is there a way to make the file explorer only view the root directory on the server pc instead of the client pc? I have a program that generates a file that my customer wants to see, but the customer is logging in to my server over the internet and does not have access to my network drives.
same thing for the internet explorer component. Is it possible to use the server pc’s internet explorer instead of the client pc’s?
No, both of those components run on the client machine. If you have file and print sharing turned on on the server you may be able to set the root directory to that path.
is this something that I can add to the feature request forum? or is it only possible to look at the client side?
Its only possible to look at the client side. The typical thing to do here is to store files as BLOBs in a database and then expose that data to the Client through a SQL query.
Does this mean that any reports that are auto generated and saved as PDF to C: by a client running on the server cannot be accessed by another “remote” client unless they are emailed?
Brett - I don’t think you can make that generalization. There are many ways of sharing files besides via email.
You should be able to construct a system that allows the user to download any of the pdf reports on demand. This might be generating the report on the fly, accessing a “presaved” report from the database (Carl’s BLOB suggestion), or accessing the pdf as a file on the server. Let me comment on each.
Generating report on the fly - This is typically the most flexible way of delivering the report for your users. It only relies on the data being in the database for that time period. Through clever bindings the user can select time periods, options, etc and have the report created for them. They can then save it locally as a pdf.
Saving reports to database - Here you generate periodic reports and save them to your SQL database as a BLOB. This is similar to using the database as your file system. This approach tend to be operating system independent and very secure (as is #1).
Writing to files, then accessing those files - This is usually done by reading and writing to network shares, which can be done in Ignition, but goes outside of the scope of the system (relies directly on operating system networking). In your case, I wouldn’t recommend it over the Internet.
3a. You might be able to write files locally to a place where the web server portion of the gateway publishes the files, then access it via a web browser. You could even have the system email a link out.
I recommend investigating options #1 and #2 first.