Sébastien Galtier ,

Under File > Options > Users you can export (and later import) individal user settings such as the window positions and the File > Options settings.

Hello Jesus,

I cannot find Users in this window, can you please detail the steps to follow?

Thank you,

Sébastien

I guess you File > Setup > Manage User Profiles, right ?

To get to this window from where we can export the user's profile as an .sdlprofile file and then import it when Studio 2022 is first launched, at the step of the selection of the profile.

Now my second question then: can we automate the export of the user profile/settings, using a command line interface for instance?

Sébastien Galtier 

Sébastien Galtier said:

I guess you File > Setup > Manage User Profiles, right ?

Yes!

Sébastien Galtier said:

can we automate the export of the user profile/settings, using a command line interface for instance?

Sorry, I have no idea. For sure, a little app developd with the API would do it. Maybe Paul knows how to address it…

Is there a documentation available on this API?

Sébastien Galtier 

https://developers.rws.com/studio-api-docs/articles/intro.html

Thank you Jesús Prieto , but this documentation is for Developers who wish to build a Trados Studio plugin (i.e. that runs inside Trados Studio).
My intention would rather be to develop a Command Line Interface (CLI) so that it could be called by a System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) software package. 

The software package would do the following:

1. Call the CLI to export the user's preferences and settings to a file;

2. Uninstall the current version of Trados Studio;

3. Install the next version of Trados Studio;

4. Import the user's preferences and settings exported in step 1.

Sébastien Galtier 

Sébastien Galtier said:

this documentation is for Developers who wish to build a Trados Studio plugin

That’s correct.

Paul , Would you have an idea how to do that?

Sébastien Galtier 

The very same documentation could be used to build a powershell script as opposed to a plugin. But you would still need to have some idea of how to work with the API.

Thank you for your answer Paul.

I was looking for the API Documentation page and I found this one: https://developers.rws.com/studio-api-docs/apiconcepts/overview.html

It is the correct and up-to-date one?

Sébastien Galtier 

Just to be sure I checked with a developer and in fact you cannot do this through the API.  This is going to change, but right now it's not possible.

You may be able manage this in a more "hacky" way through the xml settings file directly from the roaming folder.  This one to be exact:

c:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Trados\Trados Studio\Studio17\UserSettings.xml

If you export the sdlprofile for a user and then compare the contents to the UserSettings.xml for that user you will find some remarkable similarities.  You would have to do a little detective work to see what part of the UserSettings you needed to keep since you would not want everything, but you may be able to automate this once you knew what to keep and what to throwaway within a powershell script and recreate the profile you wanted.

Note that this is definitely a hack... but as a quick test I took a copy of the UserSettings file for my Studio, then reset Studio.  I added the following root and saved it as sdlprofile:

<UserProfile Name="exported" Description="User profile recommended for new users." WellKnownId="DefaultUserProfile">

</UserProfile>

I was then able to import this file as a new profile with no errors.  But that's all I checked... I have no idea what was brought in, how well this worked (if at all).  But perhaps with some time it might be worth exploring this sort of "hack" given the time it would save and the fact we don't support another method.

I might also explore replacing the UserSettings.xml instead of messing with profiles as I also quickly checked putting it back worked and it did... as well as demonstrating to me that some things were missing from the sdlprofile import hack, especially around plugins.  However, this is very likely to be problematic between versions so I would tread very carefully there.

Anyway... main points are these:

1. the API to manage this doesn't exist yet
2. there is sufficient similarity between the sdlprofile and the UserSettings.xml to warrant some investigation into an unsupported and untested hack!

I would not recommend this for anyone to do, but a technical person may be able to make use of this to find a workaround to avoid a lot of work.

Sébastien Galtier 

Just to be sure I checked with a developer and in fact you cannot do this through the API.  This is going to change, but right now it's not possible.

You may be able manage this in a more "hacky" way through the xml settings file directly from the roaming folder.  This one to be exact:

c:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Trados\Trados Studio\Studio17\UserSettings.xml

If you export the sdlprofile for a user and then compare the contents to the UserSettings.xml for that user you will find some remarkable similarities.  You would have to do a little detective work to see what part of the UserSettings you needed to keep since you would not want everything, but you may be able to automate this once you knew what to keep and what to throwaway within a powershell script and recreate the profile you wanted.

Note that this is definitely a hack... but as a quick test I took a copy of the UserSettings file for my Studio, then reset Studio.  I added the following root and saved it as sdlprofile:

<UserProfile Name="exported" Description="User profile recommended for new users." WellKnownId="DefaultUserProfile">

</UserProfile>

I was then able to import this file as a new profile with no errors.  But that's all I checked... I have no idea what was brought in, how well this worked (if at all).  But perhaps with some time it might be worth exploring this sort of "hack" given the time it would save and the fact we don't support another method.

I might also explore replacing the UserSettings.xml instead of messing with profiles as I also quickly checked putting it back worked and it did... as well as demonstrating to me that some things were missing from the sdlprofile import hack, especially around plugins.  However, this is very likely to be problematic between versions so I would tread very carefully there.

Anyway... main points are these:

1. the API to manage this doesn't exist yet
2. there is sufficient similarity between the sdlprofile and the UserSettings.xml to warrant some investigation into an unsupported and untested hack!

I would not recommend this for anyone to do, but a technical person may be able to make use of this to find a workaround to avoid a lot of work.

Thank you very much Paul  for this comprehensive answer!

If time permits, I will try to investigate this "hacky" way of doing.

If at some point in the future the API allows exporting the User's preferences, feel free to drop a line to this discussion so that I can investigate this new approach

Thanks again!