Configure Shared Customer Data in Easy Steps using Contact Management Software / CRM Invoicing Software

As your business grows you may need to access customer data from more than one PC. With Amphis Customer you can easily Share Customer Data and documents across multiple PCs with a centralized database.

These step by step instructions assume you have client PCs :- PC1, PC2 etc and you want to store the database,documents and templates etc on PC myServer. Also see the notes at the bottom of the page.
 
Step1
Share a folder public on server myServer so that the client PCs can access it eg \\myServer\public (see notes below). Use a single name for the share name ie no spaces. Ensure that you give write/update access to the shared folder or else you will not be able to create any new records.

Step2
Install Amphis Customer on PC1.

Step3
Run Amphis Customer and enter your business name etc

Step4
Use the Tools->Folders->View Data Folder menu to locate the database customer.mdb. Close Amphis Customer. Move the database file customer.mdb to \\myServer\public. Update the .config file Amphis Customer.exe.config in C:\Program Files\Amphis Software\Amphis Customer v3.0 to point to the new database location (see notes below).

Data Source=\\myServer\public\customer.mdb

Tip: On Windows Vista you may not have access to update the .config file by default. Right-click on it and select Properties. Click on the Security tab and click Edit to edit the permissions. Select Users and give them Full Control. Also on the General tab, check the file isn't set to read-only. Run Notepad and then drag and drop the file into Notepad. Make the edits, click Save and then close Notepad.

Tip: Run Amphis Customer and go to Tools->Configuration and you'll see the current configuration.

This is the default configuration so if it still looks like this, you may not have been successful in editing the .config file.

Tip: If the configuration page doesn't show the config you expect, check you didn't save the .config file as a .txt file by mistake which is very easy to do in Notepad.

Step5
From PC1 check that if you navigate to \\myServer\public that you can see the customer.mdb file. Create a file test.txt in \\myServer\public and check that you can edit the file in notepad from PC1 and save your changes (this checks that you have permissions to view and update files on the server). Also see notes below.

Step6
Run Amphis Customer and check that you can create a new customer (this checks that you can access the database now it has been moved to the server).

Step7
Now locate the templates, documents, reports and exports folders and move them all to \\myServer\public. Update the .config file to point to the server.

key="templatesFolder" value="\\myServer\public\templates"

key="documentsFolder" value="\\myServer\public\documents"

key="reportsFolder" value="\\myServer\public\reports"

key="exportsFolder" value="\\myServer\public\exports"

Run Amphis Customer and check that you can create a Quote or Invoice (this checks that you can access the templates now they have been moved to the server).

Step8
Install Amphis Customer on the rest of the client PCs but don't run Amphis Customer yet. Copy the config file Amphis Customer.exe.config from PC1 to the rest of the client PCs to point them at the server. Then run Amphis Customer on each client PC and check you can create or edit a customer. On each of the other client PCs it should not prompt you to enter your business name. If it does, it is still pointing at the local database so check the config file is pointing to the server.

Step9
On each client PC click the Get License button or menu to send an email to Amphis Software with the serial number of the software. You will be sent a license string for each PC. Click Register License and enter the string on each PC to fully license the software.

Notes

You can set up Amphis Customer to run in the above client-server configuration as part of the free 30 day trial and try it out for yourself. Amphis Customer also supports using Microsoft SQL Server as the database which we would recommend for 10 or more users.

To share a folder on the server, right-click on it and select Sharing and Security... Click the Share this folder option and click Maximum allowed. Click the Permissions button to check the access permissions. By default users probably only have Read access which is not sufficient so you need to give users Change (Update) access.

Here is an example .config file set to use the database and folders on the \\myServer\public share 

Check that if you browse to the public folder eg \\myServer\public from each of the PCs, that you can see the database and folders like this.

Check that from each client PC you can create a .txt file on the server in that public folder and check you can edit the file in Notepad and save it. This checks that all the clients have write/update access to the server share.

You will need to purchase a separate license for each PC that you use to connect to the central database. You can purchase three licenses for 50% more than the price of one.

You can set up all the client PCs you need as part of the 30 day evaluation.

Please contact customer support if you need help using Amphis - Customer with multiple PCs.

We recommend that you run the Microsoft Access Database Compact and Repair utility on a regular basis to check/fix data integrity. We have a free utility to help with that Compact and Repair Microsoft Access Database