Don’t Let The 2 Most Frustrating Problems in MYOB Drives You Crazy!

MYOB software has 2 major technical issues which needs to be addressed and there is a solution to overcome it.

1. MYOB software becomes very slow when multiple users are accessing the same company MYOB data file concurrently over the network.
2. MYOB company/user data file is vulnerable to data corruption beyond your control.

Why Is MYOB Slow Over Network?

One known fact about MYOB multi-user slow access

When MYOB is in a multi-user or multiple users access environment with more than one user concurrently accessing the company MYOB data file over the network, the performance is incredibly slow, and the users are left wondering if the software has hanged. It doesn’t matter how fast your computer or network is or the size of the MYOB data file.

When someone opens the company MYOB data file in a network environment, its speed is great as long as there is only one person accessing it. As soon as multiple users accessing the same MYOB company data file, everything grinds to a halt and unbelievably slow.

One technical fact about the MYOB software

“MYOB is a C-Tree database and the design is over 20 years old.  It is highly network intensive with massive amounts of data moved over the network.” – Clive Williams, extracted from MYOB Community Forum, 2012.

One main reason why MYOB is running so slow

When user is accessing the company MYOB data file, several activities needs to take place which include read,  lock and write data. Therefore, a number of lock files will be created. When this occurrence takes place on a computer, it will be done at local disc speed. When it is done over a network, it will be at a slower network speed. This causes MYOB to run too slow and in most case crashing because of user lock-out and file corruption. The MYOB application needs to have the fastest possible connection between the company data file and the application file. The local network speed, switching, routing, WiFi and a whole host of ‘other’ potential problems interfere with the applications’ need to read & write to the company data file using the protection mechanisms built in the application. When this happened, MYOB application will begin to run very slow and in most case may hang because of user lock-out and file corruption. This is one of the principal causes of disconnections, freezing and slow response time.

Why is the MYOB data file vulnerable to corruption?

MYOB can easily be corrupted when a user editing the file is unsuccessful because it was abruptly disconnected from the data file. For this reason, you should never store your active company MYOB data file in Dropbox, cloud storage or in a centralise network storage.

How To Speed Up MYOB Access Over Network?

Using MYOB in file sharing method or over the network won’t work

Running your MYOB multi-user versions (Premier and Enterprise) application over a peer-to-peer network environment or using mapped drives for accessing the company data file just won’t work especially when more than one user is accessing the company file.

Only one way to solve the performance problem

To overcome this technical issue and have the MYOB multi-user versions perform best, you will need to implement Remote Desktop Services or terminal server.

The ONLY successful way to setup a MYOB multi-user environment without performance issue is to install the MYOB application together with the company MYOB data file on a Windows computer or server then have the users connecting concurrently to the MYOB software using terminal services or Remote Desktop Connection client from their computer, workstation, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.

Don’t forget to also perform regular maintenance on your company file depending on it’s size like ‘optimisation’ and end of year ‘purge’ .

What is Remote Desktop Services or Terminal Server?

Remote Desktop Services (previously known as Terminal Services), as it is today, is an old technology wrapped in some new, fancy wrapping paper.

If you are old enough, or if you have read at some stage how computing environments were back in the 60s, you probably heard the word ‘Mainframe’ and/or ‘Dumb Terminals’ (those almost like computers, with a green screen terminal and a keyboard). The idea behind them was quite simple: one big box (the mainframe) was responsible for running all the applications and processing all the data at a central location. In order to run applications, users would connect to the mainframe using the so – called ‘dumb terminals’. These had no local processing power at all; they would simply send the keyboard entries back to the mainframe and the mainframe would send back the screen updates. So although users could ‘see’ their text based applications on their screen, everything was actually happening at the mainframe.

Fast forward to today’s environments and this whole ‘centralized computing environment’, sometimes referred to as ‘Server Based Computing’, is back in full swing but of course with a revamped interface. Exactly like in the 60s, today’s server based computing environments centralizes all the applications and is responsible for all the required processing power. As you can see the main difference is simply the interface. Everything today relies on a GUI (Graphic User Interface) and a mouse so the old ‘mainframe’ idea just got updated to do the same old tricks but using today’s interfaces. Terminal Services is simply a Windows Server based component (available on Windows 2000 Server and up) that delivers a unique desktop – like’ environment to multiple users at the same time, all running off a single server (or multiple servers for high availability purposes). The same old tricks but with a couple updates.

Server based computing takes care of the processing required to run applications and the applications themselves, allowing users to access these resources from pretty much any device with little processing power and no applications installed locally. Terminal Services is just the ‘Microsoft Windows’ way of doing that, giving users the familiar look and feel they are used to.