Important: To replicate images onto a local drive, you must install the Replication Service onto your PC. The installation program is included on the STORIS disc. Once installed, you access it via the Windows Control Panel.After you import images into STORIS using the Update Product Images process, you can "replicate," or copy, the STORIS Image Repository into a Windows® folder structure. Image files can be slow to load. Retrieving files from a Windows folder may be faster than from the STORIS Image Repository. In addition, the Replication Service ensures that the latest version of your file appears each time you access it. You can replicate images to a
centrally located server, and/or
Important: To replicate images onto a local drive, you must install the Replication Service onto your PC. The installation program is included on the STORIS disc. Once installed, you access it via the Windows Control Panel.
The replication process is based on date and time. The STORIS Image Repository stores the time and date each image was last updated. The Service tracks the last time it ran and selects all images updated after that. The folder structure it replicates is by Brand code and, under each Brand code, includes three folders for Enlarged, Standard and Thumb. Under those folders are the actual images.
After you specify the central and local replication directories (and, for each local PC, install the Replication Service), you can use the Service to specify the time of day to automatically replicate images. The system searches for the latest version of each image and updates the other directories. In this way, you can be sure the various directories are in synch and you are accessing the latest version of the image.
To use imported images in eSTORIS, you must replicate the image database onto your web server. You also must load the Replication Service onto the web server, then configure the Service to replicate the images to the PRODIMG folder in the web root.
The Global Configuration tab in the Replication Service consists of five additional tabs:
The STORIS Login tab requires a server password and user name, as well as the server name and STORIS account name. The Test Connection button validates the log-in credentials. When you click on the button, the Enter Account window appears, in which you must enter the path name to the account you want to test, for example
/Customer/AccountType/AccountName
Use this tab to schedule the time of day to run the auto-replicate procedure. By default, the image replication schedule is turned off.
If you set the Replication Schedule to “Off”, when you click “OK”, the Service stops.
If you set the Replication Schedule to "Daily", you activate the run time prompt. Enter the time of day, in 24-hour military-time format (that is, HH:MM), at which you want the Service to run. For example, to run at 4:00 P.M., enter 16:00 in this field., When you click “OK”, the Service starts.
Use this tab to specify the destination folder on the local drive for replicated images. The default values loaded into the Image Directory Root appear be-low the entry field (Vista has a different default).
For the eSTORIS web server, you should use the PRODIMG directory in the web root. For other PC’s, you can keep the default settings or specify your own directory. When this path is populated, you should update the user’s storis.ini record so that in the future, when SCI is run, it will know where to access the images. Once there is an entry in the user’s storis.ini record , the system uses that path to retrieve images (as opposed to retrieving them from the STORIS Image Repository). This is a required field for any PC that is actually running the replication service.
Use the Image Name field to define how to derive the Windows file name for each replicated image. When replication occurs, the full path is the following:
the Image Directory Root concatenated with the brand code
concatenated with the appropriate size folder (large, standard, or thumbnail)
concatenated with either the vendor model number or the model number
concatenated with “.jpg”.
Use this tab for logging. Choose between an errors-only log or a more detailed log. Then specify how many days to store these error logs before purging. Logs can include error messages such as expired password messages, configuration errors, and the like.
Use this tab to view the logs that were created today from this service.