HTA - Electronic Publications Management

Whew, where to start. Non-programmer type here, aside from the required classes for my masters/bachelors. In over my head with a demand from my boss I can't exactly refuse.

Long story short, an HTA or Native VB executable would work...however, I have limited knowledge of either.

My code so far:

http://pastebin.com/6ecU3nMH

Right now its a fairly organized/disorganized work, but without some parts complete since I am not sure how to best implement them. If you're not interested you can stop there, but I'll write the full-list of requirements below:

Govt Agency issues 500Gb hard drives to each person who flies these particular Aircraft. All of the required publications are updated to a sole shared drive on the network at the office.

Appliation would be on the root of the hard drive and verify the hard drive's copy of the different books are same (date modified) version or newer is available. I started with the premise of...Green Light: Verified, nothing to say or do. Red: Version on Hard Drive is verified as not current, need to update. Yellow: Not able to verify, i.e. not on network at the office.

The files are placed in several directories and organized that way, so it would have to be a recursive verification, and copy on the changed pubs since they are all fairly large.

Many other features they asked for but those are for way after I can get basic functionality going. Some of which I started but havent finished. (as im sure anyone who reads can tell.)


Give me tips, advice, solutions, arrows pointing in a general direction...whatever you can. I am under a time-schedule,but thanks for reading this far.

Bryan

Hello,

I have moved this question to the Project Requests forum.

Gary

Thanks Gary.

If I didn't explain something correctly, feel free to contact me directly. I'm willing to do as much work as I can, but can't afford the time to learn it all in a week to get things finished.

Please feel free to jump into any part.

Bryan
[email protected]

So you have one or more known directories that contain "document" files, and it sounds like subfolders of them recursively as well.

Does each document have a known, permanent file name within its folder that doesn't ever change from version to version? Are these names unique throughout the directory tree(s) to be checked? Is the "version" determined precisely and reliably based on "modified date?"

If not, are these Word, PDF, etc. documents that contain extended properties providing a unique document ID and version? If versioning is by date, is the date always monotonically ascending in value for each document (new version ALWAYS has a later date)? NTFS stores 3 dates: Created, Modified, and Accessed. These do not always mean what they may seem to, nor are they always updated depending on how the authoring software does saves.

Then you have time zone issues as a potential problem depending on how you distribute the files.


Once you have these and other questions squared away it becomes pretty simple.

In an HTA you'd use the FSO to recurse the directories, check the properties, and recopy updated versions where they exist. In compiled code you have the FSO or somewhat more efficient alternatives.


What puzzles me is your red/yellow/green indicator requirement. If a newer version is not on the server, how do you know the local copy is outdated? Is there also some "master list" file you'll work from, listing all documents and the current versions?

When do these indications show? Do you mean to do an initial pass, setting indicators in a tree-view of some sort, and then begin update-copying turning red to yellow or green as you work through Pass 2?

I'm not even sure what they'd be for. Showing the poor user a bunch of red lights and saying "So Solly, Cholly" doesn't help him much at 50,000 feet! :p

Awesome...thanks for your reply.

Let me see if I can fix my mistakes by explaining myself better! I was dead tired when I posted that, but needed some fresh ideas.

Skinny of this it is: The documents are PDFs, and are provided by several different agencies, for instance the FAA. However, when they are authored they come to us pretty much locked down for editing, so no meta data to speak of.

We maintain a master folder on our intranet with folders separating from each other by type and such, for just general housekeeping. When a new one comes down for replacement, it is named the same thing exactly, and we just take it and copy to the master folder...overwriting the old one. We email out all the users and have them overwrite their folder. We assign a version of the date it was changed last in accordance with our regulations...such as one changed yesterday, Version 11-08-18 There is a little HTML file they can open with all the files organized so we change the "version" on that. Other than that, no list to speak of.

Right now the drives they have and the master take up about 6Gb worth of files, and no need to copy them all every time. Oddly, really only 10-20Mb changes per version change, but it would have to be able to copy the whole 6Gb if necessary for new drives or something.

The "yellow" light condition is really just because the users often use the drive from the plane and home (for study) and have no access to the drive for updating. As long as it said "you currently have version 11-08-18" and the update button greyed out so they can't attempt it, that would totally work. The stoplights thing was actually a boss' idea so I'm not tied to it at all. If it looks clean, thats all I could ask for. Progress bar would be awesome for when the copying is going on, but at the very least, changing the icon in the middle to the "loading.gif" I have with a loop circle would be more than sufficient while its copying.

The big-wigs really just want to know that when they send out an email saying to "update," the users get the warm fuzzy that they have the one we said they should. If it matches each file on the drive then I feel confident in that. We are dealing with pilots here...if ya know what I mean!

The other staff that work here aren't very computer talented (not that I really am), but all they know to do when updating is add the file to right folder and change the version at the top of the basic HTML file in the root directory. If I had to I could add a txt file with the version that we update too.

Oh, totally forgot...we do have a master list per se...but its an excel document that contains the active current date and name of each file that "has" to be on the drive by federal regulation. However, that date isn't in the meta data or filename of the PDF at all...it is posted on the first page of the pdf.