Dear Rob,

I don't know if the thrust of your question is organizational or
technical.  I can't address the former, but from a technical standpoint,
we have found it to be very easy and successful.  Our users all work
from their homes or remote offices.  Only rarely does anyone have the
luxury of a local connection.  

We use Microsoft's Remote Desktop Support.  The client software comes
along with Windows XP but can also be downloaded for free for older
Windows versions.  Anywhere our users can get on a machine that has an
Internet Connection they can connect and be working on the central TMS
database with a few keystrokes.  

With a high speed connection the performance is excellent.  One forgets
the fact that it is all going over the Internet.  That is, until you
double-click on an image to see a full-screen version.  The Image Viewer
used by TMS redraws and redraws the image, making for an extremely
tedious process.  Other than that, most things run quite fast.  We have
several users who live where there is no broadband Internet connection
available, so they use a 2-way satellite connection.  It's pretty slow,
but better than a phone line.

The requirements on the server side include the ability to allow Remote
Terminal Support connections to drill through your firewall.  This is
easily accomplished technically but systems administrators can be fussy
about it.  You also need to buy the appropriate number of Client Access
Licenses from Microsoft.  

Feel free to contact me directly if you want to know anything more about
it.

Best regards,

Dick

  
Richard Grant
The Richard Diebenkorn Catalogue Raisonné Project
3200 College Avenue #2
Berkeley, CA 94705
510-428-1400
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Rob Morgan
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 2:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: TMS Access from Home


Are there any institutions out there that allow their staff to access
TMS from their home?  Our museum may be offering telecommuting as an
option for our employees, and I was curious how other institutions
addressed this issue.   

Rob Morgan
TMS Database Administrator
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive
Baltimore, MD  21211
[log in to unmask]
410-396-6489 (phone)
410-396-6562 (fax)