Description
Key Learnings
- Hear about the new features in Vault 2024.
- Learn how to use Peer Review.
- Learn how to use the new Backup and Restore features.
- Hear what is coming in future releases.
Speakers
- Irvin HayesIrvin is a Sr. Product Manager on the Autodesk Vault team based in Atlanta, Georgia. He has worked at Autodesk for nineteen years starting in product support and as a user experience designer. Irvin is a Microsoft® Certified Professional and has been working in the information technology field for more than 26 years. He helps partners, consulting, and sales develop Vault deployment plans in enterprise environments and system requirements. You can find multiple classes Irvin has presented at Autodesk University, on a wide range of Vault topics. Irvin is a technology geek and loves sharing with the community on Twitter (@ihayesjr).
IRVIN HAYES, JR: Hello, everyone. And welcome to the Vault Now and Future AU class. Every year we add some new features to the Vault product line. So this class is not to introduce those features or not just to introduce those features, but also to discuss how to use a few of the features.
So what we're going to do is we're going to have a learning session as part of this AU class on a few of those features. Make sure you're aware of what they are, how to use them. As well as towards the end, we will have some more information about what we're doing in the future of Vault with the roadmap session.
So again, we're going to talk about the new features in 2024, learn how to use peer review and the client configuration, and also what are the new features in the backup and restore features, as well as what's coming in the future.
My name is Irvin Hayes, Jr. I'm a senior product manager here at Autodesk. I've been working here for more than 10 years. I've been always working on the Vault product line. Excuse me, I've been working here for more than 19 years. I was working on the Vault product line, and I've been working on Vault for more than 12 years now.
I help our customers use the product to understand what their current issues are with the product and what we can do with the product to help them in the future with future development to drive efficiency, as well as productivity, with our data management solution. I'm going to introduce you to my co-presenter here next. Hey, Yogesh, you want to introduce yourself here?
YOGESHWAR GANDHE: Sure, Irvin. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Yogeshwar Gandhe. I'm a principal engineer based out of the Singapore site. I've been here with Autodesk for almost 10 years now. Have been primarily-- I started off with QA, and now I'm working as a product owner on the Vault team. I've been working in this PDM/PLM domain for around 17 years now. Prior to joining Autodesk, I was working with PTC. Thank you.
IRVIN HAYES, JR: All right. Thanks, Yogesh. So let's go on to the 2024 features. So let's first talk about a feature that has been asked about by a lot of customers and a lot of Inventor users for many, many years. This is managing the Inventor data and design templates inside of Vault.
So now, administrators can create and deploy templates, updates, as well as the original templates to all the users, making sure everyone is using the exact same templates, as well as making sure that they're up to date, and making sure that processes and common information are available in those templates.
And then, the users also don't have to do any manual updates to these templates because the system-- what will happen is as soon as the user logs in inside of Inventor, they will automatically receive any new design templates or design data files automatically. They don't even have to think about it. And it automatically becomes part of their day to day workflow.
Enforcing unique file names-- we put in a new feature. In putting in the new feature of the design templates, we realized that we wanted to continue to use the enforce unique file names feature. But what happened here is that the unique file names wasn't working well enough with the design data and templates.
So what we had to do is we had to enhance the enforce unique file names so that we can now exclude some of the file extensions, so that if you want to have-- you're not worried about or concerned having the same file names for PDFs, documents, and things of that nature, you can exclude those file extensions from the unique file name enforcements. You can also choose to exclude entire folders.
So if you have some set of folders, including the previous folders that we were talking about with the Inventor design data and templates, you can exclude those folders from this enforcement, making sure that actually where enforcement is needed, it will always work, excluding these locations.
Peer review, which we're going to go into in a little bit more depth later on. This here is to allow your life cycle process to have a user who can review a state before it goes into a next state. So for example, reviewing a design while it's in work in progress. You go to the review state. But before it can get to the release state, someone else besides that designer can review it to make sure it's accurate. And then they can set it to the release state.
It can be configured in anywhere in the transition. So you can do it in multiple transitions, in multiple layers. And again, it just requires that it can be configured to require more than one particular rule has to be present or true before it goes into that review state. We've included some new Thin Client enhancements for the administrator.
Now, the administrator can set the columns, the default columns, for the Thin Client. And the administrator can make sure that the users are forced to use those or not forced to use those. Users can then also make some modifications to those as necessary. But this gives some administrative overhead and configurations for new Thin Client users so they can see the data that's most important to them.
We're going to cover some backup and restore enhancements for our large Vault environments. So I don't want to cover this too much. But we did a lot here to help with our customers who have large environments or those who are struggling using the Vault servers backup and restore routines as well as migration. But we're going to go deeper into this one in a few slides soon.
PDF property management, here, what we're doing now is we're moving forward with the next stages of PDF files and managing those inside of Vault. What we're doing here is now, we're able to extract the properties of the PDF files. We're also able to write properties back to the PDF files as well. So when we generate those PDFs from a drawing or a 2D model, then the PDFs can have all the UDPs or at least some of the UDPs from the parent model.
And we can also index the PDFs out of the box, which in the past, required a third-party filter. We're no longer requiring that anymore. Copy folder structure is another one that we set up. So we know that copy design is one of the biggest features that is used in Vault today.
So following that up, when you're creating a new folder structure and/or you want to start up a new project with a template folder structure, you can now do that with Vault 2024. So by doing that, you can create a template folder structure. When you're ready to start that project, you go to that folder structure. Right click on it, and select Copy folder. You can copy the subfolders within that particular folder structure. You can copy as permissions, as well as properties to get you jump started right away.
There are some minor features-- I wouldn't really call them minor features. But there are some other features that we've included in 2024, such as exporting DXF and STEP files. We've made a lot of copy design enhancements as well. And inside of Inventor, we've included an insert punch tool straight from Vault, right inside of Inventor.
For the Job Processor, we've created an enhancement where you can auto-retry the Job Processor instead of waiting or having to resubmit a job manually by the administrator. We've also added more Thin Client enhancements as well as the Inventor read-only now has the Vault add-in included.
Now let's talk about some 2024.1 features that we've recently implemented. Now we've provided administrator to distribute its group administrations permissions to other users by giving them specific roles. But these users now don't have to have full administrative rights. So the administrator can grab a group, assign a group of specific administrators, and then now these groups of administrators can start adding or removing members from this particular group.
Again, this distributes the workload of administration of user and group management to other team members, so that the admins don't have to have a lot of work to do here. Vault Gateway expansion-- so we know that when we released Vault Gateway a couple of years ago, we were only in the US and the European regions.
Now we've actually exposed Vault Gateway to our APAC region. So users in those areas can now start taking advantage of Vault Gateway so that they can gain access to a Vault behind the firewall without VPN or other administrative overhead.
Vault Mobile, we've had a lot of our customers ask and request that Vault Mobile be released with a read-only mode. So now read-only mode is included in Vault Mobile. You don't have to have a Vault Professional or a Vault Office license. The user can log in to any Vault at the location. And they will be logging in read-only mode. So there are no write permissions at that point, similar to what we do in our Thin Client.
Some other 2024 enhancements are the display name enhancement. So we've introduced the display name a couple of releases back. Now you can actually use the display name in our copy design feature. And you can see that, and map it to another particular UDP.
Thin Client enhancements, we've added some new things there based on your requests from our Idea Station. And then some other Idea Station requests are including the criteria or search option is not. We are synchronizing properties added to our right click menu. And we've added the refresh F5 key function to the Items dialog. And with that, let's go over to peer review.
YOGESHWAR GANDHE: Yes, thank you, everyone. So with this slide onwards, we'll be actually kind of deep diving a bit into a couple of areas that Irvin has talked about earlier, a couple of new features. The first one is peer review. Next slide, please.
So this is one of the Idea Station requests that has been logged for the full check for the peer review. Essentially, what this means is that the user wants another user to have a review on a file when the state transition is going to happen. So the same user who sets a file in Lifecycle Transition State1, they cannot change it to Lifecycle Transition 2 without having the review done.
This particular feature was previously part of the VAO add-on. This we have now integrated in 2024, our team, within the product itself. We have, in fact, made this feature more generic to accommodate different parts of users. And users can define now the rules and the rule conditions for this peer review to kick in.
This is available on the Transition dialog. So on the Lifecycle Transition dialog, you can actually see a new tab that is added, Peer Review. An administrator can configure this peer review. There are two parts to this. The first part is the actual criteria definition, what is the rule condition that you want to set. So there can be multiple rules that you can define for the peer review to kick in. Like in this case, I've used three rules.
And this functionality can be used to facilitate delegation, and authority, and increase transparency. So basically, the review is going to help with that. If there are multiple criterias, then there will be some precedence that will kick in. So we can see that in the next slide.
So here, I have actually demonstrated how you can go to configure the peer review. A peer review can be applied to any lifecycle transition. And then peer review will apply only on the files within the lifecycle transition that is defined.
Users can add, or remove, or rename the rules. So the first part is the peer review rule. They can do multiple things with that. Multiple actions are possible. They can change the priority or the set of order of these rules. And then a rule can have more than one criteria. It's not necessary to have only one criteria. A rule can have more than one criteria.
And in case there are multiple rules, like when all the criteria are met, only then the rule will apply. And if there are multiple rules, as indicated earlier, the moment we hit the first rule, we will stop there itself. That's the precedence order. On the second functionality that we'll take a deeper look is the client configuration. Yeah, next slide, please.
This is probably one of the ideas that has been voted one of the highest voted ideas you can see. This is an idea for centralized management of different client or configuration data. The main rationale here is the administrator wants to manage and deploy various settings and options from client or different addins to all users.
So we did some research activities around this. We had this functionality available in Project Thunderdome as well for quite some time. And based on the research, plus based on our understanding with the Project Thunderdome, we have actually identified a few main areas for the first phase.
The first phase will have grid views, saved searches, and shortcuts as part of the client configuration data that we will manage and deploy to all the users. The super permission that is required here to set all of these data to server is Vault Set Options. So this is the permission that the user will need to have to send this data to Vault server. Next slide, please.
Let's take a look at three of these things, one by one. Let's start with the grid views first. A new command Save As Distributed View is introduced for sending the grid view to server. This is available in the Customize view dialog, or this is also available on the Create Custom View Creation dialog.
This is going to help send this viewed information to server. By view information, what I mean is that all the information that we see in the customize view dialog, the fields, the custom filters, other settings, and so on, these distributed views will be deployed to all the user machines by default. So the end user doesn't have any action. They will directly get the data that is set to send to server.
One or multiple distributed views can be saved to server. Now, by this what mean is the custom views capabilities are available in different workspaces. And it's available in different tabs as well. But for the workspaces like file, item, change order, and custom objects, users can actually today create multiple views.
So one or multiple views, whatever views they have, and if they want to save more than one view, they can do that for these four workspaces. For all the other grids, or the tabs, the uses tab, where used tab, and then all other different dialogs as well like change state, change category-- there are multiple other dialogs where customize view command itself is available.
So on all of those tabs and dialogs, we just have one default view, which the administrator or the super user can save to server. And then all the end users can get this view by default. Next slide, please.
We are changing the managed custom views dialog a bit as well, making this more informative to all the users. Distributed view column is added to this dialog now so that any user who logs in can know which view is his or her local view, versus what is coming from the server.
There are multiple edit actions possible with the distributed views. User can rename or delete only if they have permission. So if this is a super user, the super user can rename or delete the distributed view. But any user can copy or modify the distributed views.
All locally edited distributed views, there is a mechanism to have a reset to the last server side level. So there is a reset, one by one, or there is a command to do at once, like reset all distributed views command. Yeah, next slide, please Irvin.
The next one is saved search folders. So again, similar to the distributed views, we are having this capability to add a new command with this new command save as distributed search. Users can send this data to the server now. This is, again, applied to the search folder. So the search folders, which are saved, can be saved to server.
Again, all the distributed searches will be deployed to all user machines by default. They will not have any action there. One or multiple distributed searches can be saved to the server. And then, for better understanding, we are splitting these searches or saved search folders. In the left hand panel, we are splitting this into two parts.
The first is the My Searches, which is all local data. And the second is Distributed Searches, which is the content coming from the server. Next slide, please. We are, again, making some enhancements for better understanding and clarity for the Managed Saved Searches dialog.
We are adding the new column, Distributed Search, in this UI. Again, this will help users to know what is the local data versus what is the data coming from the server. There are few edit actions, rename and delete. This can be possible only if you have this super permission, but users can copy the distributed searches and create local content.
The third part of this functionality for phase one is the shortcuts. So users can actually, again, send this data, shortcut data, to server with the new command distributed shortcut, which is added in the new capability. This is going to help save the shortcut to server. Distributed shortcuts will be deployed to all user machines by default.
One or multiple shortcuts can be saved to server. And then, we are splitting the shortcuts panel as well on the left hand side into two parts. The first part is My Shortcuts, which is the local data. The second is Distributed Shortcuts, which is the data coming from the server.
And we are actually adding managed shortcuts dialogue. We don't have this dialogue till 2024.1. So we'll be adding this new dialogue to manage the shortcuts. The rationale here is for better understanding and clarity of the users, what data they want to see, where is the data coming from. And then we are also giving them ability to show or hide some of this content.
So the distributed column shortcut is added. There are rename or delete copy actions, possibly similar to the previous functionalities. And we do anticipate that users may want to show or hide some of this content on their local machines.
So we are providing the ability to show or hide local or distributed shortcuts on the local machine. That's pretty much it about the client configuration management and deployment workflow. Thank you.
IRVIN HAYES, JR: Thank you, Yogesh. Appreciate that. All right, now that we've talked about those, let's go into the backup and restore feature. So again, backup and restore for large environments is really, really tough to manage. You might have terabytes of database data. You might have multiple terabytes of Filestore data.
And what ends up happening for multiple customers, who are working around the clock, is the backup routines will happen during the time your users are actually using the product. So we had to find different ways to make backups more flexible for these particular environments, make them quicker by adding additional steps that the administrator can take to backup specific sets of data. And then exclude some other data as well.
So let's jump right into this and talk about the various different features within the backup and restore routine. We've added a feature called backing up, or we've added an option called database only backup. Here, you can actually tell the system leave the Filestore where it is.
Backup just the databases from the SQL server. And then you can use a third-party software, which most of you already have, to back up the Filestore. That software is already optimized to backup files in a way where it can back up just incremental or differential files inside of the Filestore location.
So why not use that? It's quick. It can happen any time in the day. And again, it just makes the backup routine a lot faster. So now, you're backing up just your databases only, without having to worry about backing up your Filestore at the same time, making it possibly multiple days to actually backup your entire system.
What we do recommend, though, as part of the notes down at the bottom of the slide is make sure that your files are backed up at the same time as the database. Make sure that you make a record of when that happens because if you ever need to restore, you need to know which Filestore you're going to be restoring, or which restore of the Filestore you're going to restore if you have to restore the database.
Periodically, you need to run the Filestore validation command. This actually should be run frequently if you're using this type of routine. This makes sure that your Filestores are intact. The files are not corrupt. And they match a particular checksum that we have recorded inside of the database.
And also, last but not least, test and validate your backup and restore process frequently. We've had customers who forget to test these things. And you might be thinking you have good backups, but the problem is when you go to restore, you end up finding out one of your backups actually do not work.
And then you have to go further back til you find a backup that actually works. And you're losing a ton of data in between. So always, always, always test and validate your backup and restore processes frequently.
The next one is a selective database backup. Now, many of you actually have your Production Vault. You have a Training Vault or a QA Vault. You might even have a Development Vault. The only one that really matters to you is the Production Vault.
So now what you can do is, not only back up the databases only, you could selectively back up particular Vaults or libraries and leave these other libraries that are just less important alone and not worry about that taking up your backup space. So again, you can select these at any given time in the backup restore routine. You can do it as a part of your command line as well.
And then, again, as previously stated, make sure you're running the Filestore validation frequently, so that your backups are-- you're confident that you're having a good set of backups as well as with the Filestore. The next one is using an existing Filestore during a restore command.
So when you're doing a restore in the past, what you ended up doing is restoring not only the databases, but you're also restoring the Filestore. So if you actually go and use the backup routine where you're only backing up the databases, you can use an existing Filestore and point it to that particular Filestore.
Again, this makes the restore routine a lot faster because you're not shuffling around files, a lot of files, in the Filestore at the given time of restore. So in this case, again, I'm going to keep saying it. Make sure that you're backing up the Filestore at the same time that you're backing up the databases. Make sure you use that Filestore as part of this restore process.
So if you're actually a day off and something's happening to the databases, and you want to restore yesterday's backup, your Filestore is most likely OK. And you can use that existing Filestore and go ahead and backup or restore just the databases only.
The next option then would be to not validate the Filestore. If you are on a regular basis running the command line routine that validates the Filestore, there's really no reason to do it during a full restore process.
So now, not only can you restore the databases as they were, you can skip the Filestore validation command-- which takes a long time, depending on the size of your Filestore-- and get yourself up and running right away just after the databases have been restored.
You need to make sure that your Filestore is validated and without errors from a previous Filestore validation routine. So you need to be real comfortable with that. And make sure that you're OK with it. But I do recommend that after you've done the restore, the productions back up and running, at some point in time, rerun the Filestore validation command to make sure that everything is really intact and workable for your solution.
So with that, in the future we'll be doing some other things. We hope that you're all involved in our communities that we have. So our Idea Exchange or Idea Station on the forums is where we get all of our information about features that you're asking for as part of the community.
Our forums, we look at how people are using the product. And if they're struggling, we get ideas of how to resolve certain areas of the product to make sure that struggle is removed. We have a Vault feedback community as well. This is where we talk to you, our customers, way ahead of the time before we start implementing a new feature.
This is a valuable input information for us, as well as valuable to you. Because then while we're developing a particular new feature, you get to input your information earlier in the process to make sure that we're solving problems for you and not just creating another feature that may not actually make your work more efficient or usable.
Our customization form is there also for those of you who are using our APIs, and creating your own Vault extensions, and things of that nature. So make sure you're on those as well. So with that, thank you very much for coming and attending our class. And hopefully, you have a great rest of your AU. And have a good rest of your evening.