Under the Hood

Tip Tuesday! Spacing_Out_with_Scripts in Fusion Lifecycle

Today’s post involves one of those feature enhancements that while seemingly small, pays off in a big way. Truly one of those “it’s the little things” type of improvements. This involves scripting, and a change made in Fusion Lifecycle to allow for spaces in the script name.

First, a look at the current state of most of the tenants out there. Let's take a quick journey to the Admin side of Fusion Lifecycle (note that you’ll have to be a site Admin to follow along) and navigate to Administration>System Configuration>Scripting

 Welcome to the Scripting area!

There are loads of scripts in here – from Condition to Validation to Action and Library scripts. While the new feature here applies to all scripts, we’re going to focus on Action scripts, as they have a front-end user interface if you choose to use it.

Take a look at the sample screen cap to one of my tenants below. Note_the_liberal_use_of_underscores_to_call_out_script_names. AlsoNoteTheScriptsNamesThatAreCollapsedTogether. Note the most visually appearing, eh?

Now, as an Administrator, on any given Workspace in Fusion Lifecycle, you can set Action scripts to fire at record creation, upon edit of the record, or at any time on demand. Set these in Administration>Workspace Manager and this is under the Behaviors entry in any given Workspace.

The drop down list pulls from the Action scripts in the tenant, and inherit the exact names of the scripts. So what, right? Well, as an Admin, you can edit the script in the script editor, remove the _underscores, add spaces instead, and save/close. This change permeates through the system, updating everywhere.

Here’s why this is nice. Users on the front end of Fusion Lifecycle may use push button scripting – a nifty little function that is on the same toolbar as Create, Delete, Clone, etc. Upon picking that button, a list of available Action scripts – configured by the site Admin – will list out. Instead of the barrage of underscores and concatenated words, you re greeted with nice, readable names of on-demand Action scripts to choose from.

So, take some stock of your scripts, maybe plan a cleanup day. I know I’ll be tidying up the new default tenant configuration launching soon. Getting this sorted may take time, but does provide a more polished look throughout the tenant. Enjoy!

- Brian Schanen | Product Manager | Autodesk Fusion Lifecycle

Tip Tuesday! Escalating with Permissions in Fusion Lifecycle

Enabling escalations in your workflow is a handy way to eliminate bottlenecks in a workflow that can occur when action isn’t taken.  There are several escalation types:

• Escalate using permissions
• Execute a transition
• Run a script

For today’s tip I want to focus on escalating using permissions – this will allow additional users to perform a pending transition after a specified amount of time has passed.  To select the additional users for a transition, administrators assign an ad hoc workflow permission to the transition in order to give those users the required rights only during the time the escalation is in effect.

This is great to use if you need to add additional users to perform a pending transition in the workflow if it’s not acted on within a certain time frame – eliminates bottlenecks in your processes!

you can disable any pre-condition scripts if necessary by selecting the checkbox:

--Michelle, Fusion Adoption Team

Tip Tuesday! Back to School with Fusion Lifecycle

One of my favorite features of Facebook is the ‘On This Day’ look back at what you posted in  previous years.  Today I got the notice that we first launched PLM Talk five years ago!!

 

Today I want to talk about the various ways you (and your coworkers) can learn more about Fusion Lifecycle. A nice bulleted list with links:

• YouTube
• Help
• Forums
• In person learning opportunities: Accelerate and Autodesk University
• PLM Talk webinars

Have ideas of other topics you’d like to see presented?  Please chime in on my forum post Back to School.

--Michelle, Fusion Adoption Team

Tip Tuesday! Clearing a Linking Picklist in Fusion Lifecycle

Super quick tip for a VERY hot week on the West Coast.  There was a recent post on our Community Forum on Clearing Linking Pick List (with Search Filter) field via script.  The syntax needed to clear is not to use null, but to use an empty string (“”).

item.FIELD_ID = “”;

Want to get notifications about new posts?  You can set your Notification Settings on the Subscription & Notifications tab:

New to the Autodesk Community?  There’s a great Getting Started Guide to get your up and running.

--Michelle, Fusion Adoption Team

Quick Tip: How to Delete & Find Deleted Records in Fusion Lifecycle

This recently popped up on the Forums...

To respond: deleting records is pretty straightforward - just hit the delete command right in the application.

But, how do you view all those deleted records and how do you search them? Or, delete them entirely?

Check out the quick tip video below to learn how to do it!

- Tyler Beck, Technical Marketing

Tip Tuesday! Avoid Tardy Change Orders in Fusion Lifecycle

Don’t you just love dismissing your calendar invites?  Blowing off your duties and doing something more important like dealing with e-mail?  Maybe checking ESPN one more time before getting back to that annoying expense report, change order, or nagging voice mail?  Unfortunately, I do too.

Well, lets make it interesting then.  Fusion Lifecycle offers notifications - those friendly emails that remind you a change order is ready for approval.  But, it doesn’t stop there. You can bring in the big gun: ESCALATION.  Escalation allows you to execute a script or perform the transition of your choosing if your set time limit is reached.  Pretty cool!  Check out how to do it in the video tutorial below.

 - Tyler Beck, Technical Marketing

Fusion Lifecycle Quick Tip: Using the App Store

In his book Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon spends 160 pages using some quirky illustrations to convey his deep belief that nothing is original. The fact is, that isn't really a bad thing.  For engineers - how important is it to use existing designs and data when repeating a similar project, only saving the real ingenuity for the critical parts of the projects?  Or to reuse all those specs, datasheets and vendor docs that were painstakingly collected?

Fusion Lifecycle has some pre-built workspaces designed to save you time when starting out a new workspace or when you need to track additional data.  Check out the short video below where I explain how to install and use a pre-built app from the Fusion Lifecycle app store.  So, please, feel free to steal these like an engineer.

- Tyler Beck, Technical Marketing

 

Fusion Lifecycle Quick Tip: Hover and Preview

Fusion Lifecycle has plenty of prompts and shortcuts to make your life a bit easier.  The prompts you receive while hovering over your outstanding work, attachments, and change orders can fill you in without having to guess.  One new feature that I just discovered, much to my own embarrassment, is the preview feature on the home page.  If you click and choose "Preview" it gives a cool, quick view into the record without leaving the page.  I LIKE IT!

Check out the Video:

Also, in case you weren't aware, today is Autodesk Answer Day! That means that we have Fusion Lifecycle experts staring at the Forum just waiting to answer all of your burning PLM questions. You can join the conversation and ask your questions on the Forum here.

- Tyler Beck, Technical Marketing

Tip Tuesday! Save Time with Filtered Picklists in Fusion Lifecycle

Save time and eliminate user error with filtered picklists in Fusion Lifecycle. This is an intelligent picklist manager, and is dependent on selections made previously.

If we were talking about soft drinks and you said "Cola" then you would expect only Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, RC Cola and any other black, carbonated sugar delivery device to show up on the list.  (By the way, if you recognized RC cola, you are not a millennial, just FYI.)

A real example that you might use in Fusion Lifecycle?  Zipcodes.  Grab an existing list, and import zip codes into a reference workspace - this gives you the ability to automatically find the information once the state and city is filled out.

Check out the video below to see it in use!

It’s also covered well in Bryan and Michelle’s excellent class from Autodesk University: 13 - 19 minutes

- Tyler Beck, Technical Marketing

Tip Tuesday! Permission Best Practices for Fusion Lifecycle

Join us next week for another PLM Talk - Connecting Workspaces in Fusion Lifecycle (Wed, Apr 26, 2017 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT.  One topic we’ll cover in detail is Access and Permissions - i.e. how to setup what / who is allowed for each relationship in the system.  Today’s tip is to make sure you follow a logical naming convention (like what’s delivered in your out-of-the-cloud tenant):

There are more Best Practices in the Help guide around permissions – be sure to check out the bit about a separate role for admin permissions like ‘Override Revision Control Locks’.

- Michelle Stone