Understanding offline shares

Normally, all GCF site are online and they communicate with each other over a WAN or the Internet. The vaults at each site are configured as web locations in Meridian Enterprise Web Access and the GCF accesses remote vaults through Web Access with what are called online shares. But this is not the only configuration that the GCF supports.

If a collaborating vault is not configured as a Web Access web location or you do not specify a Web Access URL for it in the GCF configuration, it will be what is called an offline share. The GCF will not attempt to communicate online with offline shares. Offline shares can be used in scenarios where there is no direct connectivity between the Meridian Enterprise servers at the different sites, but there is a method to transfer briefcase files between the sites, for example, via a CD, an e-mail system, a message queue, or an intermittent connection such as a satellite link. For information about configuring offline shares in a star topology, see Implementing a star topology.

When a share is offline, the following GCF features are not available:

• The Status column in the Collaboration property page will not show status information for an offline share. Instead, it will show Offline Share.
• The Remarks property on the Collaboration property page that displays document transfer progress and reports exceptions will be empty.
• It will not be possible to claim ownership of documents.
• It will not be possible to immediately get the latest revision of documents.

For more information about these features and their role in using the GCF, see the BlueCielo Meridian Global Collaboration Framework User's Guide.