Working offline or remote

You work offline or remote from within your favorite editing applications just as if you were in Online mode by using Application Integration to select and save vault documents. One difference is that, before displaying the Application Integration window with a view of the vault, Application Integration prompts you to select a remote vault through PowerWeb, similar to the following figure.

Note:
  • You must have an active Internet connection to the PowerWeb server to work in Offline mode or Remote mode.
  • Errors can occur if you download documents to your local workspace using 32-bit Internet Explorer as described in Preparing to work offline but later open the documents for editing in a 64-bit application. Always use either the 32-bit or 64-bit editions of Meridian components together, not a mixture of both.
  • To synchronize the vault with your local changes, you must return to Online mode and either synchronize your local workspace manually or wait until the next automatic synchronization occurs.

To open a remote vault:

  • When you click Open, Save, or Save As in your editing application and the Open Remote Vault dialog box appears:
    • Type http://<MyServer>/Meridian where <MyServer> is the name of your organization's Meridian web server.

Another difference is that the Application Integration dialogs show you the status of vault documents compared to the information stored on your computer that has not yet been synchronized with the vault. It shows you the status by the color of the document properties in the navigation views.

The meanings of the colors are described in the following table.

Offline mode colors
Option Description

Black

The document is released and synchronized.

Blue

The document is checked out to you and synchronized

Red

The document is checked out to you but not yet synchronized with the vault.

Green

The vault does not contain any information about the document and is not yet synchronized. It is either new on your computer, deleted from the vault, or new in the vault but there is no offline information about the document on your computer.

Reference synchronization in Offline mode has certain constraints:

  • Reference resolution is fully supported for the referenced documents that are cached in the same context in the local workspace. This includes resolution of existing references and creation of new outgoing references also cached in the local workspace in the same context.
  • Cross-context reference resolution is also supported for existing references. Cross-context reference resolution is not supported for newly created references in Offline mode.

To switch modes:

Important!

Do not work on the same document from more than one PC in Remote mode with the Use site cache option enabled in your personal preferences or document content inconsistencies can occur.

  1. Right-click the Accruent Application Integration icon in the system tray. A shortcut menu appears.
  2. Point to Mode (<CurrentMode>) and select a different mode.

To help you recognize the current mode when you work with the Application Integration dialogs, an icon at the right end of the toolbar indicates the current mode. The icons are described in the following table.

Application Integration mode icons
Icon Description

Online mode. Not applicable to Meridian Cloud.

Remote mode. Recommended for virtual private network (VPN) connections and Meridian Cloud.

Offline mode. The dialog box title text reads Open from local cache of <Vault> on <LocalComputerName>.