Duet has a client – server architecture. Duet clients are of two types. Primary and Secondary. If as a user you have only one machine in which Duet is installed, then you do not have to worry about primary and secondary machines. Only users with multiple machines and Administrators need to understand these concepts.

Background

In many enterprises Information Workers (IW) use more than one computer on their job. IWs work with Duet items on all their computers.  To ensure integrity of the changes from all these computers be reflected in your SAP system, there is a need to sequence the changes.  In Duet, one user machine is identified as the sequencer and it is called the Primary machine. Primary machine identification is made at deployment time. The end user functionality is identical between a Primary machine and secondary machines. The only requirement is that the Primary machine needs to be running for synchronizing the data between Duet client and your SAP system.

In normal usage, when Duet is functioning correctly, there is no need for the user to know which machines are Primary and Secondary Duet machines.

 

• How does the user know a computer is a primary machine?

The first computer on which the initial configuration is done for a user for the first time is designated as the primary machine.

Clicking on Duet utility in the system tray, displays a status dialog. This will indicate if the machine is primary or secondary. Status dialog will display the synchronization details only if the machine is a primary machine.

 

• The primary machine should always be up and outlook and duet utility should be running all the time.

Synchronization with SAP system happens only the primary machine. If the primary machine is not running for a user, changes to Duet items are never propagated to backend SAP system.

 

• Assigning a new machine to be a primary machine

First shutdown current primary machine, then run the Promote Machine tool on the machine which you want to convert it to a Primary Duet machine. Restart the old Primary machine and it will automatically become a Secondary machine.

 

• When the primary machine loses connection to the corpnet, but its still active and running.

Users can still create Duet items on Primary or Secondary machines using the offline functionality of Duet. But these items will not get synchronized with the SAP system. When the Primary machine gets connected to the corpnet and the exchange account, the items will be synchronized with the SAP backend.

 

• Duet Utility not running on the primary machine.

If the Duet utility is not running on the Primary machine, changes to Duet data will not get synchronized to the SAP system. One indication that the Duet utility is not running, is the absence of the Duet Icon on the System Tray Applet region of the task bar. Users can start the Duet utility by launching it from Start menu->Programs->Duet->Duet utility.

 

-Ramakrishnan Nagasamy, Program Manager, Duet