Closing the Loop (PLM 360 links to Vault data)

This week’s PLM 360 tip covers how to establish a link from PLM 360 to Autodesk Vault. Now, for review we know that Vault Professional integrates with PLM 360, but this post covers a clever way to round-trip the process. This will involve some minor tweaks to any existing Workspace by creating a new field. First, let’s start with how we would get to the Vaulted file.

Whether you’re targeting a Vault Pro Item, Change Order, or a File, there is an option under the File pull down menu called Send Link. See image below:

Furthermore, you can shift-select a group of data and send it, and it will group all the Vault objects together. The key here is the link that it produces. In my example here I’ve chosen one Item. Note that is creates a link to the exact Vault object – Item, CO, or File.

Now that we’ve established one way to get the link to Vault data (yes, there are more elaborate ways) let’s focus on getting PLM 360 ready for the link. Log in to PLM 360 under an administrative account, and go to Administration>Setup and find your target Workspace. I’ve chosen Items and BOMs for my example.

Next, expand the Workspace and click the Item Details Tab entry. Click Add field and enter a name like ‘Vaulted File’ or something that establishes that this is a record that resides in Vault, as opposed to a url to another location.

Drag the field over to a section and Save Layout. Go back to the Workspace front end and choose an Item to edit.

Now, go copy the link to the link and paste it into the field you created. Save the item and examine the new data in the field. This is the link directly to the Vault file. But how does one use this?

Here’s where your mileage will vary. Depending on the browser you’re running and the settings therein, you will have to use a couple of techniques. First thing is to click the url.

If you have access to a Vault client, this will download a .acr file. Different browsers had this differently as mentioned, but the key here is to open the .acr file. By the way, this is the same functionality as getting an email from Vault Professional Change Orders when you are on the routing list.

However you chose to open the .acr, just be sure to set up your Vault client to ‘Automatically log in next session’ as this will save you the step of entering your name, password. And if I may suggest, use the Windows Authentication combined with auto log in for the best user experience. Finally, you will be brought directly to the Vault Item, CO, or File – providing you have rights to see it, but that’s another Blog post isn’t it?

Comments

[Olegshilovitsky]

Brian, Nice post and sneaky way to cross link two systems. Can you tell me if Vault has an option to notify about location changes? If so, it can keep data consistency, otherwise links can be corrupted by changes in Vault. Thanks! Oleg