Network shares, and multiple users, prevent overwriting

[Don5C40]

Good Morning,

I have a client that utilizes the Adobe suite for their architect work ,and have been using a network share for well over a half a decade. recently, they have been noticing that when two users had opened an illustrator file at the same time, and save at different times, the latest save is the true save file. They are concerned as they hadn't had much issue with overwriting until they upgraded from CS6 to the subscription model. 

Does anyone have any details as to why they would suddenly have this save conflict issue, and if Adobe supports a way to lock these files when they are in use?

[Doug A Roberts]

What were they noticing before? As far as I know this has always been the case.

[Don5C40]

Thank you for your reply. They were not specific with it. just that things were fine until recently. assumably they had not had any conflicts, however understandably, clients can be short with their descriptions. 

[Doug A Roberts]

Do you know anything about their collaborative practices?

In my experience (in a sample size of one company network), it has always been possible for two users to unknowingly open the same file and for the latest save to be the current state of the file (through CS5-current CC).

Without knowing what they think changed this is hard to answer.

[Don5C40]

I understand. I plan to inform them of this information, as I believe with both yours and mylenium's reply, will be benefitial in explaining to them why they may only be experiencing the issues now, as apposed to when they ran with Adobe CS6. Thank you very much!

[Doug A Roberts]

They may want to know that a managed collaboration is possible via Cloud documents. (though they may have no use for them -- I don't):

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/share-and-collaborate.html

[Don5C40]

They are about 20 designers, whom work within 1 active directory remotely, and onsite. it may be possible the cause of the issue is due to remoting, as well as just general limitations with Adobe file structuring.  I will be doing additional file permissions adjustments if I can, but i really appreciate your input.

[Doug A Roberts]

I have no expertise in network file management except as a user, but please leave any further questions here as others may be able to chime in.

[Mylenium]

This may be down to recent changes in Adobe's network file code to improve user experience, as in the past it actually wouldn't work for a lot of users. Anyway, nothing you can fix on the Adobe end. You have to dig into the server settings and prevent unauthenticated file access as well as configuring the various file handling options via group policies (on Windows) or whatever is the equivalent. This may even go so far as to reformat the storage to actually support user permissions and quotas. If the server has really been running that long, there's a good chance that nobody ever took the time to configure it beyond its default configuration and for all intents and purposes this could be biting you now.

Mylenium

[Don5C40]

Hey Mylenium, Thanks for getting back to me. Microsoft Server file share doesn't natively support file locking, as in my experience this is typically a common feature for software specific files like Microsoft. I am not very proficient in Adobe products, so I was mostly wondering if file locking was ever a feature of Adobe, and if there was anyone who ran a similar enviroment who could shine a light on working around such conflicts. Shy of telling the client to better communicate among employees to inform them not to be in a file.

I appreciate your further input (:

[Mylenium]

What exact settings are you using? Cahced/ delay write? What formatting? What access protocols? The devil's all in the details. Windows will lock files just fine, it may just require to sync all users across the board and straighten out permissions and user privileges.

Mylenium