Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage App Store: How to Maximize OOTB App Store Solutions

TONY ZOHREHVANDI: This session is about Fusion 360 Manage App Store and How to leverage these apps to speed up your implementation time, and enhance your return on investment. This is our Safe Harbor Statement, which is a statement that cannot sustain itself as merely a historical fact. I'm an Autodesk employee, and I have to flash this Safe Harbor Statement at the beginning of my presentation.

My name is Tony Zohrehvandi, and I will be presenting this presentation. Here is a quick bio on me. I have been in PLM/PDM industry for over 25 years. You can read the bio your own in the handout, but to just make a few comments.

I have worked with many PLM companies. I have worked with many PLMs. I've been a mechanical engineer. And my education, I have a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Texas.

I have an agenda for this session. Let me just briefly cover the agenda, and then we'll go through each section. First, we are going to talk about a short and quick intro of what Fusion 360 Manage is.

Then, I will give you an overview of Fusion 360 Manage App Store. Next, we walk through how do you install an app, and what other configuration is needed for the app installation. Now, once we start it, we are going to verify that the app installed and all the configurations are in the right place.

And a live demo and, of course, when I say live, it's been prerecorded, but my talking would be live on the demo of the Fusion 360 Manage App installation and configuration. I know this session is all about App Store, but I would like to provide an overview of Fusion 360 Manage for those who are not familiar with it.

Fusion 360 Manage is a product lifecycle management platform that connects people, processes, and data across departments and geographies. It gives you the flexibility to start today and expand tomorrow with a solution that adapts to your needs. Let's talk about some of the advantages of Fusion 360 Manage.

It is designed to minimize user training. I always use this example. Just like you don't need training to order stuff on Amazon, we have designed a modern UI that ramps up the user onboarding with a minimal amount of training. The workflows are highly configurable to match your processes, rather than you changing your processes to match the solution.

There are a lot of PLM out there in the market, but they're very rigid. You literally have to change your processes to use those rigid configuration. In ours, it's the opposite. It's the other way around.

It is a single source of truth for the entire enterprise to connect processes across disciplines and geographies. From the top floor to the shop floor, seamless flow of data. Fusion 360 Manage open API allows you to expand the connectivity to other business systems, such as ERP, CRM, or MES.

It minimizes your IT overhead-- no infrastructure, no server procurement, no system administration, and minimal business administration. What I mean by that, you still need somebody to add users, maybe to configure the workflows, and to do other configurations in the system. It has a very granular permission setting to securely control data and processes based on role or privileges.

You can extend access to third parties, such as supply chain, customers, and contractors, to collaborate efficiently. Remember, it is cloud and is web-based. As I mentioned before, the user interface is easy to use, and it increases user adoption allows you to get started with minimal training.

You can use a solution anywhere. You can be flying at 30,000 feet with the airline Wi-Fi, which we all know it is not the fastest, an a proven ECO, or an MPI. What a quality issue.

You don't need to hire an expensive developer and have them create reports. With Fusion 360 Manage intuitive reporting tools, you can create and share reports in real time. There are multiple levels of access, such as view only, participants, third party, and full access, that can make this a true enterprise system.

Not everybody in the company should have the same access, and that's why we have these different levels of access. Centralized and single source of truth for information with automated workflow for notification and task assignment. If a task is assigned to you, automatic notification, email notification, would come to you.

Ability to see the status of projects in real time with easy to access views of data and workflows. Fusion 360 Manage is a PLM system that has all the core capabilities of PLM for enterprise usage. What I mean by core capabilities, those are new product development that's a process used for the product development process, one of the core capability of the PLM.

Items and power management to centrally manage and share structured bonds ensuring accurate information is used throughout your organization. Change management, complete change management system with a fully connected problem report, change request, and change orders. In some companies, they only have change orders.

But I have seen customers that they have the full process to have a problem report. That means somebody identifies a problem. That problem report, it gets review, and they either cancel it, or they decide to investigate further with a change request.

Change request analyze the impact of this change. And, once again, it's identified whether a change order is needed or not. If a change order is needed, a change order is created automatically. And that change order is where the changes happen.

Supplier collaboration, you literally stay connected 24/7 to your supply chain at any time, anywhere access to information, and collaboration workflows. Quality management, we have something that's called a closed loop quality management system that not only allows you to automate quality workflows, track and record changes, and analyze quality metrics to prevent issues, but also connect the quality issues to the product itself. That's very important.

This is great for report and analytics to improve the quality of your product. It's one thing to capture quality-- capture the quality issue, but connecting it to a product allows you to improve your quality continuously. And the last but not least, the App Store.

We have around 28 PLM processes you can use at no extra cost. And when we develop new ones, they will automatically be deployed to the cloud and available to you. Fusion 360 Manage App Store is a collection of free, ready to implement workspaces that contain business processes and templates.

You can benefit from industry best practices with pre-configured fields, taps, workflows, roles, and permissions. Fusion 360 Manage apps reduce implementation time and enhance ROI during your Fusion 360 Manage deployment. Apps can be tried with user acceptance testing before going live as they contain script reports [INAUDIBLE] and everything needed for a UAT, or user acceptance testing.

Your Fusion 360 Manage tenant administrator adds the roles and groups. And anyone within the group can start using the app. Now, why would you want to use these pre-configured apps?

The old saying is, don't reinvent the wheel and accelerate your development with these apps. We've already done it for you. Use them, make changes to them as needed. And use them again. Use report and analytics to make continuous improvement. They are designed for this.

Here are some of the characteristics of apps in the App Store. These apps are integrated into Fusion 360 Manage. They're ready, they're there ready for you to use. The workspaces are preconfigured to be deployed.

Some of the workspaces have processed templates that can be reused. They are configured with the industry best practices approach. I'll give you an example, our change management process, the workspace and the workflow.

Literally, 80% of the customers that we go to, they can use it as is. They can use a workflow and all the attributes and all the configuration. That's why we mean-- that's what we mean they are configured with the industry best practices approach.

They come equipped with pre-configured field, tabs, workflows, roles, and permission. You can use them as is, modify them and use them, or wipe them out and create new ones. That's another cool feature about this that you can create new apps on your own new workspaces.

Once again, don't reinvent the wheel. Use them to speed up your implementation. Faster deployment means a faster return on investment. You're buying this product, you want to start using it right away.

Extending the solution beyond the core capabilities of PLM. I mentioned a few core capabilities, but now, imagine extending the solution beyond those core capabilities. Use them as they are, or modify them and use them.

If you decide you don't need them, or just want to test drive them, you can remove them. You can use it for training, or development before pushing it to production. And best of all, it is free. It is included with your license of Fusion 360 Manage. You don't have to pay extra for those. Once you get a license, you get access to all these apps.

OK. The next section is our demo. Again, I pre-recorded the segments of the demo, and I will walk through them. And I pause, if needed, but I think this is the best way for me to demo the features that I'm speaking of.

As I mentioned, I'm not going to run a live session. This demo is prerecorded. The first thing you do is to log into your Fusion 360 Manage tenant. So that's a simple activity.

You go to the Fusion 360 Manage URL-- as you see, it's highlighted there-- and sign in with your credential. This is your landing page, or your dashboard once you log in. If you have seen this before, then you are familiar with the landing page.

And if you have not seen this, this is our Fusion 360 Manage landing page looks like. The layout of this page is the same for every user, but the content within the page varies based on your role in the organization and access control.

Next, I will demo how to browse the app. Apps are only available for your Fusion 360 Manage Administrator. 28 plus apps are already in the App Store. You see the list of them right here. And new ones are added periodically.

Every once in a while, we have customers that have a request. We evaluate them, we actually realize this is going to be a great app, and we add those apps to the App Store. Now, adding these apps has no impact to your tenant performance. And with proper safeguards, you can deploy them as development, go live with them, test them, and then once you're happy, roll them out to your production.

So this next demo is how you go to the app page to browse for the app. So let's start it. I'm going to walk you through it.

You go to the menu structure, go to the App Store-- Administration App Store, and here are all the apps available. Remember I said earlier, this is only available to the administrator of the site. So people cannot just go to menu administration and the App Store. This is something that your administrator has the permission to go to and deploy these apps.

Now, once you go to the app page, you can browse the apps and select the one you want to install. There is a brief description of the app, but if you need more information, just click on the app and you will be able to see more information.

Click on the app and read more about the app, and look at some of its features before installing it. Here, you will see detailed information on the app and its capabilities, the pre-configured forms and attributes, workflows, tasks, and reports and dashboards.

When you click Install, you will be able to see all the workspaces, pick lists, reports, roles, and scripts that come with the app. Some of these apps have one workspace, and some of them have multiple workspaces that work together. They're kind of connected.

Reports are available within the Report tool once app is installed. Roles and scripts are added, as well. The scripts add automation to the workflow, and other configurations such as auto numbering, or other description. And I want to show you how the script actually embedded into the workflow.

So let's start this section. This is how I will select the implementation tracker as the app that I want to deploy. So let's start this.

So I go to the implementation tracker, I click on it, and here I can read more about what this app is about. There's a detailed information of the app. I can click and see some of the forms, attribute. The workflow that comes with this app is the workflow.

If there are any task template associated, these are all the tasks that are in the template version of this workflow, and charts, and reporting. So this app already comes with some pre-built chart and reports. Now, once you click on Install, here you can read more information. You can see the workspaces, the pick list, the reports, the roles, and the scripts. And later on, we verify that all of these are installed.

Click on Install. So that's how easy it is to deploy this app, implementation tracker app. After the installation is done, we can verify that the app is installed, verify the workspaces, the script, and the roles, and the access controls, and the reports, of course.

So in this demo, I'm going to verify the workspaces are installed in the workspace manager. Let's start. So I go to the menu structure and look at the workspace manager. And I'm going to scroll down, and here are the workspaces that were installed.

Let's look at a couple of the items that were installed with this workspace. Create the workspace setting. We have a workspace name.

And let's look at the Detail tab. This is where all the attributes are. So you'll be able to see all the attributes that are deployed. And again, you can modify these as needed.

And here's a descriptive of the workspace, how the workspace description is generated based on number and the title. There is the top names. You can actually go and modify the tablet. These are the tab that would show up in the workspace so you can modify them, if you like, call it something else.

And let's check the Workflow Editor. So here's the workflow, and there are some configurations here. This is part of the admin training. But one thing that's interesting, I talked about the script, so let me open this task and show you that there is a script.

You see the action script. This is the implementation request workflow action script. So this is how the script work. They do certain things in the workflow.

Now, let's go make sure these workspaces are available through the menu. Here, I'm checking for the pick list. All the pick lists within the forms are added. And you can see all the pick lists of the implementation tracker. They show up in the pick list. Here's an example of one of the pick lists.

Next, let's look and make sure that the roles are added. So we go to the Admin security and look at the roles that were created when this app was installed. So, again, I go to the implementation section. You notice all these roles are added. You can add new ones, if needed.

But these roles kind of define what permissions are going to be available within the workspace. For example, these are all the permissions that I'm allowing for this workspace to show up here. And then you can add groups that have access to these roles. So here's engineering and manufacturing group can actually be part of this role.

Next, let's go back to the Home page and look at the scripting. Again, these scripts are deployed, and here's the implementation Tracker section. I see there are four scripts here that were added.

And this is a script. It's Java scripting and simple language. If you understand that, you see what's happening. But, again, these scripts kind of work if you know Java, you'll be able to figure out what they're actually doing in the workflow.

Now, let's make sure that all of my workspaces are showing up in the menu. OK. Here they are, all six workspaces that were installed as part of the implementation Tracker. Now, of course, we can restructure this menu as we like to.

So if you go to the menu designer, you see that the implementation tracker's added there. I can rename it, call it whatever I want, change the icon. These are all the available icons that I can use.

And moving it or restructuring it, just drag and drop it. So I just move it from the second place to the third place. And once I go to the homepage, I noticed that it's now showing up as a third from the bottom.

Again, these are all something that the system administrator would do. Let's look at the reports. These reports are added automatically. This is the reporting engine, our Fusion 360 Manage. You notice there are 40 ports that were added. And these reports can run as HTML, Excel, or chart.

Perfect. So here's the list of best practices that were used in Fusion 360 Manage App Store. It is perfect for training or development. If we don't have a separate Sandbox, we can actually use this. Let me explain that.

Some companies that get Sandbox, it costs you a little bit more to get the Sandbox. But you can do your development and training within the Sandbox. And then once you are happy with the development, you can deploy it to your production.

But I've seen other companies that they choose not to get the Sandbox, and they actually deploy these workspaces to a certain group or roles, and they can use it for development or training. And once they are happy with it, once they like the development, they can actually roll it out to the production.

You notice when I installed this app, all these naming conventions, script, roles, attributes, all were populated. So these are really based on standard naming conventions. So we use this standard naming convention throughout Fusion 360 Manage.

And deploying these workspaces really following the methodology of think big, start small, and scale fast. They're perfect to conduct your user acceptance testing before going live. And plan ahead-- only install what you need. Don't try to install every one of the apps. Again, there is no burden on your tenant, but just plan them accordingly.

In summary, the App Store is designed to extend and improve your Fusion 360 Manage implementation. It will speed up your development and deployment of new business processes. We are leveraging industry best practices for these apps.

It is free with no additional cost to you, and any new apps that are developed will be available to you. And as you saw, it is simple to install and configure. I hope you enjoyed this presentation, and now, I will open it up for questions and answers.