Vault: What Is It and Why Do I Need It?

CHRIS BENNER: Well, the clock is chiming 8 o'clock, so I think we're going to go ahead and get started here. Welcome, everybody. Thank you all for coming out so early on the first day of the conference. I hope you had plenty of coffee. Stay awake for the whole day. We are going to do Autodesk Vault, what is it, and why do I need it? We are Chris and Mark. I'm Chris, and there's Mark. Wave, Mark. Say hi, Mark.

Mark is joining us from Quakertown, Pennsylvania. He found out about halfway through planning this class that he was not allowed to make the trip, so we brought him in anyway. So how many are you using Vault right now of some sort? Don't raise your hand. All right. So what we're going to talk about, basically, is this is going to be an overview of what the different Autodesk Vault products are and what functionality is in each one so that those of you who are or are thinking about using Vault can make some more informed decisions as you're moving forward.

We're going to talk about the features. We're going to get you some ideas of what are the right questions to ask when you decide whether or not Vault is the right product for you, and we're going to go in that direction. So our key objectives are understanding the different features found in the three family of Vault products-- they are Basic, Workgroup, and Professional.

We're going to give you some ideas, like I said earlier, the intelligent questions to ask and how to put together a plan. We're to talk about understanding some of the benefits of adding Vault, and then we can talk about some of the differences in the Vault subscriptions and where you can go to find more information, which is basically autodesk.com.

I am Chris Benner. I'm the CAD manager at Powell Fabrication in St. Louis, Michigan, not St. Louis, Missouri. I have a little over 20 years of CAD experience, 10 years working with Inventor, and another probably nine with Vault. I'm a member of the Autodesk Expert Elites, and I've got a whole list of things I enjoy doing there.

If any of you have ever taken my classes before, you'll know that I used to have a Lions logo in the lower corner. Well, forget that. I'm going with my daughter's Alma mater now, so I'm too ashamed of the Lions.

This is home for me. I live in Sanford, Michigan right in the center of the State. That's a nice picture on my front yard. And at Powell Fabrication, what we do is we manufacture bleach manufacturing equipment, chemical processing equipment, all skid-mounted custom designed for whatever the customer's needs are. So Mark?

MARK LANCASTER: All right. Let's do a sound check. Everything sound OK?

CHRIS BENNER: I'm sorry, what?

MARK LANCASTER: I was just doing a sound check. I just want to make sure--

CHRIS BENNER: Yes, I can hear you.

MARK LANCASTER: All right. Hopefully, everybody else can hear me.

CHRIS BENNER: Yes. Can y'all hear Mark?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

MARK LANCASTER: We OK?

CHRIS BENNER: Yes.

MARK LANCASTER: I just want to say that you guys are in a special treat today. I work from home in Upstate New York, and usually I'm in pajamas, so I actually dressed up for tonight, so you should be honored. Anyway, I've been around the CAD world for many, many years, as you can see. Most of my time was spent in CAD back in [? McMann ?] and Fitt.

I guess we might have a problem here in a second.

CHRIS BENNER: Get rid of that.

MARK LANCASTER: So I work for an Autodesk reseller in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, but like I said, I work from home. I am the help desk technician for all the manufacturing and bulk products, heavily involved in installation, licensing description, stuff like that. As Chris, I am on Autodesk Expert Elite. With that, turn back over to you, Chris.

CHRIS BENNER: OK. So like the title of the class says, what is it, why do you need it? What is Vault. In its simplest terms, Vault is a document management system also sometimes called an electronic document management system. It is just a way to electronically store and organize your data and documentation. Some of the versions can maintain versions and revisions and give you the options to reuse your data.

And in my mind, this is one of the most important features of a Vault-type system is that it prevents two people from editing the same file at the same time. In the old days, when everything was just stored on a network drive, if two people opened up the same drawing and one of them saved even two seconds before the other one, the earliest saber wins, and the other guy's changes are gone.

Vault and its similar products prevent that by using a check-in/checkout system so that once you open up a file and check it out, it's yours. Another person can probably look at it, but it's got to be read only to them so your changes are the ones that get saved.

Why have a document management system? You can save time and money managing data all in one location. I'm sure you can do that in a network location, but there are a lot of more pains involved in that. With the DMS, you can track versions. You can look at and print previous versions of files that are stored in your Vault. You can setup security settings to make sure that the right people are accessing the right files and those people who shouldn't have access don't have access.

You have more collaboration options with the DMS, and you can avoid looking like Mark with the unwanted hair loss there. Sorry, Mark. Throw you under the bus.

MARK LANCASTER: Yeah, well, I don't have that hair.

CHRIS BENNER: We just wanted to take a real quick brief look at the history involved. In 2002, a company called True Innovations headed by Dean Brison and Brian Repke came out with this product called truEVault. It was based specifically for Inventor. They wanted to be able to better manage Inventor files and the data associated with them.

It was within about a year that their company was purchased by Autodesk, and Autodesk started integrating the Vault products into more of their other products. And so this list here shows the Autodesk and other products that are currently supported as of 2018, but with Vault. So you've got a whole list of Autodesk products, Microsoft Office, and several third-party CAD applications, MicroStation, Pro/Engineer, and SolidWorks also have Vault add-ins available for them. So you can see you can manage a whole lot of different CAD data with your Vault system.

And with that, I'm going to hand it back to Mark, and he's going to talk about the Vault architecture. Take it, Mark.

MARK LANCASTER: Thanks, Chris. So we want to just give you a few slides on the Vault architecture and how it could be configured. Overall, Vault is a client/server application, so you would have a machine acting as your server which is hosting the database, your file store, and then the Vault client communicates with the Vault server to look at your information, get your information, check it out, and those type of things.

The database server is used on a Microsoft SQL Server. If you do not want to invest in a full version of SQL, Vault comes with what's called the SQL Express, and that will allow you to install SQL without purchasing a full SQL license. But that's an option you can continue to use that or get a full SQL license.

The web server interface is basically the communication between the database and the file store. This stuff may not be important to you. You may not be an IT or just for IT manager aspect, that's fine. And then the file store, as I indicated already, that's where your Vault of files are stored, whether they're CAD documentation, spreadsheets, specifications, and those type of things.

CHRIS BENNER: And those files in the file store are fully encrypted so they're secure. You can't just go into the file store and open a file, you have to do it through the Vault interface.

MARK LANCASTER: So there's different flavors of Vaults, so how do you configure the architecture based on that. So this example here, this is a Vault basic. And as you can see, I'm not talking about the server, the client. So we have client 1, 2, and 3. In order to install the Vault basic client, you have to have a qualified CAD application on those machines, like AutoCAD, AutoCAD Electrical, Inventor, those type of things.

A Vault user can actually be remote, so as you can see client number 3 is remote. They're VPN backing into the server. On the server aspect of it, you have what's called the ADMS console, or the Vault server. This is the interface that all works together with the files store and the database. Now, the server can be a physical box, or a virtual box. And then inside that box, you would have a Vault database in a file store.

Now, customers that I have dealt with on our help desk say they always don't have the ability to get a server or their IT doesn't want to work with a server. So you can actually install the Vault server on a Windows OS. Now, usually when Vault Basic, you're using the SQL Express, but you could go to a full SQL. But I always tell people, if you're using Vault Basic, it's that really necessary to go the full SQL. Why waste your money on that.

So the only problem with putting on a Windows OS is the performance issues when you reach five or more current users. So if you've got five people logged into a Windows OS box that's hosting the ADMS Console, you're going to start seeing some performance issue. And the limit is tense. So even though you could put the ADMS console or the Vault server on a regular Windows PC, you're just going to have that limitation.

Now, when we get it the Vault Workgroup or Pro, these are the paid Vault versions. And in that case, you do have to put them on a server. Now, there is some things that you can do to put it on a Windows OS machine, but it's not really supported. And as you can see, the clients have little change difference. So client 1 doesn't need to have a qualified CAD application, but let's say client 1 is your CAD operator.

Client 2 maybe somebody in purchasing. They don't need the CAD application to use the Vault Workgroup, or the Vault, sorry, Client, when working with Vault Workgroup and Pro. And same thing, client number 3 can be remote by VPN back into the server. In addition, with the Vault Workgroup or Pro-- and you're going to see some of the stuff later on-- the clients can act as a job processor. And basically, what that means is when you check in files, those machines can process off line the information to create the viewable image inside of Vault.

Again, the server can be a physical box or virtual. And again, here you can also do a SQL Express or full SQL. There is no limitation if you do SQL Express. Things have changed over the years. SQL Express used to have a limitation of the database side. I think now it's 10 gigabytes. So at some point down the road, you could fill out the database for max requirements.

When we get into Vault Professional, so we're going the next step, same thing happens, the difference is that in this case here, you can have what's called a Web Client, so basically, somebody who's maybe just wants to view and print documents you can use the Web Client interface so they can look at the files and print them off. You don't need a license for them.

In addition to the Web Client when you get into Vault Professional is another option we're going to talk about is the Office. The Office aspect of it allows you to use the Web Client for those individuals who are working with Excel spreadsheets, Word documents. They can use the Web Client to use that interface to check in and check out. They don't need the full thick client of the Vault Client. However, with the Vault Office, you do need a license for that.

So let's look at some configuration of the server. Now, I always like to present this because you may not be an IT, and you go back saying, hey, we went to this great presentation at AU, learned a lot about Vault. We would like to implement it, and IT comes back. Well, we can only do this, or can we do that, those type of things. So I just want to throw this out.

So looking back at, this is option 1, whether it's Vault Basic, Workgroup, or Pro that you have the server and you have your database in the file store. Now, again, as I stated earlier, if you have Vault Basic, you could put it on a PC or a Windows operating system, so you can have that configuration.

Again, configuration number 2, you have two databases on that Vault server. So you say, why would I want two databases? All right, think of this.

CHRIS BENNER: And we lost Mark. We're going to try to get Mark back here. All right.

AUDIENCE: [? What ?] he does with that, could you have him step away from the camera to show and verify he does have clothes on?

CHRIS BENNER: I will ask him to do that. Yes. I'm going to get back into the slide show. You're back. Can you hear me, Mark?

MARK LANCASTER: Yes. Can you guys hear me?

CHRIS BENNER: We've had a request for you to stand up away from the camera to verify that you're actually wearing clothes.

MARK LANCASTER: I'd better not. I'm kind of like that commercial where the guy they're advertising cold medicine. The guys is joining the meeting, and he coughs and drops his laptop and stands up. Well--

CHRIS BENNER: So you're in your pajamas is what you're telling us.

MARK LANCASTER: Sorry about that technical loss connection.

CHRIS BENNER: That's not going to happen again.

MARK LANCASTER: So getting back to this configuration. So the question is, why would you want two databases. I always recommend and I know Chris does this too that when you set up a Vault, you should really have what we call a production one and the sandbox. Lot of times, I find customers don't have a sandbox where they can go in and play and they start messing around with live production data. And they could do things that maybe you can't undo, and you're stuck with that.

So if you're going down, you're going to implement Vault, I always recommend that you implement two databases, one is your live, one is your sandbox, so you can go in and play around without messing with live data.

CHRIS BENNER: It's a good way to test new features that are available in the new releases in Vault, or maybe you've got an idea you want to try something different with security settings. You can test that out in your sandbox, and you're not affecting what's going on with the actual users. And get rid of that.

MARK LANCASTER: [? New ?] data.

CHRIS BENNER: Yeah.

MARK LANCASTER: Because we lost connection.

CHRIS BENNER: Yeah. That's on my end. Got it. This is only been done once before at AU, so there's a few kinks here. Go ahead.

MARK LANCASTER: So configuration number 3, and I support customers who do this, is that basically, you have a server that's acting just as your ADMS console and the file store. And then you have a separate server which is basically your SQL Server, and then you have your databases on there.

Now, some customers, they already have SQL installed in their infrastructure, and they want to continue using that. It is still recommended that you do have a dedicated box in any of these configurations for Vault. Because if the server is being taxed by other processes that are in your infrastructure, especially a separate SQL bot, it could impact your performance in Vault, so just keep that in mind.

The next one is the replication. There's two types of replication, which is full replication, which this image shows, and then the next slide is basically, the file replication. So you can see in this aspect of it, we've got a server. It's called the Publisher, and it has its database in file stores, and then you have remote sites.

So how many in the session today have other locations that you would want to share data with them?

CHRIS BENNER: We've got several hands going up, Mark. So there's quite a few people that would possibly use replication.

MARK LANCASTER: OK. So the remote sites are called the Subscriber. So the Subscriber will request from the Publisher has there been any updates. And if there is, it replicates that information to the server. And it kind of goes both ways. There's a lot of behind the scenes, and I'm not going to get into today, but the Subscriber, somebody puts it in their server, it will replicate back to the Publisher. So everything is in sync.

The last one is called the files store replication. And basically, it's kind of like the same thing as full replication. The only difference is the files are just replicated. So in that case, instead of the ADMS console being the Subscriber, it's just called now the Autodesk Vault File Server, or the AVFS, because you're only replicating the file. So it's like I'm here in New York. I have a company down to Florida. I just replicate the files. I'm not moving database information over. So that's another option that you can implement.

With that, I'll turn it back over to Chris.

CHRIS BENNER: All right. So with all of that wonderful Vault architecture that Mark probably confused everyone with, there are the clients-- this is the interface that your users and you as the admin are going to see every day, and this is where you're going to do all of your work. The first is called the thick client, or the primary client. This is what you would put on your user's individual machines, and this is where you'll do all of your work in the Vault.

You've got the Project Explorer, which looks a lot like a Windows setup where all your files are accessed. Depending on the version involved, you've you may also have the item master and the change order list and a bunch of other interfaces. It all depends on which version of Vault that you use. So this is your primary interface right here, the thick client.

You can view and print. You can add files. You can do file-based operations such as your revisions and life cycles if you're in Vault Professional. You can configure the settings from here. And now Mark mentioned the Thin Client. This is also known as the Web Client. This is something that you can grab from any browser. It only really works with Microsoft Internet Explorer. There's a couple of different reasons in the background why that's true.

You can put it on a different-- I've opened it with Chrome, but you're severely limited to what you can do. So if you're going to use it, use Internet Explorer for it. The Vault Admin sets what you can see and what you can't see, and it's basically used just for viewing and printing files. The only person in my company that uses the Thin Client is our purchasing agent who just needs to print off a file to send with a purchase order.

That's all he needs. So he doesn't need a full client to do that. He can just use the Web Client, find the file, print it off, and close it up. And he's not consuming a license. That's probably the most important thing about this is that he can do that without consuming a license and taking something away from one of the engineers that needs to use Vault.

AUDIENCE: Can we ask questions?

CHRIS BENNER: Yes.

AUDIENCE: You said a little bit ago, you mentioned about the Web Client to check in and out in Excel, Word in Office [INAUDIBLE]. Now you're saying you can't check in and out. [INAUDIBLE].

CHRIS BENNER: Mark, the question was, we mentioned a few minutes ago about with the Thin Client, you can check in and out Office files. That's if you have Vault Office, correct?

MARK LANCASTER: Right. So you would have to purchase a Vault Office license.

CHRIS BENNER: There's another product. It's called Vault Office, and with that product, those functions are available in the Thin Client. And we're going to describe with the Vault Office in more detail a little bit. So that was actually the last bullet here is that with Vault Office, you can perform some basic file management tasks like check in, check out, that sort of thing.

So you've got to Thick Client, the Thin Client, and then you've got the clients that are embedded into some of your CAD applications, the Vault add-ins. I'm showing you here an example of the Inventor and AutoCAD Vault add-ins. They basically have their own toolbar. They have some of the very basic Vault functions. You've got your log in, log out, open. You can open from Vault, place from Vault. You can check in and check out from here.

A lot of my options are grayed out on here because at the time I took these screenshots, I did not have a file open. So there was nothing available to do, but if you look at the ends here, you can also do things such as some file management tools that has changed category, changed the state, get revision on the latest. So there's more tools available in here than what I'm showing you because I did not have a file open.

There are Vault add-ins in, I believe, all of the AutoCAD products, Inventor-- what else am I missing here? It has a Vault add-in Revit.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

CHRIS BENNER: 3ds Max, and Civil 3D. I don't have those, so I couldn't get any pictures of them. So those are the add-in clients. This is a picture of the Vault Office Client. You'll notice it looks almost identical to the Thick Client for a full Vault, but it's limited to just doing those Office files functions like Word, Excel, PowerPoint. And like Mark mentioned, Vault Office is a separate purchase, and it looks like-- you want to add anything about Vault Office, mark?

MARK LANCASTER: So users who have a Vault Office license, their Vault functionality, as Chris already pointed out it is kind of limited to working with non-CAD data. You can still view CAD data, you just wouldn't be able to check it out, modify it, those type of things.

A Vault Office license also permits any user who has that, they can participate in state changes, ECO workflows, those type of functionalities inside a Vault. I know Chris and I are throwing some terms at you that you may not fully understand especially if you don't have Vault.

And the other key important thing about Vault Office that it can only be installed on machines that the work in the normal Workgroup and Pro Vault Client is not installed. So if you're already using a Pro Client, you can't install the Office Client on it.

CHRIS BENNER: They may not both be on the same machine.

MARK LANCASTER: Right, both machines. The other thing I want to point out back on the last slide that Chris talked about, the Vault add-ins, one thing that we like to point out that Vault works with up to two revisions of CAD. So for example, CAD can't be newer than Vault. So let's say you went Vault '19, you could still use-- and better 2017, AutoCAD 2018, or AutoCAD 2019. So the clients, the add-ins do not have to be the same for your Vault server/client as they do for the add-in.

So just keep that in mind. If you-- hey, we got to stick with '17 and better, but we want to go to Vault 2019, you can still do that.

AUDIENCE: What are the most likely for [INAUDIBLE].

CHRIS BENNER: Loading licenses? Are there? Irving is nodding his head, yes. All right. So I'm going in the wrong direction here. And now, we're going to break down what are the options of the Vault family of products starting with the very basic Vault Basic.

This is just the lowest level of the Vault functionality. Gives you check in, checkout, and very basic version controls. Gives you the option to share and reuse data with an internal copy design. The Vault Basic Server can be put on either a server operating system or a Windows operating system, like Mark mentioned earlier.

The client can only be installed on a machine that has a qualified CAD application, such as AutoCAD, or Inventor, or whatever. So if you don't have that on your machine, the Vault Client cannot be installed there for Vault Basic. Vault Basic can be integrated with Microsoft Office, and Vault Basic is free with those qualified CAD applications.

So this is not a Vault that you need to purchase. A lot of people like to start here because if you're already using Inventor or AutoCAD, it's a good way to get your feet wet in Vault and see if it's something that you're going to use. So Mark, want to take Workgroup?

MARK LANCASTER: So now we've gone over the free aspect of it, and now we're moving into a paid version. So the first paid version is called Vault Workgroup. Unlike the Basic where you can put it on a Windows OS or a server, the Workgroup is for Vault from [? need ?] to server. From here, you're going to take, basically, the features that you get with Vault Basic, and we're going to give additional features.

So we can get into file life cycles and revision, so mechanisms to control your documentation from work in progress to release. And again, we're probably throwing terms out to you that may not make sense. We also, with the Workgroup, the security aspect of it. In the afternoon class-- and how many are signed up for Chris a I's afternoon class part 1 of vault configuration?

CHRIS BENNER: Anyone? We're going to go into this security in much greater detail in this afternoon class. There may still be seats available for that, and I'm going to put up a slide here at the end that has a number of different Vault classes, and I believe I put ours on there as well. So go ahead, Mark.

MARK LANCASTER: So these show things-- you can start doing reports. You can publish and manage PDFs, so when you put your documents in, change lifecycle stage, you can have a PDF automatically created. There is a newer copier design in there that's kind of like an external copy design utility, whereas Vault Basic is internal.

You also have the ability to set up automatic filing naming, so when you put in CAD data, you can say I always want you to start with this naming convention. And the other thing that's there is data standard. Data standard, in the past, was always an option. With 2019, it's part of the installation. It allows you to say this is the stuff that I want you to configure before or define before you can even check in your [? documentation. ?] What it allowed you to do is you're standardizing across the board so all files have the correct information.

Continuing on, again, Workgroup Client, you don't need no qualified CAD applications. So just because somebody is not using CAD, like an engineering manager, somebody in purchasing, quality control, you can install the Vault Workgroup Client. We can also implement the Vault Office Client, like Chris has shown earlier, which, again, it requires a license, but it may lower your cost in your investment of your overall license quantity. Meaning that not every non-CAD person really needs the full client or Workgroup. You can invest say, hey, this person in QC, they're always writing specifications. So you can view that license for a Vault Office.

Job Processor, we already talked about that before. I'm not going to get into-- there's some updates bent to that. But Job Processor allows you to setup CAD Workstation or any workstation to process your documentation off line. So you're not waiting for it when you're checking in. Many years ago, people used AutoCAD when you plotted. What did you have to do? You had to wait till the plotting was done.

So not saying it's a slow, doing yourself but the Job Processor, you just send it to the Job Processor, and off it goes. A new feature in 2019 is shared views. So you can actually share Vault information to other people inside your organization or outside your organization. It is a subscription-only benefit, which we all know that if you do go get the Vault now, it is a subscription-brought product.

CHRIS BENNER: That's sharing. That's Shared view. I was going to just go a little further on that. That is a view that anybody can open with any browser. So you create basically, an image either of your 2D data or even your 3D data, and you share the link to that with whomever you need to share it with. and they can view it in any browser, they can comment, make markups, and then share it back to the site. And then you can see what their comments were.

I've used it for a couple of weeks now. I really enjoyed it. It's great. Sorry, Mark.

MARK LANCASTER: That's OK. So also involved, in Vault Basic, you have a backup utility, where you would have to do, it's called the full backup, so every night you would run a full backup. In Vault Workgroup and Pro, you have what's called an increment backup. So you could do a full backup, let's say Sunday night or maybe Monday night, and then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, you do incremental backup, which when you do incremental backups, it's less disk space that it's taking and less time to do it because it's only backing up the stuff that hasn't been backed up.

As Vault Basic, you can go into Outlook. And how do you get it? It is available at one or three years' subscription. And you can get it into a single user or multi-user. Most customers, I think, go down the multi-user route, but we do have customers that I support that they occasionally do by single user because they want a dedicated license to a given person.

With that, I'll turn it back over to Chris.

CHRIS BENNER: All right. And then when reaching the top of the family, we get into Vault Professional, which contains all of the same features as both Vault Workgroup and Vault Basic and then builds on that a little bit further. Your clients can now be set up to use Windows Authentication. They can be domain users, as opposed to just a static user. The Web Client is available to you now with no license required as we said earlier, unless you're using the Vault office in your Web Client, you do need the license for Vault office before you can view that in the Web Client.

Vault Professional builds on management with adding items. It's always a hard one to exactly define, but the best definition that I've read is that an item is what you make, build, sell, or manage. So if you build widgets, that widget might have 20 files associated with it in your vendor, but the widget itself will be your item. And you can use that in Vault now. That's only in the Vault Professional. Files and items can be controlled.

You can control your lifecycles. You can control your revisions. You can assign categories. You can create rules based on those categories, and you can really dial in and manage the life cycles and revisions of various different types of products that you're dealing with. Maybe one product needs a certain revision scheme, whereas another product uses a different revision scheme for a different part of your company, for example.

It gives you the option of BOM management using the items. You can actually create your BOMs right in the Vault using the Item Management, and it also has a built-in engineering change order system that is really a very, very good product. That's my bread and butter. We do change orders for all of our engineering tasks, then requests. So that's Vault Professional. That's basically the cream of the crop.

Vault Professional also offers you multi-site replication, either full replication like Mark was talking about earlier or just the AVFS where you're replicating only the file store and the database stays at home. You can now integrate with your ERP system and Revit. You have different forms of collaboration like the shared views that we talked about earlier, and you can use Project Sync, which is new in 2019. And Project Sync requires that you have a Fusion Team license and an active Job Processor. So that's going to send those jobs back and forth through the Job Processor.

You can integrate with SharePoint and create SharePoint folders right in the Vault so that your CAD data can be accessed through SharePoint by some of your users, either in the office or wherever they are. And now you can perform backups while you're working in the Vault. So if you've got a huge backup that you're running, I've never noticed much of a hit, but you may notice just a tiny hit on performance if you're running a backup while you're working.

Vault Professional Light Workgroup is available as a one- or three-year subscription and can be used with either a single license or a multi-user license. And you want to take Vault Office?

MARK LANCASTER: Yeah. So just to clarify, we've already talked about the office. It's only for Workgroup and Pro. Again, it's a separate license purchase. We've already pointed this stuff out, but just to reinforce it that there's an Office Thick Client, and then there's the Office Thin Client. Just to point out, Thick Office is not like a full installation of Basic Workgroup or Pro, it's just like an add-on to Workgroup or Pro to give you those functionalities.

Again, you're going to see a slide at the end about licensing. So customers, sometimes they don't want-- Vault Office is a little lower cost of licensing. So if you've got people who are doing specification, work in Excel, Word document, those type of things, you might want to consider getting them a license that a full Workgroup or Pro license.

CHRIS BENNER: So here are some of the shared functions across all three products. They all do-- all of these that we see over here, get central location for your project data. It's integrated right into your CAD. They all support AnyCAD. You can reuse data, very easy administration and configuration. These are shared across all three products in the family. But the next slide is going to show you where it becomes tiered after that with the additional functions that are in Vault-- Workgroup and Vault Pro.

So when you're making your decisions about Vault, you want to think about moving forward, other than just storing my data and checking it in and checking it out, what else am I going to want to be doing down the road as I get more into the Vault, and that's going to help you decide which one of these families is right for you.

These slides are all going to be available, by the way, on the AU website, so you can download them, and the configurations that Mark showed you earlier, that might be something handy to download that and have that ready to show to your IT group so they can understand the different options. And you can use this to convince your management that Vault is the right way to go.

So Mark is going to mention a little bit about licensing.

MARK LANCASTER: Yeah. So we've already pointed out that Vault Basic is free. There's no license required. It's just as long as you have a qualified CAD application. When we get into Workgroup and Professional, as I stated earlier that it's a paid version, and you can get your licensing and multi-user or single user.

Now, there is really no guidelines as a lot of times we have new customers coming to Synergis, they said, well, how many license do I need, or what do you think based on this. So years ago, even before I Synergis working, I kind of guideline. I'd stick with it. No rules saying that you have to. No rules stating that it's a correct accurate, but it's just a baseline to start with.

So if you've got people who are CAD drafting designers, they're constantly in, they're checking in, checking out files, modifying, those type of things, you should really do a one-to-one ratio. So if you have eight CAD designers, well, you start with a license for your Vault Client or Vault. When we get into engineering, they're maybe in there every so often.

They go in for 15 minutes, check documentation, get out. Maybe they participate in the change order that Chris talked about or in the release process. You might want to consider two-to-one ratio. When we get into QCs, manufacturing managers, they will need access. Maybe you want to consider three-to-one ratio in that regard. So if you got four managers, well, maybe you just want to buy one license for them.

When we get into viewing and printing, there's a couple of things that you can do. Now, we've had certain customers that they do not want to deal with a Web Client at all. They just want to do a View and Print right inside the Vault Client because it gives them more ability. They're not as restricted as the Web Client would be. So you might want to consider a 4 to 1 ratio. But you can use the Vault Client if you have Vault Pro, and it's free. It comes with it. You don't have to worry about it though. It's an unlimited license for that.

CHRIS BENNER: So to go a little bit further with where he's going with this, just to give you an example like at our company, there is two drafters, and there are six project managers. We started with three licenses involved, and so the two drafters were using two out of the three. And the last license was being shared among all those project managers and the head of engineering and purchasing.

That didn't go very well for very long. People were constantly fighting over that last license. So we bumped it up to three additional licenses, and that lasted about six months. And then we bumped it up to six additional licenses, and that lasted a couple of years. We're at 10 now. So it's something that you may need to build on as you get more and more and start using more of the functionalities involved, so be ready for that. Sorry.

MARK LANCASTER: That's OK. So the last option is what we've talked about is using the Vault Office license. Now, whether the CAD individual engineering manager, person that's doing printing using a regular license, you still have the ability to work with office information. All right. Office integration is just that restricted to an office license.

But if you have a person or a group of people who are dedicated to just working with Office document, then you might want to consider them investing into Office license, especially if you're using Workgroup or Pro because it allows you to reduce your overall cost in licensing.

CHRIS BENNER: So we've thrown a lot at you, a lot of terminology that you probably never heard before, a lot of different functionality, and a lot of different options that you can look at. So now what? Now what do you do? First thing is when you're thinking about going to Vault, if you're not already using Vault, don't put the cart before the horse. Do a lot of homework. This is a tough decision. It's an expensive decision. You want to make the right decision.

Obviously, Vault Basic, that's free. You can use that to try things out, but if you're looking at some of the advanced functionality, make sure you do a lot of your homework. I put this one up here because this is very important to consider when you're looking at a Vault implementation is you have to meet the system requirements and/or exceed them so that you've got room to grow as new releases come out.

I know that our computers are on a three-year cycle, so when I buy new computers, I try to buy them powerful enough to handle two releases of Vault ahead. It's a guess, but you can make an educated guess on that. I mentioned earlier, these slides are available online. So what this slide is is a hyperlink to the page that has all of the system requirements from 2010 through 2019.

If I put him up here, it would have been about another eight slides. So I just wanted to give you that link. So you can go there and take a look at what you would need for your implementation.

So as I said, do your homework. I'm sorry do you want to--

MARK LANCASTER: Yeah, it does matter. So as Chris already indicated, do your homework. Have a backup process. A lot of times people who implement Vault, they don't consider that going forward how we're going to protect your data, so make sure you have a backup process. It is also important, and whether you're [? new ?] or veteran user, AutoCAD user, I see some things like what I've been using better for two hours and I want to make this complex shape. I consider that you're jumping off the deep end of the pool without even knowing how to swim.

So document your plan. Put it in phases. Don't try to do everything at once. Another key thing is to involve your team, whether somebody from QC, how do they want to see data. What are they looking for? Somebody from manufacturing. You're engineering managers. Consider a consultant, whether it's in Autodesk reseller, value added reseller, or somebody who is familiar with implementing Vault, that's saying that personally you can't implement your own Vault, but sometimes walking in blind, you may miss some crucial thing that you really need.

As I stated before, create a sandbox. Get the necessary training. A lot of times, you may not be able to manage the infrastructure. You're only the end user, and you say, well, I can't do anything about that. IT has to. Make sure IT has the proper training. I interviewed a few customers that IT deals with, but they have no knowledge of how Vault works, so that's important.

When we get into installing your Vault Client, then these are kind of little keys after you will implement Vault. A lot of times because we're all used to the desktop app, a user will see the Vault client needs to be updated and they update it. It is important that your Vault client build number, or version, stays the same as your Vault server. You don't want your Vault client to be newer than your server.