PDMAdmin
Mechanical
- Apr 21, 2004
- 488
As many of you have read here, my company recently decided to make the plunge and purchase Advanced Server for several reasons, primarily so our overseas users could access PDMWorks through web portal. (They couldn't use the client software because of timeout issues.)
Advanced Server costs about as much as a full-featured SolidWorks license, so its purchase is not a decision to be taken lightly. What I have found is that it's very powerful, but it's also not very user-friendly, unlike other SolidWorks products. The documentation is practically non-existent, so you really have to know what you're doing. I'll be posting a few tips here that will hopefully help people come up to speed on it faster than I did.
The first tip is regarding web portal. Just for giggles, go to your favorite search engine and do a search on the words web, portal and PDMWorks. The results you get will mostly point to summary data sheets that don't tell you very much about it. Having used it, here are some initial observations. Bottom line, if you think web portal is an "apples-to-apples" replacement for the client software, think again:
1) There is no "options" tab that I can find. Users cannot change their own passwords using web portal, for example, but in the client software, they can.
2) Users cannot take ownership of files using web portal, which also means they cannot check files into the vault using web portal. If they want to check anything in, they will need to send the files to a user who has access to the client software, and that user will have to check the files in.
3) Users can download files from the vault using web portal. However, files can only be downloaded one at a time. If you have an assembly with hundreds of components that you're trying to download through web portal, good luck.
4) There is no way that I can find to make sure your local files are the latest in the vault, other than viewing the properties of the file in Windows and comparing the revision you find there with what’s in the vault. I suppose an indirect way to do it would be to use triggers, which I'll discuss in a future tip (once I actually get them to work).
5) I'm sure some network admins (which I am not) may disagree with this, but I haven't found a way to use SSL (secure web browsing) with web portal. So far, this hasn't been a huge issue because we're operating exclusively within our company network, but people who want to access PDMWorks securely from outside the company are in for a challenge.
I hope these observations help. Coming soon... triggers, and how they work (or in my case, don't work).
Advanced Server costs about as much as a full-featured SolidWorks license, so its purchase is not a decision to be taken lightly. What I have found is that it's very powerful, but it's also not very user-friendly, unlike other SolidWorks products. The documentation is practically non-existent, so you really have to know what you're doing. I'll be posting a few tips here that will hopefully help people come up to speed on it faster than I did.
The first tip is regarding web portal. Just for giggles, go to your favorite search engine and do a search on the words web, portal and PDMWorks. The results you get will mostly point to summary data sheets that don't tell you very much about it. Having used it, here are some initial observations. Bottom line, if you think web portal is an "apples-to-apples" replacement for the client software, think again:
1) There is no "options" tab that I can find. Users cannot change their own passwords using web portal, for example, but in the client software, they can.
2) Users cannot take ownership of files using web portal, which also means they cannot check files into the vault using web portal. If they want to check anything in, they will need to send the files to a user who has access to the client software, and that user will have to check the files in.
3) Users can download files from the vault using web portal. However, files can only be downloaded one at a time. If you have an assembly with hundreds of components that you're trying to download through web portal, good luck.
4) There is no way that I can find to make sure your local files are the latest in the vault, other than viewing the properties of the file in Windows and comparing the revision you find there with what’s in the vault. I suppose an indirect way to do it would be to use triggers, which I'll discuss in a future tip (once I actually get them to work).
5) I'm sure some network admins (which I am not) may disagree with this, but I haven't found a way to use SSL (secure web browsing) with web portal. So far, this hasn't been a huge issue because we're operating exclusively within our company network, but people who want to access PDMWorks securely from outside the company are in for a challenge.
I hope these observations help. Coming soon... triggers, and how they work (or in my case, don't work).
