Under the Hood

Feature Friday: Here’s a Hot Button New Feature in PLM 360

Today we’ll highlight another new feature in our latest release – you can now customize the workflow action button labels.

Now if you’re the administrator that designed and implemented the workflow, this may seem like a trivial change.  But to the casual user, it’s huge!  I was lucky enough to sit in on several usability studies this week and it’s amazing how the things veteran users take for granted can be so meaningful to new or casual users.  Having the button say ‘Approve’ or ‘Reject’ rather than ‘Save Step’ let’s them know exactly what they are doing when transitioning an record in a workflow.

By default, it looks like this:

If you go to the transition properties in the workflow editor, you have the option to change the label:

And now this is what the user sees – tells them *exactly* what clicking that button does!

For help on accessing customizing workflow buttons, see Creating a Workflow Map in the Workflow Guide.

I’m off to improve some of our workflows and ones in the app store by using the new feature!

--Michelle

Photo: Daniel*1977

Getting Out of a Jam in 2014 (Changing State on Locally Modified Files)

One of those painful messes we find ourselves in from time to time is a local file that is both locked and modified?!?  

We manage to get something like an assembly file on our local drive and it needs to update its references based on the project or the wrong file version or revision being referenced, perhaps we have edited the open file even though we were warned not to, so its marked as needing to be saved.

No problem, just check it out and save right? No, not so fast, it’s locked in a released state.

Well I’ll just change the state right?  Nope, Vault doesn't like that either.

So typically we have 2 options – get the last effective revision (losing any changes and wrestling with revision bias) so I can change state OR we could go to Vault Explorer, change the state and check it out, then reopen in Inventor and do our updates, either way we are burning needless time and effort to get our assembly back on track.

No longer - in 2014 we can now change the state on locally modified files; so what does this mean? 

Instead of closing files, losing changes or going back to Vault Explorer, we can change state on these files marked as requiring save and retain all the local edits!  Once the state is changed you can simply check out your file, save and check back in - this simple change is hoped will make life with the Inventor add in much more bearable for those using document lifecycle management.

-Allan

Photo: Dawn Perry

Tip Tuesday! This New PLM 360 Feature Will Make You Collapse

I’ve been highlighting a lot of the big ticket new features on our Feature Fridays posts, but today want to share a tip on how to use another feature we recently put in.  You can now configure sections on the Item Details tab to be collapsed by default – this is a great way to get more real estate on the page for sections that may not be of interest to most.

A few weeks ago I did a Tip Tuesday about adding a QR code to a workspace.  Let’s say you don’t want to have that section opened when someone navigates to a record like it is now:

We can configure that section to be collapsed in the workspace layout:

Now when we go to the record in the workspace, you won’t see the fields until you expand that section:

Easy enough to set up, but think about how powerful this can be.  When you are configuring workspaces that will be accessed by mobile devices, having sections collapsed will be key in terms of usability.

--Michelle

Photo: fletcherjcm

Feature Friday: More Bright Ideas Put Into Action in PLM 360

The May release of PLM 360 bought several new features suggested by the community via the IdeaStation.  Enhancements were made to the preview functionality as well as having Project Management available through scripting.  Thanks to all who kudo’d and commented – Product Management really appreciates it!

Now you can customize the Item Preview Data Card – by default is only displays fields from the first section of the Item Details tab.  To customize what your end-users see, go to the Workspace Manager and edit the field – you can then check off ‘visible on preview’:

Note once you’re customized fields you do have to go in and select every field you want displayed.  Now when I preview – the Severity field is included:

Now onto using scripting for project management – a quick example to show adding a task to a project.  You can customize the Task workspace and add a Project field (I called it RELATED_PROJECT as you can see in the script) – put a simple action script on the behavior for the workspace and if there’s a project associated with the task, it will add that task to it:

The syntax for this and a few more examples can be found on the IdeaStation link above or visit the Scripting Reference on our Wiki. 

You can read more about What’s New in the latest release of PLM 360 and look forward to us covering the others in upcoming Feature Fridays!

--Michelle

Photo: Hey Paul

Tip Tuesday! A Belated “Administrative Professionals Day” Gift for the PLM 360 Admins

Our new release of PLM 360 over the weekend included some big changes to the Administration menu – the redesign brings vast improvements to the usability.  I have to admit it took me a bit to get used to it, but now that I’ve been playing with it and using it in my own PLM admin duties, I’m a happy camper.

It’s nice to be able to access the exact area you need from the main cascading menu – fewer picks and clicks are always a good thing.

I’m not a big fan of flowers (other than the wildflower variety seen while hiking!) so I much prefer software changes that make administering PLM 360 easier for my “PLM Administrators Day” gift {ok, so it’s not a real holiday…. yet }

Enjoy!

--Michelle Stone

Photo: Justin Dolske

And there really is an “Administrative Professionals Day” holiday!

Feature Friday: Having Fun in PLM 360 with BOM Effectivity Dates Yet?

A few weeks ago we talked about our new date effectivity feature in PLM 360 in “Are you Affected by Effectivity”  Bastien, from our support team, wrote a detailed example of how this works to give some more insight in how to use this new feature.  Let’s say you are planning some future changes to your Spur Gear product and decided to make a change to the Gear Box part to go along with it.

The changes to the product require some facility changes, so the plan is to make that in a month from now. This can be easily done in PLM 360 thanks to the new BOM effectivity feature. All that is required is to create a new change order, add the Gear Box part as the only affected item and set its effectivity date to be in a month from now.

After completing the change order, the Spur Gear assembly BOM will now show revision B for the Gear Box part after changing the BOM view date to a month from now.

However, soon after that, warranty claims start coming requiring an emergency change to the same Gear Box part taking effect immediately.

This is also easily taken care of in PLM 360 by creating yet another change order for that part to move it to revision C with an effectivity date set to a couple of days from now.

This may raise some high brows since the next revision C will have an effectivity date earlier than its previous revision B. This is however not a problem due to PLM 360 high flexibility in BOM area.

Changing the BOM view dates around in assembly shows that revision A is superseded:

… that revision C is in Production:

… and that revision B is superseded:

But most importantly if you navigate to the Gear Box item itself, you will find that superseded revision B was never in effect.

In addition, this same method could be used to accelerate delivery plans by going with a different supplier, or fixing mistakes.

Hope that helps you get a better understanding of how it all works! 

--Michelle Stone

I’m going to need to see some ID

What’s the best way to identify your assembly components in the Inventor Vault Browser?  I mean, these structures get big and it’s not always clear what is what…

Some time back we made this a lot easier by implementing component selection highlighting (select it in the model and it highlights in the Vault browser or vice versa), then we added Vault options in the right click context menus that meant you could carry out Vault tasks direct from the Inventor structure browser or the model itself.  If this was still not clear you could always use datacards as a tool to cycle through the model and find what you are looking for.

A release or two back we started to provide more information inside the Vault Browser itself, giving users the ability to add limited Vault properties to the instance names, now you could append the default instance name with the document lifecycle state and revision.  This was a great help in making decisions about file access and modification but did not address actual file identification. 

New in 2014 we have extended the browser properties and made this completely flexible – users can now select to add any additional Vault properties or choose an alternate display name all together.

This last option is ideal for companies using automatic file numbering which provides a nicely uniform but altogether indecipherable file identifier – using part number, stock number or description value instead of a file name in this case should make it much simpler to identify browser instances and reduce the stumbling around in semi-darkness.

-Allan

Tip Tuesday! Unraveling the Mysteries of BOM Roll-ups in PLM 360

Well, I think I looked at one too many cat pictures on the Internet and started to turn into one… seems I’ve spent the last 5 days sleeping like 16+ hours a day and looking for sunny spots to warm up in, so I never got around to posting a ‘Feature Friday’ last week for you guys.  My antibiotics have finally kicked in, so today’s tip will be how to use one of the features from last month’s release, Advanced BOM Roll-up functionality.  This allows you to easily calculate cost, weight or other key data.

Let’s say you want to roll-up weight information – if you don’t already have a field capturing that data – you can add it to the item details and also to the BOM tab (watch the video for step by step instructions).

PLM TV - Bill of Material Roll Up: Administrator Briefing

Once you have that field in your workspace, you can easily record the values. Having this information at your fingertips on the BOM tab can be a real time saver!  It can do the totals for you real time.

Something to keep in mind – you can do roll-ups on the following data types only: float, integer, money, date or check box. Also, the data type on both the field and the roll-up need to be the same.

--Michelle Stone

Photo: Dr. Hemmert

Good Ideas!

With the release of Autodesk Vault 2014 we see a number of the IdeaStation postings from the last year being implemented. Obviously we would love to implement every suggestion (well, maybe not EVERY suggestion) but we are off to a good start with 12 customer requests making the cut, which at the time of defining the release represented a good percentage of the total number. 

Over the coming weeks we will detail a number of the new enhancements in Vault 2014 but some of those we can cross of the IdeaStation list include the hugely popular “improvements to job processor” request, 4 Revit improvements and the seemingly obvious iFeature support.

Moving forward with the IdeaStation concept we hope to increase the number of implemented solutions with each release – looking at the current projections we have 13 ideas accepted and a large number (71) under consideration for future releases.  If your idea didn’t make it – hang in there, if you have a new idea go and post it – we really do build this product for you!

- Allan

Photo: crdotx

Tip Tuesday! When to Implement Your Access Control Model in PLM 360

Tomorrow’s PLM Talk will about one of my favorite topics (no, not cats….) Access Controls!

Last summer I talked a bit on why the topic is near and dear to my heart in How to Fall in Love with PLM and tomorrow I’m going to condense the AU Virtual class I did last year, ‘Do You Have the “Need to Know” More About Security Permissions in Autodesk® PLM 360?’ to about 1/2 the time and walk through some key concepts around correctly using security permissions in PLM 360 so you can make sure that everyone can see the data they need to see, but only the data they need to see.

One tip I’d like to share here is a mention of when is the “best” time to implement the user/group/roles set up.  I look at it as really coming into play after you’ve done the bulk of your functional implementation (defining and developing workspaces).  In the beginning it’s sufficient to open up workspaces and focus on functionality and later work on creating more succinct roles once that’s more stable.

{guess this is where the disclaimer comes into place – this is an “IMHO” bit and by no means a hard and fast rule!  One of the greatest advantages to PLM 360 is the ‘Have it Your Way’ attitude – you’re not confined to strict rules of how and when you have to implement functionality or define your access model.}

You’ll notice towards the end of the project timeline, there is very little going on in the way of changes to the data model, yet you’ll still be refining access controls, based on more testing and feedback as you involve more folks in the validation process.

If you can’t join us for tomorrow for the webinar, there’s always plenty of PLM Talk on the Discussion Group or our Facebook page!

--Michelle Stone