Offline Files Wizard

Use the Offline Files Wizard to help your road warriors save on long-distance telephone charges and frustration.

How often does one of your mobile employees, equipped with a notebook computer and modem, have to dial into your office server to transfer files back and forth?

A Workaround for Slow, Unreliable, Exorbitant Hotel Dial-In

Usually these long-distance telephone calls show up on an expense report at hotel room telephone rates, which are generally very steep!

So, it’s in your best interest to do everything you can to make sure your road warriors have all the files they need before they hit the road. But, how do you tackle the challenge of keeping files in sync with any changes made while traveling?

Synchronizing Your Files with the Offline Files Wizard 

Fortunately, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and Microsoft Windows XP Professional have a built-in feature to manage all this for you. The Offline Files feature, running in conjunction with Synchronization Manager, allows you to keep working with files and folders on a server, even when you have no physical connection to the server.

Note:
Only the business versions of Microsoft Windows support Offline Files.

So you don’t need to establish a dial-up, LAN or virtual private network (VPN) connection. It’s as if you’ve taken a network-mapped drive on the road with you.

Upon reconnecting to the server, Synchronization Manager synchronizes any file updates you have made while traveling with the appropriate server-shared folder.

The Offline Files Wizard

Setting up Offline Files is very straightforward.

In Windows Explorer, select the desired files and folders, right click and select Make Available Offline, then run through the Offline Files Wizard (Figure 4-3).

Just select the files you want to have available offline while you’re still connected to the LAN. When you log off the LAN, Synchronization Manager transfers the files to your notebook. While traveling, you can work on the Offline Files as if you were connected to the LAN, even with the same mapped drive letters and folder paths.

Figure 4-3

The Offline Files Wizard is a great tool for road warriors who need to synchronize files on their notebook with files on server-shared folders. This often can eliminate the need to dial into the server over slow, hotel-grade telephone lines while traveling.

Returning to the Office

Then, when you return to the office and plug back into the LAN, Synchronization Manager synchronizes any changes you made while on the road with the appropriate files on the server-shared folder. No need to dial-in remotely.

Offline Files Wizard Action Items

How do mobile workers download and upload files from the office network while traveling?

Do any of your mobile workers have notebooks with Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional or Microsoft Windows XP Professional?

While traveling, do your mobile workers often have to depend on dialing into the network through unreliable, expensive hotel telephone lines?

When mobile workers return to the office following a business trip, how do they synchronize their changed files with server-shared folders?

 

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