Tips For IT Administrators

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Tips For IT Administrators

Regular backups are important!

On a regular basis, please take a backup of the FastMaint.mdb and FastMaint.mdw files

•Basic/ Standard editions: The files are in the program install directory.

•Professional edition: For an internal database, the files are in the database directory specified in the Fastmaint.ini file. For an external database using ODBC, please speak with the database administrator about taking regular backups of the FastMaint database.

Improving performance

It's a good idea to regularly compact the database to reduce wasted space: Select Administration, Compact Database. This option is not available if you are using an external database (ODBC connection).

If you are connecting to an external database using ODBC, speak with the database administrator to see what kind of regular maintenance needs to be scheduled for optimum performance.

If configuring the Professional Edition for users from multiple workstations, put the database on a fast network location to get best performance. Slow and unreliable network connections will result in poor performance as well as database corruption and loss of data.

Removing Old Data: This menu option is available under the Administration menu. It will remove work requests and work orders prior to a specified date. This action is not reversible. So use it only if you have many thousands of work requests or work orders from several years back that you no longer need to retain.

Changing the database location (Professional edition only)

•Internal database (Microsoft Jet/ Access 2000)

1.Move the FastMaint.mdb and FastMaint.mdw files to the required location.

2.Ensure that all users who will connect to this database have file create, update and delete rights in this new location.

3.Edit the Fastmaint.ini file (found in the FastMaint installation directory of each workstation that has FastMaint installed) and change the path of the Database attribute to point to the new location. Each workstation that connects to the FastMaint database should have the Fastmaint.ini file modified to point to the same database location. You can also use the Application Setup Wizard (Administration menu) to make this change to the FastMaint.ini file on each workstation.

•External Microsoft SQL Server database (ODBC connection):

1.Speak with the database administrator about backing up and restoring the existing database onto another server/ location.

2.Go to each workstation that will be connecting to this database and use the ODBC Connection Wizard to add/ change the ODBC connection to the relocated database.

3.If using a new ODBC connection,  also use the Application Setup Wizard (Administration menu) to make changes to the FastMaint.ini file to point to the newly setup database.

Integration with other systems/ Getting access to FastMaint data

To preserve the integrity of the FastMaint system it is advisable to open the database as Read Only. Bad updates can cause the FastMaint system to fail or work incorrectly.

•Single user edition or multi-user edition using an internal database (Microsoft Jet/ Access 2000): FastMaint data is stored in a Microsoft Jet/ Access 2000 database called FastMaint.mdb. Many third-party programs, utilities and report generation tools can access this database. You will need to configure the tools to open the workgroup information file FastMaint.mdw (found in the same location as the FastMaint.mdb file).
 
Two user accounts are provided with the Access database to read/ write data in this database. This will enable you to create any special reports you need, export maintenance data to a corporate data repository and so on.
 
Account "reader": No password (default) – has read access to many tables in the database.
Account "editor": No password (default) – has read and update access to many tables in the database.
 
To open the database with Microsoft Access 2000:
Create a shortcut on your desktop to Microsoft Access and use this shortcut to open the FastMaint database. The shortcut should call Microsoft Access with the following properties: (MS Access path) (database path) /WRKGRP (workgroup path)
 
e.g. (all on a single line)
 
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\MSACCESS.EXE" "C:\Program Files\fastmaint\FastMaint.mdb" /WRKGRP "C:\Program Files\fastmaint\FastMaint.mdw" /excl
 
(The "/excl" flag above opens the database in exclusive mode (single user mode). It is optional and is only required if you want to create custom Microsoft Access Reports in the database.)

Warning: Set passwords on the "reader" and "editor" accounts as soon as possible to prevent unauthorized access to FastMaint data.

•External Microsoft SQL Server database (ODBC connection): Many third-party programs, utilities and report generation tools, can also access this database.

Data locking issues (Professional edition only)

If using the internal (Microsoft Jet/ Access 2000) database, all FastMaint users should have file create, update and delete rights on the directory where the shared FastMaint database files are stored.

If a user workstation crashes when editing an item (e.g. a Part, Task, etc.), a lock may still be retained on one or more items, preventing all users from being able to access them (you will get an item is locked error message). To release such spurious locks, first ensure that all users are out of the FastMaint application, then shut down and restart the file server or workstation on which the FastMaint database files are kept. This will release all open locks. If connecting to an external database using ODBC please speak to the database administrator about how to release such locks.