User Support Forum

Hello all,

First off I would like to say that this is a great forum. I am the new administrator of my churches' network and I have a few questions regarding migrating to the version 9 of PC plus on new hardware.

First off, the church had no network connectivity at all for years. Thus, there are probably three PC's with PC Plus 8.5 on them, each performing a different function. There is one PC that has the majority of the data on it, the other two may only have one module or so that is actually used.

Another member and I networked the church and we have purchased a server running Windows Server 2003 with a tape backup solution. WE want to move from having standalone installations to using a networked approach. We want to move data from the standalone installations to the server so the data can be in one central location and can be backed up. We have the new version 9.0 and would like to run it. Here's what I have gathered so far.

1. Backup the current data on the standalone PC's.
2. Create a mapped drive to the PCPlus data on the main standalone PC.
3. Install Version 9.0 on the server.
4. Tell install to upgrade from a previous version and point to mapped drive for location of information.
5. Install any needed updates.
6. Disconnect mapped drive to standalone PC
7. Backup and remove PC Plus 8.5 from the standalone PC.
8. Create mapped drive on standalone PC back to location of 9.0 install on server.
9. Run the net9setup on PC and point it to new server for datasource.

Does this sound correct? My big concern though is then how to migrate the data from the other standalone PC installs? I would appreciate any input. Thanks.

Greg

A few things on the networking:

Insure that on the server share you create with PCPlus, that all users have FULL ACCESS to it. Allow PCPlus to handle what the users can do with the data, the internal security will take care of that problem.

Make sure all the client PC's have the netsetup9 run on them, but insure that you have the server share mapped on those machines, with reconnect.


Lastly, on the data ... what were each of the PC's doing ?? If one was doing Membership and another doing contributions, there may be an issue with merging that data. If one was just doing accounting, that may be easiest to migrate over using an accounting file backup.

If you could explain what each was doing, other forum members may have some additional ideas.

Thanks for the input Neil. To tell you the truth I'm not exactly sure yet what each one does, I need to inventory that. I believe the main PC is doing everything except for attendance, which I think is what the second standalone is doing. I'm not sure what the third is for.

gtaylor wrote:Thanks for the input Neil. To tell you the truth I'm not exactly sure yet what each one does, I need to inventory that. I believe the main PC is doing everything except for attendance, which I think is what the second standalone is doing. I'm not sure what the third is for.

I suspect keeping them in sync must be a full time job !!

Well, I just took this over, so there is no synching going on. They are completely independent of each other. I'm very new to the software, but lets say that one of the PC's was only used for attendance, which I assume would be the membership module. Could I go to that PC, make a backup of only the membership module, and restore it to the server and t not corrupt or overwrite any pre-existing data on the server? This of course assumes that only one PC is doing the membership part and none of the others were doing any membership functions. Thanks for your input Neil.

Greg

gtaylor wrote:Well, I just took this over, so there is no synching going on. They are completely independent of each other. I'm very new to the software, but lets say that one of the PC's was only used for attendance, which I assume would be the membership module. Could I go to that PC, make a backup of only the membership module, and restore it to the server and t not corrupt or overwrite any pre-existing data on the server? This of course assumes that only one PC is doing the membership part and none of the others were doing any membership functions. Thanks for your input Neil.

Greg

Well ... the attendance function is part of the overall Membership module, and is keyed to the personal profiles already established on the stand alone machine. So if this is not the 'main' PC that was used to keep track of members, visitors, etc; you run the risk of overwriting or corrupting the more 'up-to-date' data.

If this PC is running version 8.5, you really don't have to upgrade it to 9.0. You can leave it alone for historical data, and just start keeping attendance on the networked Version 9.0. You CAN have both versions on one PC, with the networked version 9.0 in a separate directory from the old 8.5 system.

I have three different versions 8, 8.5 and 9 running on my test system at home, and they all work independently of each other with no issues.

That's a good thought, about starting attendance clean with 9.0, I'll have to discuss that with the board members. I appreciate your help Neil.

Greg