I have a merge publication in SQL 2008 R2 with data partitions and I am wondering when I should generate the snapshots for the data partitions. I get an error sometimes when bringing a new subscribe online related to the partition snapshot being out of date and I am wondering if this has to do with the publication snapshot being scheduled at the same time as the partition snapshots. I'm not really sure how the partition snapshot gets generated, but it appears maybe it is getting generated before the publication snapshot.

If this is the case how should I be scheduling the partition snapshots to get generated? Should I set them to run x number of minutes after the publication snapshot? this seems kind of poor to do in case the publication snapshot takes awhile or fails. It seems to me the publication snapshot should just run the data partition snapshot agents when it is done if this is the case.