Communication

Learn about the configuration required for communication between stations.

These settings affect communication between stations.

Attachment Name

Executable files cannot be sent or opened in MS Outlook, unless Outlook is configured accordingly. You can therefore specify a file name used by all attachments sent from within Aurea CRM. The file name may not contain any special characters apart from underscore (_), and the file extension cannot exceed 3 characters. You need to enter the same attachment name on each communicating station to ensure that the file is recognized correctly.

Enter the file name in the Text field.

Benchmark

For testing purposes only.

Maximum Record Size

This parameter accelerates the output of data under SQL Server and Oracle.

Generally, only records' primary keys are transferred and stored in a temporary file. Once all the keys necessary for communication have been written, each record is read from the database using the keys in the temporary file.

If you enter a value, all records under the specified size (in bytes) are written directly to the temporary file and then later transferred to the communication file without needing to access the database a second time.

The size of a record is determined by the sum of the field lengths in the record. For example, to determine the length of fields in the Company (FI) info area:

SQL Server:

select sum(length) from syscolumns where id in (select id from sysobjects where name='INV_FI')

Oracle:

select sum(data_length) from all_tab_columns where table_name='INV_FI';

Note: The bigger the value, the more space required during output (in the COM user's directory).

No Inventory

Enable this option to suppress the verification of stock-relevant data when synchronizing stations. If this configuration entry is active, data affecting stocks are deleted on branch offices when synchronizing (e.g. orders that have not been included in stocktaking).

This setting must be assigned per station.

Alternatively, you can completely disable stock management by locking the "Inventory Management" process (see CRM Process Configuration). This is the approach recommended by Aurea.

Update priority

When communicating, the access rights defined in the Rights module are ignored, see Rights and Communication. When inputting records, records from the source station are matched up with existing records based on the primary key. If a record with an identical key is found, the records are merged. Aurea CRM saves the modification date and time for each record and uses this information and the settings in the communication format to determine which data to retain, see Communication Format in the Aurea CRM win Administrator Guide. Use the Update priority configuration entry to prevent field contents in records from being changed by communication on the target station (this function corresponds to conditional field access rights). This allows you to prevent data that is synchronized with external systems from being overwritten by data communicated from branch offices.

Changes to data in the fields on the source station are ignored and the contents of the record on the target station are output for the source station (synchronization).

If both the records on the target and source stations are affected by a configuration entry, the data in the station higher up the hierarchy (i.e. the station closest to the main office according to the existing communication connections) takes precedence. All corresponding connection records (Communication info area) must be present on the target station for this to take effect.

Enter conditions to be applied to the fields that should be locked in the Value field using the following syntax:

[FI: " F26<>'' " 2,5]

[FI: " F35='A' OR F79>='100' AND F79<='500' " 4,10,25]

[ID: " F9='#1' AND F27()'update.com' " 6,102]

Expressions are delimited as follows:

  • Enclose definitions for an info areas in square brackets: [FI: ]
  • Enclose conditions in quotation marks: " F35= 'A ' OR F79>='100' AND F79<='500' ". (You can use (Copy Condition) in the Define Conditions dialog to copy conditions to the clipboard.)
  • Enclose comparison values in single quotation marks: F9='#1'

Enter the fields that should be locked after the condition, separated by commas, e.g. 2 ,5

If the syntax is invalid, a warning is displayed when saving the configuration entry. If an entry using invalid syntax is used during communication, nothing is input from the affected info areas and the warning is displayed and written to the log file.

This configuration entry can be defined globally or per station.