Daily Central Office Transmissions

All Central Office transmissions go to and from the FTP site configured for the stores and the server. Each transmission includes only the updates since the last successful transmission.

• Stores transmit data to the FTP site.
• The Central Office server imports the store data from the FTP site, processes the data, then transmits the updates back to the FTP site.
• Stores retrieve the server updates from the FTP site.

These transmission keep the data on the Central Office server and the stores in sync.

R.O. Writer strongly recommends transmitting every day to keep your data as current as possible. This also makes transmissions faster because the daily payloads are smaller. The more data that needs to transmit, the longer the transmission takes.

Round Trip Process

The complete data transfer process between the stores and the server is referred to as the "round trip" process and contains three steps:

1. The store transmits to the Central Office server.
2. The Central Office server transmits to the store.
3. The store transmits to the Central Office server again.

A database at the store has accurate data after all three steps have been completed. This means that the data at the store is usually one day old. In addition, you have to transmit twice at the store to see the data from the server. This is normal behavior.

The topics in this section include: