Update on Hardware Upgrade

12:16 PM EST

Backup hardware is in place and in use for www.mydocsonline.com and webfolders.mydocsonline.com so if you're using either of those two interfaces you should have full access to the site.

Please note that webfolders2.mydocsonline.com will not be operational until much later in the day so if you have work that needs to be done please reset your webfolders connection to webfolders.mydocsonline.com. If you need help with that please call us at 239-495-1181.

For the time being the backup server supporting the SDK and the Transporter is not working correctly. If you normally use the Transporter please just log into the website to access your account for the time being.

We're currently running on backup servers so file transfers will be much than usual, but you should have access to files.

I'll post updates here as changes happen.

PLANNED OUTAGE for this coming Saturday, July 4th

An outage is scheduled for Saturday, July 4th beginning at 10 am U.S. Eastern Time (1400 UT). Service interruptions should be over by 2 pm Eastern (1800 UT).

The outage is for a hardware upgrade.

We'll keep the blog updated throughout the outage so please check back for more information. We'll also have the phone lines open so feel free to call with any questions at 239-495-1181.

Mac OS X Java Update Causing Problems with Java Web Start?

The most recent Java auto-update through OS X (Leopard) is causing some problems with Java Web Start, the program used to launch the My Docs Transporter program. If you've gone through the update and your Java Web Start is no longer available it means that the update wasn't completely successful.

A symptom of this is trying to launch a Java Web Start Application (Transporter for My Docs users) and having it open something that looks like a text file.

Fortunately there is a fairly simple solution to the problem. You can manually re-install the Java Update from this Apple location:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/application_updates/javaformacosx105update4.html

Let us know through the comments here if this doesn't work for you.

Planned outage for this coming Saturday April 17th

We've got some new hardware that needs to be installed this Saturday, April 17th. The addition of this new hardware will cause at least one outage of about 45 minutes and there may be other brief outages as well. The outages are scheduled for our least busy time of the week, on Saturday between the hours of 11:00am and 2:00 PM EST.   Of course we will do everything we can to keep them as short as possible.

Thanks for your patience as we continue to improve your user experience with My Docs Online.

Mysterious escape characters explained

We received the following question from a customer earlier today.  The question was something that many people are curious about so we've posted both the question and the answer below.  

Q - Is there any way to keep a space from changing to "%20" or "#" from changing to "%23" in a file name that's being uploaded to MDO through web folders or in the Public Folder?

A - The short answer is "No", and there are other special characters as well.

 

Using web folders means each file has to have a web URL and web URLs cannot include certain characters because they are used in HTML itself. "#" is one. Also blanks are not allowed. When a file name includes one of these characters they get replaced with an "escape" character which will start with % and a 2-digit code (%23 = # %20 = blank).

 

This is a web/internet thing, not a My Docs Online thing. All you can do is avoid using them in file names.

 

Here is a complete list (many of them aren't allowed in filenames in any case):

 

Table of URL Escape Characters
Character	Escape Character	Character	Escape Character
Space	%20	#	%23
$	%24	%	%25
&	%26	@	%40
'	%60	/	%2F
:	%3A	;	%3B
<	%3C	=	%3D
>	%3E	?	%3F
[	%5B	\	%5C
]	%5D	^	%5E
{	%7B	|	%7C
}	%7D	~	%7E

 

Scheduled outage for Saturday March 7th

We've got some new hardware that needs to be installed this Saturday, March 7th. The addition of this new hardware will cause at least one outage of about 20 minutes and there may be other brief outages as well. The outages are scheduled for our least busy time of the week, on Saturday between the hours of 2:00 and 5:00 PM EST.   Of course we will do everything we can to keep them as short as possible.

Thanks for your patience as we continue to improve your user experience with My Docs Online.

New Feature: Account Activity Logging and Reporting

We're pleased to introduce a new feature for Enterprise and Transcription Edition accounts that logs account activity and generates a daily report for the account administrator.

If you've ever wondered "when was this file uploaded" or "who deleted that folder" this new feature could be for you.

Each My Docs Online interface (browser, web folders, Transporter, etc) is now able to log key events like file upload/download/deletion, folder creation/deletion and many other events. Included in each log entry are time and date, login ID, and the IP address of the user.

We deliver the reports to account administrators by creating a "comma separated values" (CSV) file at about midnight for that day's activity, with the file generated and deposited in a special folder named "\Logs\Activity".

Using CSV files means each day's report can be downloaded to Excel for data manipulation like sorting or searching.

Currently this feature has to be configured by My Docs Online Support Staff, so if you are interested in using it contact support@mydocsonline.com and include your administrator ID, and we will turn the feature on for you.