Recollector for MS/Windows has been completely re-written, from the ground up, using the latest programming technologies from Microsoft. The fundamentals of Recollector have not changed, but a 10-year old look-and-feel will be replaced by an up-to-date appearance, along with quite a few enhancements, including:

 ▶  Support for unicode - enter text in any character set (Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, etc.).
 ▶  Image viewers have sliders that allows a continuous range of zooming.
 ▶  No separate "Start-up Window"; all functionality is in one place (the collection window).
 ▶  Hover-over provides tool tips in the editor and in the Item Details view.
 ▶  Faster image display, wherever images are shown.
 ▶  Managed Access - see below.

Though developed on, and aimed at, Windows 10, the new PC version of Recollector is designed to run on any version of Windows from Windows 7 onwards. (The prior version of Recollector for Windows will be retained for customers who are running on versions of Windows older than Windows 7.)

The new versions, for both Windows and Mac, have a new feature called Managed Access. This feature lets small groups of co-workers work on the same collection, without having to worry about "colliding" and overwriting each other’s changes. This is ideal for galleries or small museums, where more than one person needs to be able to update a collection database.

Once a collection is placed under Managed Access, only one user at a time can make changes to the collection, but all users can simultaneously access the collection for viewing and exploration. With Managed Access users employ a password to request permission to update a collection. Therefore, in a public setting, you can have a computer running Recollector, for viewing the collection by visitors, without having to worry that the visitor might accidentally change the collection database. Without the managed-access password, the visitor cannot make changes.

Managed Access is intended for friendly, cooperative groups. If Jill is currently making changes to the collection, and Jack wants to make changes and asks Recollector for permission to update the collection, he will be politely informed that Jill is currently making changes. So Jack can try again later, or he can ask Jill when she is likely to be finished with her changes. (Or he can ask Recollector to notify him when Jill has finished making changes.) And if Jill happens to suddenly get called away from her desk on an emergency, and forgets to log out, Recollector will time out Jill’s update permission after a specified period of inactivity, and another user will be able to ask for, and get, permission to update the collection.

Managed Access is used on collections that are stored in a location accessible from multiple computers. This is typically either on a shared network disk drive, or a cloud-based file-sharing service, such as Dropbox. With cloud-based storage, you can access the same collection database from different physical locations. One customer recently reported members of their group happily accessing (and updating) their collection from both the US and Japan.

What Managed Access is not: Managed Access is not a full-fledged multi-user, simultaneous read/write access database system. It is not like an online airline reservation system, where hundreds, if not thousands, of users are adding, modifying or deleting reservations, all at the same time. Recollector’s Managed Access is for small groups of cooperating users, and it allows them to safely access and update a shared collection database. So Recollector’s Managed Access goals are modest, but appropriate to its target audience. (And this is also why Recollector costs $49, and not $4,900!)