Under the Hood

How to change Service Account / SQL Password in Vault

Challenge

Due to security concerns sometimes customers need to change service account passwords or SQL SA account passwords. This needs certain steps in a replicated environment, which we will discuss in the article below.

Solution

Follow this link to the new Vault Blog

Alternate Snapshot – The Solution for High Latency Connected Workgroups

Big customers have Autodesk Vault Subscribers in their environment with a slow connection (e.g. Asia). When initializing them with a new Snapshot, it can take very long time. This blog entry is a guideline how to initialize a new Subscriber faster. This is done by utilizing the alternate snapshot technology within SQL Server for big databases on slow links.

Alternate Snapshot technology enables you to transfer the snapshot via alternative ways (compressed FTP, CIFS) to the destination and prevent SQL Server replication mechanism take care of the transport, which speeds up the initialization process tremendously.

 

Please find a full walk-through the process here on the Vault Blog

Publishing and Manage PDF Files

In the latest release, Vault data management software introduced the capability to automatically publish and share 2D PDFs of drawings during the release process. Peter Van Avondt, Technical Specialist - Data Management, and Kamil Cejpek, Technical Sales Specialist, explore the different aspects of this functionality taking you through the steps to correctly set up this publishing process in Vault and show you the different publishing options. They’ll also teach you how to let users outside your engineering department access the PDFs for printing and other workflows.

For full details visit our new blog here.

Irvin Hayes Jr.
Product Manager

 

What are Custom Objects?

Custom Objects have been in Vault Professional for quite some time, but many people do not know what they are. Kim Hendrix, D3 Technologies, presented a class at Autodesk University 2017 explaining and demonstrating the feature.

What are Custom Objects?

Custom Objects allow Vault administrators to create new entities to meet the needs of their team, organization, or company. Therefore administrators can create a Custom Object definition and assign it categories, lifecycles, and properties. Once the definition is created, users can create instances of that custom object directly through the user interface.

For full details visit our new blog here.

Irvin Hayes Jr.
Product Manager

 

Windows 10 Updates Breaks Vault Server

We have had several reports that Windows 10 Updates have broken Vault Server and in particular Internet Information Services (IIS) on the operating system after it has been installed. Our product support team has discovered that the updates are changing the IIS user account and therefore the permissions on the application pool directories are no longer set appropriately.

For full details visit our new blog here.

Irvin Hayes Jr.
Product Manager

Switch Back to Inventor

If you have installed Vault 2018.2 Update, you are aware that Vault now using Inventor Server to process Inventor jobs through the Job Processor. The Job Processor processes DWF creation, updating User Defined Properties (UDP) and PDF creation of Inventor and AutoCAD files. If, for some reason, you would like to switch back to using the full version of Inventor to process these jobs, you can by performing the following steps.

For full details, view the complete post on our new Vault blog here.

Irvin Hayes Jr.
Product Manager

Migrating Your Autodesk Vault Server (Part 2 ADMS Detach and Attach)

While using Autodesk Vault, you may encounter the need to move your data from one server to another. Some of the reasons to move to another server could be due to hardware replacement, upgrades, or the wish to create a test environment with a copy of your production data. There are two supported methods to migrate your Autodesk Vault and its data to a new server:

Performing a Vault Backup and Restore and using the ADMS Detach and Attach command.  Here we detail the ADMS tool, for details on using Backup and Restore, see (Part 1 ADMS Backup and Restore)

Is the ADMS Detach and Attach the right direction for your organization?

Pros: ADMS Detach and Attach creates all SQL permissions and migrates the databases to the proper version.  You can copy the filestore, .mdf (data files) and .ldf (log files) directly to their final destinations on the new server. Subsequently, this method requires less downtime.  Using Detach and Attach is faster than a backup and restore.

Cons: Using this method will delete user associations to individual vaults – if you have created user associations to the vaults by the user, you will need to re-assign those users to their respective vaults, whereas if you have created them by the group, you will need to re-assign the groups to the vaults. You are responsible to separately backup/copy each filestore, .mdf and .ldf to the new server.

 

For full details, view the complete post on our new Vault blog here

 

Traci Peurasaari
Autodesk  SQL DBA / Specialist

Migrating Your Autodesk Vault Server (Part 1 ADMS Backup and Restore)

While using Autodesk Vault, you may encounter the need to move your data from one server to another. Some of the reasons to move to another server could be due to hardware replacement, upgrades, or the wish to create a test environment with a copy of your production data. There are two supported methods to migrate your Autodesk Vault and its data to a new server:

Performing a Vault Backup and Restore and using the ADMS Detach and Attach command.  This article will focus on the first method, Backup and Restore, and a later article will focus on the second, the ADMS tool.

Is ADMS Backup and Restore the right direction for your organization?

Pros:  Backup and Restore creates all SQL permissions and migrates the databases.  It also maintains all Vault permissions.  This method backs up and validates all the Vaults, Content Centers, and the filestores.  Everything is contained in one folder and as a result, leaves only one folder to copy to the new server.

Cons: Time to complete can be long depending on the size of the database.  Furthermore, you have downtime from the production environment to backup, copy, and restore (except when creating a test server).  Additionally, you need space for both the backup file of the databases and filestores as well as the restores of each. 

 

For full details, view the complete post on our new Vault blog here

 

Traci Peurasaari
Autodesk  SQL DBA / Specialist

Autodesk Vault: Know Your Roles

Across all editions of Vault, there are 21 different roles that comprise of 140 different permissions. What are roles? Roles are a group of permissions combined and assigned to a user or group so that they can perform specific commands or actions within Vault. A few examples of roles shown below.

Role	Details
Document Consumer	Read-only access to files and folders only, including the job server queue.
Document Editor Level 1	Basic file adding and editing privileges within the vault, also add/remove file and folder user-defined properties, but cannot delete files and folders.
Document Editor Level 2	Full privileges within the vault, also add/remove file and folder user-defined properties.
Document Manager Level 1	The privileges to change category, lifecycle, and revision assignments, and to edit user-defined properties.

Permissions
A permission authorizes users or groups to perform specific actions such as checking in a file, creating a change order or editing a custom object. For instance, a Document Consumer has the permission only to Read a file, but a Document Editor can check-in and modify a file.
Examples:
• File Check In
• File Check Out
• File Create
• File Delete Conditional
• File Read
• File Rename
When multiple roles are assigned to a user or group, they act like a union combining all permissions allowing the user to perform all permissions that each role authorizes them to perform. For example, if a user is assigned the Document Editor Level 1 and Document Manager Level 1 roles, they have all the permissions of both roles.
The permissions given to a user or group by the roles they have been assigned will be the permissions in all Vault that user or group is allowed to access. Further security must be controlled by the Object or State based security settings on the objects within the vault. The permissions to that specific object will not be reflected in the Effective Permission tab on the object when checking security for the user. If you assign a user a Document Consumer role but give them Modify permission on an object, they will not be able to modify that object because the Document Consumer role is a ready only role in the vault.
To see a full matrix of the roles and permissions assigned, use this excel sheet for reference.

Download Permissions Per Role matrix - Vault Pro 2018

Irvin Hayes Jr.
Product Manager

Renaming PDF Files in Detail

In a previous article, Autodesk Vault 2018: It is All About the PDF!, we discussed the ability to customize the file names of PDFs created by the Job Processor during a transition to the Released lifecycle state.  Let’s get into more details on how to make this customization.

First, you need to make a copy of the JobProcessor.exe.config file located in the <install dir>\Vault Professional 2018\Explorer folder.  Use a text editing software, such as Notepad, to open and edit the file.  Other applications may corrupt the XML file so be careful about the application that you use.

In the appSettings section after the (<add key="TrueViewDwfPublishCount" value="500"/>) line, you will add the following keys to customize the PDF name.

1. Remove the file IDW extension from the PDF name
   Key: <add key="DesignRepresentation.Naming" value="\.(idw)$/&lt;_name_&gt;"/>
   1. \.(idw)$                Extension for which this rule applies
   2. &lt;_name_&gt;   Source File name without extension
   3. /                           Separator
2. Add a Prefix: PreFix-suspension.dwg.pdf
   <add key="DesignRepresentation.Naming" value="\.(dwg)$/PreFix-&lt;_name_&gt; &lt;_ext_&gt;"/>
   1. \.(dwg)$               Extension for which this rule applies
   2. PreFix-                Prefix string
   3. &lt;_name_&gt;   Source File name without extension (<_name_>)
   4. &lt;_ext_&gt;       Source File name without extension (<_ext_>)
   5. /                          Separator
3. Add a PostFix: suspension-PostFix.dwg.pdf
   <add key="DesignRepresentation.Naming" value="\.(dwg)$/&lt;_name_&gt;-PostFix"/>
   1. \.(dwg)$               Extension for which this rule applies
   2. &lt;_name_&gt;   Source File name without extension (<_name_>)
   3. -PostFix               Postfix string
   4. /                           Separator
4. Add a Pre- and PostFix: PreFix-suspension-PostFix.idw.pdf
   <add key="DesignRepresentation.Naming" value="\.(idw)$/PreFix-&lt;_name_&gt;-PostFix"/>
   
   1. \.(idw)$                Extension for which this rule applies 
   2. PreFix-                Prefix string
   3. &lt;_name_&gt;   Source File name without extension (<_name_>)
   4. -PostFix               Prefix string
   5. /                           Separator
5. Combine DWG and IDW rules
   <add key="DesignRepresentation.Naming" value="\.(dwg)$/PreFix-&lt;_name_&gt;-PostFix/\.(idw)$/PreFix-&lt;_name_&gt;-PostFix&lt;_ext_&gt;"/>

Join the Beta Program!

We are starting new discussions in the Vault Beta program, and we need your input. It is your opportunity to drive the direction of new and existing features. Sign Up now! Join the Vault Beta Program

Irvin Hayes Jr.
Product Manager

Peter Van Avondt
Technical Sales Specialist