Code Keepers Vaulted Path to Success

TIFFANY HAYDEN: Hi, everybody. Welcome to Code Keeper's Vaulted Path to Success. I am Tiffany Hayden. A little bit about me is I'm an application developer for KETIV Technologies. I am a new member of the Autodesk Expert Elite Program. And I have primarily worked in the material handling industry my entire career until coming to KETIV, so I have focused a lot on material handling automation in that realm.

So the agenda for today is we're going to go through a little bit of Vault administration for controlling external rules. So external rules, primarily, if you don't use Vault, most of the time they are stored on the network. And then you point your Inventor to the network and you're running those external rules from the network. In this scenario, we're going to move the external rules to Vault. And we are going to go through the entire process to manage those external rules through a multi-developer environment.

The next thing we're going to do is talk through what an example workflow might look like with one developer or multiple developers. And then we're going to talk about an Inventor add-in that I created for this class that you will be able to take back to your work and develop further if you would like to, or download and try it out at your work and see how it works for you.

So the first thing is Vault users. Vault users are-- we're going to have three Vault users in this situation. We're going to have Abby the approver, Donna the developer, and Eva the engineer. And one additional user will be administrator in this situation. The administrator would be me because I am on this computer and neither one of those will have access to it. But we will sign in to Vault to better-- to show each one of those users and be able to show what permissions look like for each one of those users.

The next set is groups. We're going to have two groups that are set up in Vault. One will be the external approvers and Abby the approver and administrator will be part of that group. And then we're going to have external users that will be Abby the approver, Donna the developer, and the administrator.

The next thing we're going to talk about is lifecycles. That's a big deal with Vault. You have the ability to create lifecycles and the ability to make them as user-friendly as possible for your workflow.

So to talk about both the groups, they're going to have different lifecycle permissions. The users are going to be able to do the work. So they're going to be able to go from release to work-in-progress, release to for full review, obsolete, back to work-in-progress, and for review.

That's the key component in that is that they seamlessly can transfer all of the files to where they can start their work without any sort of permissions or approval. That's the key here. This may not work in your situation, and you may want to tweak it here and there, depending on the needs of your company, but this is just an example of what a workflow might look like for users. And when I say users, those are going to be developers. Those are going to be non-approver developers.

So the approvers are going to be responsible for approving it to that release date or that obsolete state. They are going to be approving a fast-track approval work-in-progress to obsolete, a normal approval for review to released, or an obsolete approval to a for review to obsolete or release to obsolete.

Those are all-- when I say approves or approval, what mean is a conversation has to be had for those lifecycle states to happen. And that's a good place to be with developers. When you go from an editing type scenario to an approval type scenario, a lot of times you have some sort of code review that happens and a conversation that happens to make sure that you're following standards and you're doing things the way that the team expects them to be done.

So let's go over to Vault and start our administrative side. So like I said earlier, we are going to start with users. Users we're going to be adding. You go to Global Settings, Tools, Administration, and then Global Settings. And then we're going to Manage Access.

I've already added two out of the three users to this, but we're going to need to add a third one. I've added all the columns, so you can see their permissions and what they are available, what their users look like. So their first name, last name, what accounts they're associated with. All of these are going to be Vault accounts, mainly because this is a demonstration and I don't want to worry about passwords. That will probably not be the case for your company. Usually, you, instead of doing a Vault account, you have some sort of Windows authentication that happens. So you can log in to Vault with that. For this scenario, we're going to use Vault accounts.

And then I have a Vault. It's called AU2024. All of these are going to be attached to that. So they can log in, and then the user is enabled. So we need to add a new user. So you go to New. And then we need to add Abby the approver. And first name Abby, last name Approver. And then their accounts, Vault account. And I'm not going to worry about a password right there. For Vault accounts, you can set a password for the users, but in this situation, I'm not going to set one. So go ahead and hit OK.

And then we're not dealing with roles yet. That's going to be on the group side, but we need to attach her to the Vault. So go ahead and click on that. And then it is enabled, so we're going to hit OK.

And now we have-- let me refresh. Now we have Abby the approver and then Vault account AU2024. She's all set.

Now we need to move over to Groups. I already have both of the groups created, but I'm going to walk through each one of them to make sure that we have clarity on what they look like.

To create a group, you just hit the New button and a form loads up. And then you are responsible for filling out that form to the best of your knowledge. In this case, I do have both of them, but we're going to walk through each one of them.

So the group name is External Role Approvers. The roles, you're going to have two roles-- document editor level two and document manager level two. That gives the members of that group full access to do any sort of editing inside of that folder. We want to make sure that they can do the work. We don't want to limit them from doing that, so they both have access to those.

And then the group is associated with a specific Vault, too. So we chose the Vault. When you create a new group, it automatically comes enabled. So just make sure that check mark is open or checked. And then we want to add members to this. So we already have administrator. This is an approver, so we're going to add Abby the approver and click OK and OK again.

Now, the users, they have the same permissions as the approvers when it comes to the roles, the Vault. They, of course, have a different name, but different members are going to be in this one. So we're going to add new members. And we need to add Abby the approver and Donna the developer. And then click OK.

So now we have the two groups filled in. Their roles are defined. They are enabled. And the assigned Vaults are attached to those groups.

OK, so we're done with Global Settings, so we're going to go ahead and hit Close on that. We need to go back to administration and go to Vault Settings. We're going to go over to the behaviors and set up a category.

So we're going to set up a file category and Add New. And we're just going to call it External Rules and then External Rules Category and then click OK. And then we're going to go ahead and close out of that and start on lifecycles first. And then we'll go back to the category to set up any rules that we need.

So we do have an external rule process. And this was built off of a copy of the basic rules process. So you just click on that and hit Copy. And then you can start filling out everything that you need to fill out for the lifecycle definition.

So I need to go down here and edit the one that got created. The definition name is External Rule Release Process. And then we want to assign it to a specific category, so the External Rules Category. Click Close. And then you want to update the description to something that is specific to what this lifecycle is. I just updated it to Lifecycle Process for External Rules.

And then we're going to go through the transitions. I filled out the transitions for For Review, Released, and Obsolete. But we're going to go through Work-in-Progress to make sure that you understand how to add the security to the transition.

So we go in here and you click on the first one and hit Edit. And then-- so from Work-in-Progress to For Review, we want users to be able to do that. So you go to Security. You uncheck the No Restriction on this Transition, and then you hit Add. And then we're going to add the users to that and then hit OK.

And then the second one, we want the approvers to be able to do this because it's Work-in-Progress to Release. Release state, like we said, Release state is something that approvers need to be able to have that conversation with the developers. So go to Security. Uncheck that Restrictions and then Add Approvers.

And then, finally, the last one we're also going to add the approvers to that. So uncheck. And then Approvers, because it's Work-in-Progress to Obsolete. And that, like we said, Released and Obsolete-- anytime you're going to or from that situation or those states, unless you're going to Work-in-Progress, you want to make sure and have that conversation with your developers. So Add Approvers. Hit OK, OK, OK again, and Close.

And then what we'll do is go back in the category. And we need to click on the External Rules Category. And we want to assign. So if this wasn't there, you just add it. So I'll remove it and then add it.

And then you want to make sure that this is default. So you can double-click, or you can hit default. Either way, it does what you're expecting it to do. And then you want to make sure down here it's checked.

And you want to make sure-- before you start assigning, you want to make sure and click on External Rules. And then make sure when you're assigning, you're on the right category. I have done that probably too many times where you're not on the right category and you add a lifecycle definition to it. And it's not the right one. So I also go back in here and just make sure that-- because I've had situations where maybe it didn't save, or maybe I didn't click it right, so I always end up going back in just to make sure that it's the right one, and it is checked.

And then now we're going to add a rule to the category. So a rule for the category is any time this rule happens, this category is going to be triggered. And then that category is going to trigger the lifecycle definition.

So for this instance, we need a new rule. And we're just going to call it External Rules. And then we need to assign it a category, which is External Rules. Click OK.

Make sure that this is selected, and then go to Folders, Path, and we want to do Starts with. And we want to do the Working directory, which is dollar sign forward slash, in this case, it's AU/external rules. Yeah, OK.

And then you want to hit Add. If you don't hit Add, it's not going to run that role. And then hit Apply and OK. I typically go back in here just to make sure that everything got saved because it is important for everything to be right, just to make sure everything's right. So hit OK. Everything's good to go.

OK, so now we have the users, the groups, lifecycle definition, the category set up, and a category rule set up. So how that category rule is going to work is when you drop new rules into the External Rules folder, it's going to automatically assign that category. And that category is-- like I said, that category is going to trigger the lifecycle definition. And it's going to automatically set that file to the first state that is available.

So let's go ahead and drop just a test external rule in here. So you see how it automatically changed this to work-in-progress? If we didn't have any of that set up at all, it would be blank. It wouldn't know what to do with it. So your state would just not be defined.

Because I'm in the administrator, I'll show you what the administrator looks like. I have access to all the states that are available for that lifecycle definition. Abby will also have access to all of those because she's set to an approver. But I didn't make any changes, so it's prompting me.

Let's log out and then log in and hit OK. I'm logged in as Abby. And let's look at this file just to give-- so you can look and see. So she has access to everything-- everything that's available for the-- because she is an approver. Let's log out and log in as Donna developer.

OK? So we can see that when you go to change the state, she only has access to Work-in-progress and For Review. That is intentional because she is the person that is in users, and she's not an approver. So she can push it as far as For Review, but she can't go to the Release state or the Obsolete state.

And then let's log out and log in as Ava engineer. And you see we didn't add Ava to either one of the groups. And you see she doesn't even have access to that folder.

So this is a good way to keep people out of that specific folder if you don't want them to have access to it. Sometimes if you give access to it, you have to restrict them in other ways. It's good to just not allow them to have access to the folder if they don't need to, especially for important files like external rules that are governed by every-- or they affect everybody. So that's how this is set up. This may not be how you do things at your work, so tweaks may need to be made.

Let me log out and log back in as administrator. And then we will go back to the PowerPoint and continue. OK, so we're done with the Vault demo.

I kind of want to talk about just an example workflow if you have one developer, or if you have multiple developers. For one developer, a workflow for an editing type process might look like this. You have a file. If it's not in the Work-in-progress state, you would move it to the Work-in-progress state. Most of the time, these files are going to be in the Release state until you start editing them. So you would be moving them back to the Work-in-progress state.

Then you would get the file locally. If you're the only one working on this file, you could check out the file. You would make the changes to the file and then test those changes on whatever part or assembly that you are working in. And then you would check in the file. And then move that file state from Work-in-progress to For Review.

So it looks a little bit different when you go into a multi-developer environment dealing with external rules. And it looks different because you could potentially have more than one person working on one external rule. In my past experience, I've had as many as three people working on a change for a very large external rule. That's something that is common. So this change or this workflow worked for that scenario. And I just wanted to share it with you all.

So when you have more than one developer, each one of these developers are going to go through this workflow. So you want to step through this, thinking about maybe two people. Let's just say two people are going through this workflow. Each one of them are going to be doing this workflow.

They would change-- one of them would change the file from Release to Work-in-progress. Both of them don't need to do that, just one. Both of them would get the file and then make a local copy of that file.

When we go a little bit further into the Inventor Add-in, we will talk a little bit about that process. I've created buttons to help with that getting and overriding and making copies sort of process. So we'll talk about that when we go over to Inventor. Both of them would make local copies. They would make changes to their files. They would test those changes.

And the next process is if one of them were to check in the file, you would want to make sure and get the latest from that file because you don't want to overwrite something that-- potentially overwrite something by checking it out and overwriting the file and not knowing that there's differences. So you want to make sure and get a fresh set of that file. And then retest that file, if you need to, in the environment that you have.

One of the two people would check out the file, do a comparison with some sort of comparison tool. You can use Notepad++. You can use anything that does some sort of comparison to make sure that your changes aren't going to affect others.

And then if there are changes that the Vaulted file has, you want to implement those changes in your code, and then retest, if needed. And then you are going to overwrite the file that is on disk, that's checked out. And then you want to check in that file and change it to For Review.

Now, that second developer is still working. What they could do is they could implement that. They could check in their stuff too. But let's say it's going to be a little while. And the first person's ready and the second person, maybe it's going to be another week. You can go ahead and go through a full review process and approval process and change it back to Release and have that second person change it back to Work-in-progress to account for their changes.

If you're-- at the same time, you would collaborate with each other and check in-- one person check in and have the other person compare and check in. And then move it to an approval process. Move it to For Review, have the approval process, and then change it to the Release state.

So that's what a multi-developer or a single developer process might look like. The key to this is that you're using Vault. And you're able to have complete control over the external rules and revision control. That's why I have always moved my external rules into Vault because you have this safety net of revision control and version history and having the ability to look back in history and see who did what. You don't get that on the network when your external rules are on the network.

And you don't have the accidental chance of editing and not meaning to or deleting something and not meaning to. That all can happen, too. And sometimes it takes a little bit for-- if you have an IT department, and you have backups, sometimes it takes a little bit to get the backup. And even when you get the backup, it may not be what you need. It may have been two weeks from today. So I definitely recommend moving external rules to Vault.

OK, well, let's move back over to-- well, hold on. Let's finish the PowerPoint. So in the data set, you're going to have access to two coding type projects. You're going to have access to a simple add-in, which it will have everything that you need to create just a test ribbon with a button on it, just a very, very simple add-in.

The second one is going to be the final add-in for this class. So it's going to have everything that you need to get started managing external rules in Vault. So I just wanted to make sure that you knew that those two files do exist. So let's say you want to create an add-in, or you want to expand on maybe making a simple add-in and expand on it, that's available.

And the reason why I created that for this class is because this class is built off of 2025, so Inventor 2025, Vault 2025. And there was a big change that happened in Inventor and Vault 2025. We went from .NET 4.8 to .NET 8. And that coding change is pretty drastic. So we want to make sure that you also have access to that add-in.

I have also created and documented a step-by-step process to create an add-in-- that simple add-in from scratch. From start to finish, what you have to do to just get it started with .NET 8. Both of these are in C#, so you can explore that.

And then-- so just to give a little bit of graphics to the Inventor add-in, the data set will include those two coding solution files. But the first picture here, it shows the Inventor add-in, just the simple one. This is all you get. You get a test ribbon and a test button, and that's it. The final class add-in, you're going to get all of these buttons. And we're going to go through that here in a second.

All right, let's go back to Inventor. So this add-in is triggered on a Vault connection. So if you don't see this when you start up Inventor, you may not be connected to Vault. So what I would do is I would connect to Vault and then the add-in should load.

So the first thing that you can see is that there's a little dropdown, and you have access to the one external rule that's in Vault. Let me go back to Vault and just do a state change just to show y'all a little bit of history. So I'm going to change it back to Work-in-progress, too.

OK. So when you start up Inventor, what it's going to do is it's going to automatically get all the external rules in the file that you have defined and get them at the latest release date. So that would be for all of your non-developer users. So all the people that are doing engineering work or quality work or whatever that that looks like for your company.

So let's go ahead and choose the external rule. It says that it's current lifecycle state is Work-in-progress, which is right. You can-- there are several buttons. So we're going to go-- I'm going to skip Refresh for right now, and we'll come back to it. So you can get the latest from the-- which would get the latest of all the rules that are in that folder. We only have one, so it's kind of easy to get. And I can show you what that looks like.

So when you get latest, it says the local version on 3 is 3, which is the latest version. When you get the latest release date, or get the latest release version of all the rules, what it's going to do, it says it's going to overwrite the file, but when you go over to Vault, you're going to see this like half white, half gray circle. And that just means that there's non, well, it says newer non-released changes available. OK.

So it's at the release date. I can show you that. So the local version number 2 is the latest released version. So the non-developer users are only going to see the latest release version. And they're only going to have access to that file on their local machine.

That's the key there, because you don't want them to see work in progress stuff. So if you're in the middle of a developer change, or a quality change, or stuff like that, you don't want them to have access to the in progress stuff. You want them to have access to the latest released, approved, tested change. All right.

So you have several files. If you're familiar with Inventor, you are familiar with these types of words. Check out, Get, Check in, Undo checkout. So we're just going to go through them. If you do a Get it's going to get the latest for the file that is chosen, over here on the left. And I can show you what that looks like.

So if I do a refresh, it's now a white circle. So it means that the Vault and the local disk are the same file. And then if I do a Check out, you'll be able to see that in Vault. So this is checked out by me, the administrator. And then you can do an Undo checkout which will undo the checkout.

So it goes back to revision 3, or version 3. Let's say we want to do a, we want to actually make a change. So we would, it's at the latest. So we would check out the file. And then I can kind of show you. Well, let me make a copy first.

So you have this make copy. Make local copy, which will make a copy of the file and then put it in the same folder, but with your system name, underscore your system name on the end. So I'm going to go ahead and click on that. And then I'll show you what that looks like. So that is your, that's the vaulted version.

And then this is the copy that you would be making your changes at. So it has underscore Tiffany Hayden, which is my system name. So that may look differently. It may not be first name, last name for you. It may be first initial, last name for you.

So let's say we just want to make a change. If we were to delete, overwrite this file and check it in, it wouldn't make a new version because the files are exactly the same with the same modified date and the same everything. So let's go ahead and just make a change to this file and just say in progress.

So we have that file. It's been changed. The date is 9/20 now. Now, we want to do an overwrite rule which will replace this file. Actually, we need to do a checkout first, if we didn't already. Did we? Did we do that already? Let's check.

Yes, we have checked out. Just wanted to double check. So let's go ahead and overwrite the, I'll put this over here, overwrite the rule with the copy. So we'll click that button. And what it did was, it replaced this rule with a copy. You can kind of see the words that are in there.

This was a blank external rule before I started. So we added those words. And now the latest is that. And now we want to do a Check in. And let's go back to Vault and get a refresh. And you see how we now have a fourth version associated with that, with 9/20 release, or Check in date.

One thing. We said we were going to come back to the Refresh button, but I have to change the state first so you can actually see it. The Refresh button is going to Refresh the UI in Inventor. So let's say you did change the release date, or the state from work in progress to release. And the UI Inventor may not automatically update like that because you're changing it in a separate application.

And so what I'll do is I'll change it to a release date. And then you can minimize this. And do a Refresh. And it will do a Refresh. Most of these buttons will automatically update for that. That's just one that I haven't had, I found a really good way to trigger that to update when you make a change in Vault.

That may be something that I add in the future to this little add in. But right now, I did add a Refresh button, so you can click that and it would just do a refresh for you. So that kind of, that kind of gets us started on the, on the Inventor add in.

So let's go back to the PowerPoint. So we finished the Inventor demo. I just wanted to talk a little bit about additional resources for just anything Inventor, anything Vault. I'm a big fan of Autodesk community. I am on the forums very often.

I may not be the one answering the questions, but I post questions and I try to collaborate with the other members on community as much as possible because I know how important community is for, and having that information on the forums, even if I am the one asking the questions and collaborating with other members. Maybe in the future somebody else gets something out of that.

And they can find that forum post and help them with their development. So the more we are on the forums, the more we're communicating and finding answers to solutions, the better all of us are going to be. So we have, I have two that I typically go to pretty often, and it's the Inventor programming forum that just kind of takes all the programming, iLogic macros, add ins, anything.

And I'll put it all in one. And then you have the Vault customization file, or forum. That houses everything to do with Vault and any add ins, communication to Vault. There's a lot of examples of real life scenarios on both of those forums. And so the way that I typically use the forums is I have some sort of keyword that I found in the API or the SDK that I copy and paste over there and just see what's out there.

See if it's something that there's other people working in it. And maybe I can find an example of something that somebody else has done that I can use and tweak to get what I need. The other bullet point is the class GitHub Repo. I showed an image of that earlier, but that will house all of the important documentation for this class. I'll try to put as much in there.

I do have a few recordings that go through the entire process. I know setting up, the Vault admin already had a few things set up already. But if you're interested in watching a full recording for those step by step instructions, pretty much, I do have those full recordings. So I'll make sure that they're on the GitHub, as well.

And don't forget about Ideas. If you have anything that you want to implement in the software in Vault or Inventor or other softwares, there's other idea boards. Don't be afraid to just put it out there and ask questions, and put those ideas and give a good description of what you're talking about, maybe some images. And the people on the forums are just great.

They're great about looking at your ideas and asking questions if they don't understand. And then maybe go it one step further. I typically, if I have an idea that I posted, I go to my work and I say, hey, if y'all are interested in this being implemented, go for it. It's always good to get people from your work to vote for ideas to potentially help in the future.

And then if you want to connect with me after this class, after AU, I am available in many different places. I have my LinkedIn there, but I'm also an author on the Autodesk community blog focusing on Inventor automation. I want to do some stuff with Vault automation in the future but haven't done that yet.

And a really good YouTube channel is KETIV Virtual Academy. You may know it as KVA. That is a lot of tutorials and a lot of great knowledge from some really great people, knowledgeable people, and they do a video, I think, once a week. So there's a lot of great content.

I also have my own YouTube channel, The Coding CADventure. If you are interested in just connecting with me there, you can always connect with me there. And then I also have my GitHub, as well. So that is just the master GitHub for all the stuff that I have ever done, pretty much, is in there.

Well, thank you for joining me. I've really enjoyed being here and just showing you a little bit about different types of automation and how to set up Vault in a way that will help you in the future. Y'all have a great day.