By Reed Block, Senior Data Analyst & Mary Teachout, Data Analyst 

 

Fall is upon us, and with every day that passes we get closer to every kids’ (and some adults’) favorite day in October… Halloween! There are plenty of Halloween traditions to celebrate, such as carving pumpkins, curating the perfect costume, or even visiting haunted houses. However, the most popular of all is trick or treating, which is why we are here to give you all of the tricks and treats for your ARCU environment this spooky season.

Trick – Don’t be fooled into thinking you will always have enough room on your ARCU Server. Your databases are always growing; before you know it, drives will fill up and there won’t be any space for new data. Here are a few ways to avoid being tricked by these capacity issues:

  1. Clear out old ARCU logs, which are likely stored in C:/ARCU/arculogs. MDT recommends only keeping 30 days’ worth of information here, so simply deleting old log files is an easy way to free up space on the server.
  2. Clear out old ARCU upgrade/installation folders. As you probably know, with each ARCU upgrade or installation comes another folder containing many PowerShell files, SQL scripts, and much more. These folders can add up quickly, especially if you have been performing multiple upgrades to get caught up to a supported version. MDT recommends only keeping the most recent and one previous installation folder. The chances of you needing anything out of folders from many versions ago are slim, so this is another easy way to free up space on the server.
  3. An area that has a large impact on ARCU processing is the arcuftp_archive folder. MDT recommends keeping only 90 days’ worth of daily archived files. Everything else can either be zipped or deleted to save space.

Treat – Adding favorites to your profile in the ARCU Portal will help you access your most used reports faster by creating a custom section on the top of the report menu. This will ensure easier navigation when you open your ARCU Portal and will save you the hassle of locating the reports nested in the rest of the menu. To add your favorites:

  1. Select your profile in the top right-hand corner next to the 4 square menu.
  2. Select ‘Favorites’.
  3. Add your most used reports from the standard ARCU menu.

Treat  – Using GL Auto Assign can help you avoid out of balance issues. Don’t worry about forgetting to assign your new GLs in Category Designer; GL Auto-Assign can do the work for you. There is a one-day lag between the time that the GL account is added and the time that the feature assigns the GL account, which provides time to manually assign the account. As new accounts are added, the feature will assign the new GLs to the categories based on assignments of existing GL accounts.

We know that these treats aren’t exactly what you’d want to see in your candy bag at the end of the night (that would include peanut butter cups), but they will help keep the ghosts and skeletons out of your data warehouse.