I maintain two Win 2003 servers connected via a VPN with data duplicated via DFS. As it stands the customer is complaining of losing data – normally because one person in each office saves a version of the file, causing one copy to silently go to the conflicts folder.
The ideal would be to lock access to a file at both locations, or at least notify users if their changes have ended up in the conflicts folder, but I'm stumped about how to arrange either.
Any suggestion will be appreciated and I will, of course, diligently answer any questions you have!
Best Answer
There's no built-in functionality to do what you're describing. DFS replication is really nice, but it doesn't excel in the kind of situation you're talking about.
You could code something up to parse the ConflictandDeletedManifest.xml file (it would have to run as an "Administrator") and report against it. Further, because the ConflictAndDeleted folder has a quota and "wraps", nothing you do is going to be guaranteed to be automated. Identifying the "owner" of a file could be as simple as examining the owner in the ACL, but it's possible that the owner could be someone other than the party to whom notification should be sent.
In case you see it or someone else points it out, there's a script from Microsoft Enterprise Product support that will restore files based on the ConflictandDeletedManifest.xml file. It might be a starting point, but it won't do waht you want out-of-the-box.
This idea sounds nice on the surface, but I think it will prove to be problematic. You're probably better off trying to put together a workflow that involves saving to new filenames or using something like a revision control system (SharePoint, Subversion, etc) in lieu of file-based storage for the data that has been the source of issues.