.

    I was actually inquiring more specifically on what everyone is doing with defining _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION when the staff is split between WFH & working in the office.  In the "normal" world, we just push out ConfigurationSetup.cfg and WorkspaceSetup.cfg to each device and everyone is pointed in the right direction.  However, in our scenario, its seems a bit kludgy to have to manually manage those two files for office vs remote environments and to even rely on the staff to manage that.

    I have read other posts where admins wrote an IF/ELSE statement that checks for an office network drive and defines _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION to be corporate or local depending on the result of the check.  That seems more reasonable to do, except VPN users will be mapped to the network while connected to the VPN too, so when it checks, the result will still be true.

    Project file access is another issue and much harder to remedy.  Most of the staff have adequate internet connections that allows them to access the files directly over the VPN, some others do not.

    Thanks again

    Chuck

Children
  • Hi Charles,

    You can include an If/Else statement in the [General] section of ConfigurationSetup.cfg. You may also be able to put statements currently in your WorkSpaceSetup.cfg in there too.

    Once _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION has set _USTN_CONFIGURATION to point to the Custom Configuration I wouldn't expect a WorkspaceSetup.cfg on the local drive to be read unless it was specifically included?

    Note that currently we overwrite the ConfigurationSetup.cfg with new installs but are looking at modifying that behaviour (Enhancement 854340).

    Currently I am experimenting with Custom Configurations located in OneDrive folders. Windows has system variables that resolve to the user's local OneDrive root folder that handle any managed or individual changes to that location, OneDriveCommercial being most relevant (there is also OneDriveConsumer). This is not something we have formally tested or certified, but looks promising. Use of OneDrive has been discussed in other posts here so there may be other current experiences to share.

    Regards

    Marc

    Answer Verified By: Charles Meuser