Tips & Tricks: Distribute Settings to Multiple Workstations
The HELiOS Desktop makes it possible to distribute a specific user interface configuration uniformly to several workstations.
To do this, the user interface of a HELiOS Desktop must first be set to the desired "initial situation". This is done as normal using the various configuration options in the user interface itself.
In order to then transfer the corresponding configuration to other workstations for standardisation, only certain system files of the corresponding workstation on which the settings were made must be copied to the correct directories of the other workstations.
Please note at this point: As of HELiOS 2024 Service Pack 1, a new directory structure has been introduced to ensure that different HELiOS users can also use different settings regardless of the Windows user logged in.
When updating to HELiOS 2024 SP1 (or higher) from an older version, existing settings files are backed up in a directory (%appdata%\Before2901Backup) and then migrated to the new structure.
In order for existing settings to be transferred, the workstations must be updated accordingly or an export of the settings with HELiOS 2024 SP1 (or newer) must be re-imported.
The superordinate directory n for settings that are dependent on the Windows user, such as the positions of windows, is %AppData%/.
At %programdata% HELiOS creates a structure with the further subdirectories Locations and News and the file GlobalDataDepot.db (this contains the global data repository) at \ISD Software und Systeme\ in the subdirectory of the current version.
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The Locations directory contains corresponding subdirectories for the individual location IDs (i.e. different HELiOS databases. This means that a workstation can work with different settings for different databases).
The user-specific data, such as the layout and position of the tabs, is stored in the Users directory.
The other directories contain the cross-user data such as masks and attribute mappings.
The cross-user data can be stored in a network directory and is then automatically adopted when HELiOS is started. -
The News directory contains settings for the HELiOS news page.
Generally, the configuration can be exported via the HELiOS Options.
The HELiOS cross-user data can be stored centrally using the HELiOS.ConfigImport.exe tool. The tool creates the required directory structure and fills it with the required data from the export prepared in advance. Manual creation of the directory structure or storage of the settings files is therefore no longer necessary.
