PT8 single work machine-several separate users

Question

Trying to understand the details of PT8 registration. Here’s a user case:

Project Admin Jane has three different coworkers who visit when available to work on a translation project. There’s only one of them there at a time. Jane wants a single workstation with a single instance of PT8 installed, but clearly she will need to set up four different registered users for PT, with different privileges and work tasks for each.
-How should the registrations be managed?
-How does PT8 interface with separate user accounts set up on a single work station?
-Or how does PT8 recognize the current user so it will serve the appropriate privileges and tasks and resources?

PT instance registered to Jane I assume. Do A, B, and C need separate PT licenses or installations?
On the work station host system, separate user accounts will be set up for Jane (Admin) and for coworkers A, B, and C.
Can PT8 be aware of different workstation users? Or is there some other way of PT8 to be aware of the current PT8 user?

Answer 1

Paratext should work very well in this case as Paratext was designed to handle this - provided that the following is done:

• Each user has their own Paratext registration.

• Each user has a separate computer login.

• Each user puts in their Paratext registration while logged into their computer login.

If this is done, Paratext will automatically detect that the user has changed and make sure to do a Mark Point in Project History to make sure changes are attributed to the correct users. It will also warn users when they do certain things like Delete Project that will affect the other users on the machine.

This setup does not require separate Paratext installations.

Note that based on internal testing, Paratext needs to be closed before switching users if using Window’s “Switch User” functionality (i.e. they don’t actually log out). This is because otherwise Paratext continues to run in the background in this case and causes problems.

This functionality was added in 7.6.

Answer 2

Having separate Windows logins for each user has worked with all previous versions of Paratext as far as I know. It is a good solution. I would also suggest that each user make their own Text Combinations in Paratext to suit the tasks they typically perform.

Answer 3

anon044949:

Having separate Windows logins for each user has worked with all previous versions of Paratext as far as I know.

Yes, it has worked fairly well. However, it used to be really easy to get changes to projects attributed to the wrong person unless they made sure to do a S/R or Mark Point in Project History before switching users. Now Paratext does it for you.

Answer 4

Yes, team members should do S/R at least at the beginning of work, and the end of work. This is true whether team members use the same computer or not.