[THIN] Re: Office autosave settings / server reboot schedule

  • From: Angus Macdonald <Angus.Macdonald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 16:42:37 -0000

If I remember correctly, the default is 10 minutes. Setting it to 0 probably
disables the function but you should be OK to use any value you think is
appropriate.
-----Original Message-----
From: Luchette, Jon [mailto:JLuchette@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 12 December 2003 16:34
To: 'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [THIN] Re: Office autosave settings / server reboot schedule


Do you know what the default timer is should this setting not be altered, or
how I could find it myself?  I assume it is much higher than 3 minutes....
Thanks for your help with this!
 
/jL
-----Original Message-----
From: Angus Macdonald [mailto:Angus.Macdonald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 11:16 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Office autosave settings / server reboot schedule
 
Whoops. must slow down my fingers. that should be a 3 minute timeout, not 2
minutes.
-----Original Message-----
From: Angus Macdonald [mailto:Angus.Macdonald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 12 December 2003 16:11
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Office autosave settings / server reboot schedule
I'm not sure about Excel but this Kix line (it'll probably wrap) sets a
short autosave value (2 minutes) for Word 2000
 
$tval=WRITEVALUE("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\software\policies\microsoft\office\9.0\W
ord\Options\vpref","AutoRecover_192_8","3","REG_DWORD")
We're a bit more vicious with our reboot system. When the reboot process
starts, the users receive a  popup telling them to logout and back in again.
5 minutes later they get another one. 5 minutes after that the server
reboots. Users soon learn to heed the warnings.
-----Original Message-----
From: Luchette, Jon [mailto:JLuchette@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 12 December 2003 16:02
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Office autosave settings / server reboot schedule
Six MF servers, win2k sp3, FR2 (soon to be upgraded to FR3!)
 
Hello, we are trying to use a Citrix idle timeout setting of 2 or 3 hours
along with basically intelligent reboot scripting to provide a reboot
schedule transparent to the user.   Our schedule looks like this:
 
Server 1 is scheduled first to reboot: 1st day logons are disabled at 2am,
the script/application is setup to wait 12 hours for all users to logoff, if
they are all off before that time the server will reboot before the 12 hours
is up, if not it will wait the full 12 hours and then boot all of the users
off and then reboot and move to the next server.  We are hoping that because
of the 2 hour idle session timeout, as well as the fact that most users
aren't going to be working for a full 12 hours straight, that we will not
have a lot of scenarios where users are kicked off.  If we do see a lot of
users still on after the 12 hours being kicked off, we have the ability to
set the script to say that after the 12 hours is up, do not reboot the
server or kick any users off, simply move to the next server in a
round-robin style architecture.
 
However because of one possible scenario we are faced with a problem.  If a
user was to log on to the server at say 10am, and then at a later time, say
noon, the server is next on the schedule to reboot and logons are disabled.
Then let's say that user leaves an important spreadsheet open and unsaved
for more than two hours of inactivity, they will be disconnected because of
the idle session timeout of 2 hours.  Then that user comes back and tries to
reconnect to that same session, and / or pull up that spreadsheet that was
never saved, they will be unable to because logons are disabled to that
server.  The only way to even get them back onto the server is to reset
their session using the CMC.  It is because of this possibility of users
losing data that I am faced with this problem.  I brought this up to my
company so as to say we have to make sure users do not leave these documents
open with more than 2 hours of inactivity and was told that was TOO MUCH TO
ASK OF THEM!!!!   -but I won't get started on that...
 
Anyways, the good part is that we mostly use just two types of applications:
one is our main HIS application which does have to ability to autosave
documents, and the other is the Office suite (a mixture of office 2000 and
Outlook XP).  So if were able to control and configure the autosave settings
for just the Office suite alone for the entire server, I can say that should
this ridiculous scenario actually occur, we do not stand the ability to lose
data because I will be able to use the auto saved office document to
retrieve their data for them.   
 
We run Office 2000 but with Outlook XP.  Does anybody know of any good group
policies or any other easy way to configure the autosave settings for these
particular apps server-wide?  I am looking at setting the timer as to when
the documents are automatically saved, and the location to which they are
saved, -mainly a user's home drive because most users are on thin clients.
Anybody doing this already or got any way to do it?
 
/jL

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