Emergency Chuteside Mode

Overview

Fusion Client requires a consistent and stable network connection with Fusion Server to run properly. If your network experiences problems during a chuteside job, you cannot finish the job using Fusion Client until the network issues have been resolved. If this happens to you and the network cannot be fixed in a timely manner, you may want to use Fusion's Emergency Chuteside Mode. In this mode, Fusion Truck can be used to allow you to at least finish the job. Once the network is functional again, Fusion Client will detect the changes made to the job by Fusion Truck working in emergency mode so that you can finalize the job with the server. In extreme cases where the network to your barn will be down for several hours or days, the emergency mode makes it possible to shuffle jobs from an office computer to the chuteside and back with USB drives.

Please note that this feature is not intended to be used on a daily basis so that you can get by without a network connection to your barn. It is only intended to be used on the rare occasions where you have network problems that cannot be immediately fixed.

Possible Scenarios

Typical Scenario

The following steps describe what typically happens when the emergency mode is needed:

  1. You start a chuteside job as normal with Fusion Client.
  2. Part way through the job, the network goes down, crashing Fusion Client.
  3. After a few minutes it becomes obvious that the network can't immediately be fixed.
  4. You launch Fusion Truck which detects that it should run in emergency mode, pulling in all the information it needs for the job and resuming it where you left off.
  5. You continue the job until the last animal is finished and then pause the job.
  6. By this time the network issues have been fixed, so you quit Fusion Truck and launch Fusion Client.
  7. Fusion Client detects that the job was continued in emergency mode, pulls in the changes, and resumes the job.
  8. You now either continue or finalize the job.

Extended Scenario 1

If the network hasn't been fixed by step 6 in the typical scenario, you can follow these steps:

  1. Choose Save To USB… in the emergency chuteside mode's main menu window which allows you to save the job to a USB drive.
  2. Take the USB drive to an office computer and launch Fusion Client.
  3. Select Fusion Chuteside → Jobs → Load Emergency Job From USB… and point it to the USB drive you saved the job on.
  4. Fusion Client finds the job on the USB drive, pulls in the changes, and resumes the job.
  5. You now finalize the job.

Extended Scenario 2

If the network still hasn't been fixed after the above scenarios occur and you must run another job, you can follow these steps:

  1. Go to an office computer and launch Fusion Client.
  2. Begin a new chuteside job and set it up.
  3. In the Job Setup Window, click the Save To USB… button and choose the USB drive you want to save the job to.
  4. Take the USB drive to the chuteside computer and launch Fusion Truck. It will normally detect that it needs to launch in emergency mode, but if it doesn't, you can force it by holding the Shift key down while it is launching.
  5. You will automatically be asked to select the USB drive you want to load a job from. (If you aren't asked automatically, use the Load From USB… button in the main menu window.)
  6. The job will be loaded and you can then resume the job.
  7. When you are finished with the job, save it back to the USB drive and take it to the office computer for finalization as described in Extended Scenario 1 above.

Pre-Fetching

It will be helpful to understand that for the emergency mode to be possible, Fusion Client needs to get any data you might need during the job from the server when the job starts. This is called a pre-fetch. Once you are finished setting up a new job and it actually begins, Fusion starts pre-fetching data from the server in the background. During this process you will see a small window in the bottom-right corner of the screen showing the progress of the pre-fetch. Fusion does this in the background so that you can start the job without waiting for the pre-fetch to finish, but it is important to understand that the emergency mode will not be available until the window disappears, signifying that the pre-fetch has completed.

The pre-fetch normally happens fairly quickly, although it is very dependent on your network speed. It will normally finish while you are on your first or second animal. Please be aware that it will take a little longer for the first job of each day as more information must be brought from the server at the beginning of the day.

Requirements and Limitations

For the emergency mode to be possible, the following requirements and limitations come into play:

  • Fusion Truck must be installed on the chuteside computer and must be the same version as Fusion Client. This must be true before the job starts. Fusion Truck will not automatically update in this situation, so it is your responsibility to upgrade it using Fusion Installer whenever Fusion Client auto-upgrades. Fortunately, this is very fast and easy when you use the Fusion Server source in Fusion Installer. If the correct version of Fusion Truck is not installed when a job starts up, you will be warned that the emergency mode will not be available unless you install the correct version before continuing.
  • Emergency mode is only available to Fusion Client when running on a chuteside computer. This ensures that when you start a job on an office computer, unnecessary time and bandwidth for the pre-fetch is not wasted.
  • When in emergency mode, Fusion Truck can only deal with one job at a time. It is not possible to do multiple jobs unless you use a USB drive to finalize each job on an office computer before starting the next one.
  • In emergency mode, Fusion truck is very limited on what it can do. For example, you can view a list of current animals and see their history, but you cannot edit information in the Animal History window. Only functionality related to finishing a job is available.
  • A job cannot be finalized or canceled in emergency mode. It can only be paused. Once the job is running on a client computer connected to the server, it can then be finalized or canceled.
  • When a job is switched into or from emergency mode, numerous checks are made to ensure that nothing has contaminated the job. For example, you cannot upgrade Fusion to a different version before an emergency job has been finalized or Fusion won't accept the job. Another example is that it checks to make sure no one else has tried to run the job on another computer during the time Fusion Truck was running it in emergency mode. If Fusion suspects that anything is wrong with the emergency data, it will simply not load a job in emergency mode or in Fusion Client for finalization.

Please be aware that emergency chuteside mode is a best effort situation. Fusion will do its best to make this mode available, but it cannot be absolutely guaranteed.

Miscellaneous Things To Know

When Fusion Client is running a job, it is saving information to the server after each animal leaves the squeeze. It also saves a copy of this data to the chuteside computer's local hard drive. When Fusion Truck is launched, it looks on the hard drive to see if it can detect a job that crashed while running. If it detects this (or that it is on a chuteside computer), you will be asked if you want to run Fusion Truck in emergency chuteside mode. If you have just installed a brand new computer where Fusion is not able to detect that it should give you this choice, you can force it to ask you by holding down the Shift key just after launching Fusion Truck.

When Fusion Truck is running in emergency mode, it makes a limited main menu window available with the following options:

  • List Animals. Opens the Animal List window with limited functionality. Only current animals from one location will be listed.
  • Resume Job. If there is a job loaded, this button is used to resume it.
  • Load From USB…. Loads a job from a USB drive. Typically this will be a job that was started on an office computer.
  • Save To USB…. Saves the loaded job to a USB drive so it can be taken to an office computer and finalized.
  • Options. Allows access to limited functionality such as the Physical Computer Management window.
  • Quit. Used to quit Fusion Truck.
  • Log Out. Used to log out.

When Fusion Truck is launched in emergency mode, it will first look for a job on the local hard drive. If it finds one, it will be loaded and the main menu window will be shown so you can resume the job. If it can't find one, it assumes you want to load a job from a USB drive and will ask you to choose the USB drive. If no job can be loaded, Fusion Truck will quit.

When you log in on Fusion Client, it automatically checks to see if there is a job on the hard drive that was run in emergency mode. If there is, you will be alerted to this fact and it will load the changes and resume the job automatically. You can then continue, cancel, or finalize the job.

In this Topic