VPN/dial-in access vs. Network

[Guest]

I recently ran into some confusion when I was explaining why RoboHelp projects have to be worked on locally. I used the words "not over the network" and "work from home over VPN" in the same paragraph. The response was "Huh? You just said you can't work over the network..."

Now I want to check my understanding, in case I've been wrong.

"Over the network" means:

• The RoboHelp developer application is installed on one PC (let's call it A).
• The RoboHelp source files are on another PC (B) that is on the same network as PC A.
• PC A has PC B mapped as a Network Drive (that's the Windows wording; don't know what other OSs call it).

"VPN" (or other dial-in access) means:

• The RoboHelp developer application is installed on PC A.
• The RoboHelp source files are also on PC A.
• The user is at home on PC F, running an application like Remote Desktop Connection, which creates a dial-in connection to PC A.

The critical thing that allows RoboHelp to work with VPN is the location of the RoboHelp application and the source files (same PC). In my example, the user at home on PC F is working (virtually) on PC A, using F to push the buttons.

Is that correct? Has anybody had difficulty working with RoboHelp in this kind of dial-in setup?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

This is correct - I do a lot of working from home in this way. I connect my home machine to our corporate network via a VPN connection & then start a Remote Desktop connection to my office machine. The net result is that I'm virtually sitting in the office. Of course, all my RH files are kept local to my office machine.

[Rasterdan2U]

I have been using Robo via Source control for almost 10 years.  I dial in on the VPN.  Then from my home pc i open the project from source control.  When the project opens it asks if i want to "Get All".  If i say yes, it checks all of my local copies.  If I say no, it works with what I have locally.  I used the Async connection for speed.  You just need to know the name of your server or the FTP address of the server pc.  It is a little tricky at first but once you connect, it works perfectly ... until the 8.0.2 update.  Now some of our files are having trouble.  I am going to open a different thread for this however.

When you close, you are prompted to check in all topics that you have checked out from the server.  If you dial in via VPN, you are on the same network as your remote computer.  At least that is what our net guy says.

dv