RSIGuard Technical Note

Issue:

RSIGuard 4.0.31 introduced a new format for storing usage data. This new format will enable RSIGuard to provide some exciting new reporting capabilities in the future. However, older versions of RSIGuard can't read data written by RSIGuard v4.0.31 or later.

Discussion:

RSIGuard stores reporting information (e.g. # hours of computer use, break compliance, etc.) in TID files. These files are used by the RSIGuard reporting tools UserInsight and GroupInsight (see http://www.rsiguard.com/reports for more information) as well as by RSIGuard itself (e.g. by the BreakTimer algorithm).

In RSIGuard v4.0.31, the format for these files changed. This new format will allow RSIGuard to provide enhanced reporting in the future.

When RSIGuard v4.0.31 (or later) first runs under a particular user account, it converts the TID file for that user to the new format.

If the RSIGuard user's TID file is stored on a network drive, and the user connects to this TID file via 2 or more instances of RSIGuard running on multiple computers, then all instances of RSIGuard should be v4.0.31 or later. If not, versions of RSIGuard prior to v4.0.31 will not be able to read the new-format TID files. However, these older versions of RSIGuard will correctly recognize that the format is newer and will behave gracefully. Therefore, the only impact is that usage data will not be recorded by pre-v4.0.31 installations of RSIGuard.

If RSIGuard stores its TID files on a local hard drive, this technical note can be disregarded.

For this reason, if you use RSIGuard and store TID files on a network drive, you should ideally update all of your RSIGuard installations. It is not necessary to update at precisely the same time. However, older versions will not be able to update TID files so some usage data will not be stored until all of a particular users' computers are updated.

RSIGuard reporting utilities (UserInsight and GroupInsight) v4.0.31 or later can read both the newer and the older format files seamlessly. Furthermore, the reporting utilities do not modify these files in any way, so you can use the newer reporting utilities with any mixture of pre and post v4.0.31 instances of RSIGuard.

Solution:

When you update a user's computer from a version of RSIGuard prior to v4.0.31 to v4.0.31 or later, you should ideally update all of the users' computers to the newer version. However, this is only required if recording data from the older versions of RSIGuard is required.

If you need further assistance, please contact RSIGuard support.