Global Lock

Harmony Network has a lock system, referred to as Global Lock, for the different scenes and scene assets. As all the data on the server can be accessed directly and modified from any client machine by default, the scenes are locked. Users must obtain the rights to modify scenes in order to save their work on the server.

Only one user at a time can modify a scene. Once a scene is opened on a client machine, other users can only open the scene in read-only mode; they will not be able to save any modifications.

If you work in standalone mode, you automatically have the rights to modify all drawings and palettes.

The Global Lock has three levels:

A Harmony project can be locked at various levels. Its timing, drawings, version and palettes can be locked. Locking means to get the rights to modify a scene or its assets. Other users cannot modify locked items. They will be prompted with an error message saying that the scene has been locked by another user. At that moment the scene will be displayed as read-only.

See the table below to understand the different lock possibilities.

Lock Description
Scene or Version Lock Controls the Xsheet timing, layers, Network modules but not the drawing, palettes, palette-lists or templates.
Drawing Lock Only one user can edit and save a locked drawing.
Palette Lock Only one user can edit and save a locked palette.
Palette-list Lock Only one user can edit and save a locked palette-list.
Library Folder lock Only one user can edit and save into that folder in the Library.

 

Get rights to modify the scene: Allows the user to modify the selected version of the scene and access the version manager during the opened session.
Get rights to modify the scene version: Allows the user to modify the currently selected scene version, but locks access to the version manager during the opened session.
Get rights to modify the scene assets: Automatically gets all the edit rights to modify the scene and its assets. the user locking the scene using this option is the only user that can edit and save the scene version, all the drawings in that scene, all the palettes in the palette-list, both palette-lists, but not the library folders..

These three levels of locking are available from the Database Selector when the user logs into Harmony. From there you can select a scene and obtain the rights to modify it by selecting the desired lock option.

There are several different ways to obtain the rights to modify the scenes. It can be done when the user loads a scene from Harmony, inside the application once the scene is loaded, or when an environment, job or scene is created using the Control Center module.

Acquiring Rights to a Scene Once it is Loaded

If you opened a scene in read-only mode, but realize that you need to modify it, you can easily acquire the necessary rights without closing and reloading the scene.

Note that it is not possible to acquire the rights to modify the scene assets once the scene is loaded. This process is done during the initial loading of the scene. To learn more about enabling the rights to modify while creating environments, jobs and scenes, refer to the Control Center guide.