We have been using Method CRM for our manufacturing business for 10 years, and for 10 years I've been trying to get the File Attachment data type to work. It has always been buggy and poorly designed, for example since inception it will allow duplicate filenames to be used which causes problems. Yes, I know each file has a relational key field, but the http and url resource requests do not like duplicate filenames.
There have always been occasional issues with attachments like 404 errors or images not displaying on screens, but in the last year when the file attachment fails to load the attachment is DELETED. The data is lost, destroyed, whatever. This is most often accompanied with the message “The value passed in the URL appears to have been altered. Please check the link that you used to access this page.”
I opened a case with Method Support and they called me and told me they were able to replicate the error on their end, but that they could not provide any support or a fix since I was using Method Classic and that I had customized my screens. Huh? I told them this was obviously a database error that was destroying user data and that not destroying data is a fundamental requirement of a database, but they said the only way to I could get help was to pay for customization services, but I could get an hour for free.
Okay, that has me pretty livid, but I tried to help them by suggesting that IF Native File Attachments were not fully supported and that Method software developers were not going to allocate any more resources to that feature, even though it was never coded corretly and even though they broke it when they implemented new code, and the bug was reproduced by the support team, that maybe my issue could be solved by using SmartVault instead. I am okay with knowing that native file attachment support is just iffy and that there is a recommendation to use SmartVault instead and that if I invest the time to implement SmartVault that it will be supported in the future. But, I could not even get that recommendation from the support team.
So, I'm putting it out there, again, here to the forum for help.
Does SmartVault work? Is it better than the native File Attachment data object?
All I want to do is attach an image or pdf file to our Items that can then be viewed when we lookup Items or printed on an report. This helps us identify our parts. I have many images and engineering drawings already attached, but many of these have beeen deleted by the bug. I am okay recreating all of this in SmartVault if it works.
James