Meanwhile the desktop integration is doing a pretty good job. It even recognizes files which are stored in Windchill and can iterate on these downloaded files.
However as soon people start to travel a lot it becomes painful.
1. Downloading folder structure for offline use
- using export and unzip file is a workaround and less a feature
- better RMB within the explorer integration and mark for offline which will download the files in the cache directory
- the benefit is that the complete or only parts of a folder structure can be duplicated to disk
2. Modifications of unplanned changes during travel
- Best practice is to mark all files which will be changed on travel by "Check Out"
- But there are often minor updates which might not be forseen which you want to synch later on
- best approach would be to show an + within the eplorer integration if the timestamp & size on disk is differs to the content on the server
3. Version Information after checkin does not get updated
- if you have downloaded A.1 from the server, modified it and checked it back in the server version gets A.2
- unfortunately the meta data on the local disk is still A.1 even it has the new content
- after successful check in the meta data should update automatically to A.2
- otherwise you will face always the conflict that server version is newer than local one on next check out
- Is is not practical to first download again from server to synch this and it is anoying to validate that this is just the next iteration and therefore safe to proceed
