Under the Hood

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

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

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

AU 2013 Call for Proposals

I know what you’re thinking: Wow. It’s that time already? The answer is Yes. Autodesk University Call for Proposals site is live! I am excited already for AU 2013 and what we will do on the PLM and Data Management track. But I need to hear ideas from you – the PLM and Vault community out there.

So, for inspiration here’s what you do: If you have an AU Online account, go check out what went down last year at AU2012 for PLM and Vault. It was everywhere, on the tip of everyone’s tongue, in other tracks beyond just the PLM/DM one. Note the customer lead classes too – panels, roundtables, lectures. We’re looking for real world best practices, case studies, and of course the deep dives into technical features.

“What’s in it for me?” you may ask. In addition to the free 3 day pass to AU, there is the networking and expertise sharing that all find invaluable. Beyond that, I’ve worked closely each year as a team with all the PLM/DM track speakers to share ideas and perform dry runs of presentations – all optional. I’d welcome you to be part of the PLM/DM teaching team at AU. Whether you’re a customer, reseller, independent consultant, we would love to hear your class proposal.

The Call for Proposals site closes May 19. Be sure to look over the Tips for Success and Proposal Checklist on this page, this provides excellent guidance to make your proposal the best it can be.

http://au.autodesk.com/?nd=call_for_proposals

-Brian Schanen

Feature Friday: Feel Secure with PLM 360

While ‘ubiquitous access’ is cool when it comes to PLM 360 (I know I enjoy being able to promote workflows when I’m out and about!), admins may want to restrict certain groups from accessing content when in public areas.  Now with the new IP Address Whitelisting it’s possible to configure network IP addresses so that folks in certain groups can’t access the site when outside those addresses.  This is key for sensitive information, say sales and marketing information, you don’t want folks to access while sipping on their latte at a coffee shop.

Brian Schanen put together a brief video going into more detail on how this works:

IP Address Whitelisting

It’s pretty easy to set up– go to ‘Administration’ –> ‘Users Groups Roles’ –> ‘Groups’ tab.  Select and edit the group you want to restrict, then configure the Group ID Access – be sure to save your changes! 

Now if a member of that group tries to access the PLM 360 tenant from an address outside the range, they won’t get in.  They will get a message letting them know why:

Want to learn more about access controls in PLM 360 beyond this?  Be sure to sign up for our PLM Talk on this topic scheduled for May 1, 2013.  We’ll talk more about using the 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!

--Michelle Stone

Photo: Klearchos Kapoutsis

Tip Tuesday! Grab a Strong Cuppa and Put a QR Code in your PLM 360 Workspace

I’m attending the Autodesk Technical Specialist Summit this week and in addition to learning more about our manufacturing solutions, I got the pleasure of *finally* meeting one of my favorite PLM 360 bloggers, Steve Bedder.  (If you don’t follow his contributions to the Autodesk Manufacturing and Digital Prototyping Solutions blog, you should!)

Steve gave a great overview of PLM 360 and how it’s being used by companies in the AEC industry (that’s Architectural, Engineering, and Construction).  One bit he showed that I figured would make a great Tip Tuesday is how to embed a QR code into a workspace to be used for asset management tracking.

This is pretty easy to set up – first you’ll need two fields in your item details and an Action script that will be used as an ‘OnCreate’ and ‘OnEdit’ behavior.

Field 1 – This is used to display the QR code image and is a single line text computed field which contains the following:

CASE WHEN PAGE_URL IS NOT NULL THEN

'<img src="https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=150x150&cht=qr&chl=' + PAGE_URL + '&chs=150x150&cht=qr&chld=H%7C0">'

ELSE

''

END

Field 2 – This is a URL field which will contain the URL of the current item, you will see from the script above that it uses a field call PAGE_URL – which is this field. You can call the field whatever you like, just make sure you change the script above to reflect the change you made.

Script – Create a new Action script and paste the following into it. Make sure you change the URL from yourtenant to your actual tenant name!

//add the page URL

var pageURL = encodeURIComponent('https://yourtenant.autodeskplm360.net/workspace#workspaceid=' + workspaceID  + '&dmsid=' + dmsID);

if(item.PAGE_URL !== pageURL){

    item.PAGE_URL = pageURL;

}

Add the script as an OnEdit and OnCreate behavior within your workspace and you’re good to go!

The script collects the page\item URL and pushes it into the PAGE_URL field (feel free to hide it).

And voila! Check it out – I created a new record and the QR code was generated and displayed automatically:

Now to see if Steve will share a cup of his beloved Yorkshire tea with me...

--Michelle Stone

Photo: cordfish

Feature Friday: Are you Affected by Effectivity?

Many years ago, in my school English lessons, I was taught the difference between the words ‘affect’ and ‘effect’. Even to this day, though, I’ve never been quite sure of their proper usage, and often find myself being corrected on it. One thing I am certain of, though, is the powerful effect of ‘Date Effectivity’ in PLM 360, and how it can positively affect the product development process (or should that be ‘affect’ and ‘effect’?).

Date Effectivity is a function which is applied to a Bill of Materials (BoM), and was introduced in the recent latest release of PLM 360. This capability allows a particular revision of a component part or subassembly to be assigned ‘effectivity’ dates which, essentially, define a period of time during which that item is valid within that BoM. When a BoM contains that item, it will show whatever revision of it is relevant at that point in time. You can choose to view such a BoM as it would appear at a given point in the past, present, or future. This capability allows improved and more flexible planning, for example for Manufacturing and Purchasing departments, and more accurate traceability of previous configurations of a BoM.

Further details of how this powerful new capability works is outlined in our PLM TV User Briefing video …

 

 

System Administrators can choose whether to enable this capability, and where, in the release cycle, it comes into play. Effectivity is configured in the Lifecycle Editor facility of the Setup menu. Within the editor, we can switch the ability to apply date effectivity on at any one or more of the release lifecycle stages. For example, if we want to enable it at the ‘Production’ stage, we right-click at that point to edit it …

 

 

… then simply click on the ‘Effectivity’ tick box, and select ‘Accept’ to enable it …

 

 

Once enabled, every time a user signs off the revisioning step of the Change Order workflow to move an item to ‘Production’ status, they will have the option to set a date effectivity.

So, if you’re managing Bills of Materials today in PLM 360, be sure to check out date effectivity, and see how it can really affect the effectiveness of your product development process (please correct me if the grammar in my last sentence is wrong!).

-- Gavin England

-- Photo: Dictionary.com