Property Management with Vault Professional

MIKE THOMAS: So welcome. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time it is for you. Thanks for joining this session on properties within Vault. The title is Vault Professional. But we're going to kind of touch on properties across all flavors of Vault.

My name is Mike Thomas. And I'm a technical services manager for Praire Machine. We're a mining equipment manufacturer and been a longtime Vault user. I'm also an Autodesk Expert Elite.

So like I said, what we're going to focus on today is we're going to look at Vault properties, is what we're going to look at. So what are properties? Well it's essentially metadata? What's metadata? It's essentially the data about the data. So it's what describes your objects.

So if you think about a file, a file automatically has a file size. And it has a date modified and created. And those just happen. And it allows you to group, and organize, and sort by that information.

So Vault properties are essentially the same. It's just information about these objects like files, and items, and change orders, and folders, and custom objects that allows you to group, and categorize, and search, and describe. With Vault, there's two types. And its system properties, which are very similar to what you would see in let's say Windows Explorer, if you're using a Windows operating system. And these are the out-of-the-box ones. They're defined by Vault.

Again, we use the example, we can use the example of file size, date modified. Those things that just come with it. Title is another one that just comes with it. And the user defined ones are the ones that you can create. You can add ones let's say for manufacturer. It's something that you want to track on purchased parts. So you can add a manufacturer. So you can fill in that information.

Now, just to pause here for a second. There is a bit of differentiation between the different versions of Vault. So if you're using Vault Basic, you essentially have access to files. And that's what you get. You get access to files.

But if you're using Vault Workgroup or Vault Professional, well then you start having access to items, and change orders, and custom objects, and such. So I'm going to be touching on some things about items and change orders. And just to be clear that you might hop onto your system and go well, where is this? And it could be that you're using Vault Basic.

So just to clarify that base level properties are properties. But it kind of expands out as you go through the different versions of vault. So let's just start on the user. So I'm going into a configured Vault. Everything's rosy. I'm going in.

What are my tasks in managing properties? Well for me, it starts with, as a user, is adding the files. So I add the files. I create the change orders. I build the items. And I then edit those property values.

So maybe what I do is I set a description. Or I put in the manufacturer. I also have some things in that I can add and remove properties. And add or remove properties typically only happens, perhaps you're changing categories. Or maybe there's been a recent change to Vault.

If you set up some properties and assigned them to categories, those will kind of flow through. So adding and removing properties is not something that's going to be a daily repetitive task. And then there's synchronizing properties as well. Maybe I've changed an item, and I want to make sure that the associated files update with those changes. So as a user, my main responsibility is adding the objects and then setting the properties accordingly.

Now some of this property information will come from the files. Now vault will essentially work with any type of file. It'll work with DWGs, and RVTS, and will work with TIFFs and JPEGs. But the type of information that can be extracted from those files is limited to the files.

So what we can get from, let's say a TIFF or a JPEG, is essentially things like the date modified, the check in date, which is always there, but very limited information. But if I'm using something like AutoCAD, well then I can get its document properties. I can get information from sheet sets. I can even extract out block attribute information.

With Inventor, it's the IProperties. That's just inherent in every Inventor document. So things like title, and description, and keywords, that information all flows through into Vault, essentially out of the box. We've got Revit. A note about Revit is that that's only available with Vault Professional, to be able to extract out that Revit information.

And then with Microsoft Office products, So Excel and Word, is not only do you get those document properties, but any properties within that document. So maybe I've set up a property called publisher. And I can extract that information out from those Office documents.

Now, another note about this is that if you're hoping to manage your email for Outlook, you do require more than Vault Basic. And then you can see in the upper right corner, I just put a couple of other support applications. This includes the Alias suite of products, 3ds Max, Navisworks, and SolidWorks.

There's actually an add-in for SolidWorks that will pull out that information similar to Inventor. Now for the AutoCAD products, if I'm using AutoCAD Mechanical, it understands build materials and component information. If I'm using AutoCAD Electrical, it can pull information from the components or the project. So there's a wealth of information that just comes automatically as you start using these files.

So here's a simple example, is I'm going to use IProperties on this Inventor component. And I'm going to set some of the information. So I'm going to set a description. I'm going to make sure the part number is correct. And I'm going to add in some custom IProperties, because one of the things that you can do with Inventor and IProperties is you can add in your own properties.

So after I filled in those kind of project related information, I'm going to add in a custom property called paint, so I can identify what color it is, how we're going to paint it. So maybe it's going to be brushed, or sprayed, or spray bombed, or powder coated is what I'm going to add here. And what we're going to do is, with this information assigned now, is I'm going to check this into Vault.

So we're checking this into Vault. We'll flip over to Vault. And what we'll see is that some of that information automatically came through. So what I can see there is, the company information came. We can see that description that I set. Notice the part number.

But notice that none of the custom IProperty information is there. It's because those don't come out-of-the-box. That's something that I would have to configure and essentially point to to let Vault know to go and grab that information. So when you pull in file, some of it will just happen naturally out-of-the-box, whereas some of it you'll have to do some configuration.

Now, in this case, what I wanted to show is, here's an AutoCAD Mechanical drawing, which has a build material. So it's got component information in it. So it knows that there's bearings, and bolts, and stuff. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to assign an item to it. And when I sign an item to it, what it will do is it will understand that this thing had a build materials.

And notice that it pulled the property information from all those components. So it knows this is a drive shaft. It knows its title. It knows its description. Again, because all that property information is mapped.

Now AutoCAD Mechanical is a bit special compared to AutoCAD in that you can have that component information with descriptions, and part numbers, and all that fun stuff. And that information will flow into Vault. A lot of that, again, out-of-the-box it'll just flow through. But you have control over what's coming in, what's going out, and any maybe custom fields that you want to add.

So that's just to show a little bit about how you're not starting completely from scratch. There's a lot of information available to you just out-of-the-box that you can start working with. Now when I go to edit properties, what I can do is there's really two methods within Vault. There's the property edit, where you get a dialog. And another method is through the property grid.

And this is just allows you to see all the properties. You can actually copy and paste from it. But what I can do is I can also edit the properties. Now, one thing to note is you have to be an editor or admin. So if you're only a viewer, whether it's a file or an item, you won't be able to modify properties.

And another note is that not all properties are editable. For example, date modified. I keep going back to that one. But it's a good example. I mean, the object was modified on a particular lead. I can't change that. So that will be read only.

One thing that Vault does do though, is if you change properties, it's going to increment the object or the file. So that you've made some changes. It shows a version, so that you know what it was before and what it is now. So let's take that same file that we just checked in. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the property palette to make some changes.

So I'm being specific here about which properties I want to modify. I'm going to use the specific edit selected. I'm going to make some changes. So I'm going to change the description. I'm going to set a keyword.

Notice that I can't change the material. And the material is because it's an Inventor property, where you pick from a list. So we'll set the part number. We'll set the stock number on this. And we're going to save our changes.

Now what we'll see is that it does that, it highlights, everything was successful. And if I go back now into Inventor, what I'll see is that that information has come across into that file, because even though I'm making changes to it in Vault, I'm essentially changing the properties and at the same time write them into that file. So it's quite easy to go in there and really modify any of the properties that are maintained by Vault and know that that information is going to go right back into the file.

I did this with an Inventor file. It would be the same if I'm doing AutoCAD or a Word document. Now, there is a specific function. It's called update properties. What could happen is you've edited the properties within Vault, but you have a local copy of the file that hasn't been updated. And Vault is really aware of this.

So the next time you open that file, that local copy, Vault will come up and say, hey, this is out of date. Do you want to update it now? Or you can use the specific update properties. So it'll grab that information from Vault. And it'll update that local copy.

Now if you've made some changes to the properties within Vault, and you do an open or a checkout and you didn't have a local copy, well then that information is just going to be there. So this is only if you had a local copy that hadn't been touched by vault yet.

So that's from the user's perspective. I mean, for the user, once the Vault is set up, it's very inherent and very natural for them. I mean they essentially add the objects, whether it's to check in a file or create an item. And then they just go through and make sure that the information is correct.

Really, the hard work is on the administrator to set up all the required properties, to make sure that they've got the right criteria. We're pushing and pulling information as we want. If I'm using Vault Workgroup or Vault Professional, you how do I want to integrate categories? How do I want to integrate properties into change orders? And then we can use Inventor data cards as well.

Now, within Vault, this all happens within the Vault settings, on the behaviors tab within the properties. And let's just dive into that a little bit right now. Now we mentioned before that Vault has two types. And you can kind of tell by the icons.

The one with the little gear on it, that's a system property. And you have very limited control over system properties. So you can see that I can't do overrides. It's just not supported.

But if I take a look at a user-defined property, so UDP, I can see that I can change all the settings. And I can even be specific to the category that it falls in. So maybe under the AutoCAD category I want it to be uppercase, but on a base I want it to be lowercase. So I can be specific about the category.

So the system properties are there. You can't delete them. You have limited control over them. But they're inherent. And they're out-of-the-box. And they just happen.

Whereas the UDP, user-defined, you can create them, edit them, delete them if they're not used. And you've got kind of a full control over it. So what I'm going to do here is we're going to go into the properties and we're going to add a new property.

So I'm going to create one called NPI for new product introduction. And I'm going to assign it to a category. Now let's just pause this here for a second. One thing to note about the associations is that if you're using Vault Basic, it's just a file. So there's really nothing to do. You don't have to worry about associations.

But if you're using Vault Workgroup or Vault Professional, then that's when you need to start worrying about the associations. Is this property available for change orders? Is this property available for files, and items, and such like that? So you're picking where you want that property to be available. Now, if you miss one, you can always go back and add it later. So if I miss items, I can always go back and add it.

So here what I'm doing is I'm adding the list of values. You have the option to set the default or the initial value. You can also say, well I'm going to enforce it. So by enforcing it, what I'm saying here is that you have to pick from the list. So perhaps you want the list there as options, but the person can still [? hand ?] bomb in, add in the information you want. But you can enforce it.

Now in this case, by making the value-- If I was to make the value required, it's kind of defeating the purpose, because I said you have to pick from a list. And the list has a default. So I don't need to worry about that one.

Same thing with case sensitivity in this case. I mean it's already uppercase. But you can see how we can set the sensitivity on it. We can also set a minute max.

Now what I want to do is I want to associate this. So more than just having the properties. Sorry, not associate, I want to map this, is I'm going to map this to a particular object or provider. So what I'm doing is I'm going to map this to an Inventor file. And I'm going to go into Vault, because one of them already has this property, this custom IProperty already defined.

I'm now going to go in. I'm going to select that IProperty. And I'm going to make sure that we create it, because what's important here is that, if I don't create it, what will happen is I could end up with Inventor files that don't have that property. So I need to have one Inventor part, or assembly, or drawing that has the desired property.

Now I'm using a custom IProperty. But maybe it's keywords or title that I want to map to. Since the mapping is both directions, what that means is that if I change the file, it'll update within Vault. And if I update within Vault, it'll update within the file.

Sometimes with items, you may only want it to go one way or change orders. But typically with files, you want it to go both directions. So now I've got this NPI property that will be created if it doesn't exist. And now what I can do is I can change that in Vault and know that that information will be in Inventor. Or I can set it in Inventor, and I can know that it's going to flow into Vault.

Now what I'm doing here is I'm creating a new property called paint type. And I'm associating it with files of certain categories. So again, if you're using Vault Workgroup or Vault Professional, you can get into categories. So what I'm saying is I don't need the paint type if it's under the category of office. So maybe I used the office category for manuals, and data sheets, and stuff like that. And I don't need the paint type because the paint type doesn't apply.

So what we're going to do is we're just going to pick those certain associations and insert item types. Again, I'm going to map it. I'm going to map it. I'm going to pick from files, the one that's already loaded. I already have a property called paint. And I'm going to associate it with it on the file. And I'm going to do the same thing on the item.

So the idea is that that one file, when it's checked in, can populate the Vault property called paint, but also populate that same paint property on the item. So you can see here, that information is not there. So what I'm doing is I'm adding that property.

So it's just because that file already existed. And I added it after it was already checked in. So I just added it to that file. I could have checked it out and checked it back in as well. But now I'm setting that information. So I picked the NPI want. I'm picking the paint type. The information's been set.

And if I was to hop back into Inventor and open it, I would see that that information has transferred into that color part, even though originally that Inventor part didn't have those two properties. So you can see how powerful this is, because you create that property. And then essentially say, OK, I want it now available on all my Inventor parts, because it's important that we know how we paint our files.

Or if this is going to be an R&D project, I can categorize it in R&D and then get this NPI information so I know what stage it's in. So you can be global across all your files or all your items. Or you can be specific into what category they fall into.

So when you're creating properties, we've gone through this, just ask yourself, what data type is required? Should it be included in the searches? So let's say something like the mass. How often you're actually going to search by mass? Well there's one I'm not going to include, because it could just potentially slow down my searches.

Is there a list of values? Is there a default value? Is it mandatory that you need it? Is it sensitive? You just ask those questions, and you fill in those properties.

Association is the attribute to where that property is going to be available. So is it available on an item? Is it only available on a change order? You define that.

And then the mapping is important if you want that information to go to and from. Or maybe you want it to go from file to item. Or you want it to go just from the item back to the file. That's where the mapping comes into it.

Now, if you want to include AutoCAD block information, there's kind of a special step that you need to do from the ADMS. And that is you need to add in the block names. So you need to go in there, and you need to add it by name. So by name, you go through. And you pull in that block.

And in this case, what I'm doing is I'm going to re-index the properties, because I've already got a couple hundred or thousands of AutoCAD files already in Vault. And what I want to make sure is that that information is, or the properties are, populated based on the title block that's already in there. Now if this was a brand new vault, and I just created this property, or it's a brand new block that I'm extracting from, I wouldn't need to do that index.

Now what we'll see now is that when I go to create a property, is that I'll now have the option to pull from that title block. So again, I just need to pick a file that already has that title block in it. So I'm just going to use the template. And what we'll see is that notice that the attributes description drawn by part number are now available.

And I'm going to map it to the description property. So if the drawing has that title block and the description properties is filled in, it's then going to set the description property in Vault.

Now in this case, what am I to do is I'm going to check in this file. It doesn't have that title block. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the document properties. I'm going to set a title, and a subject, and keywords, or comments. You can even do custom properties, just like we saw in Inventor.

But I'm going to use this to populate the property information within Vault. So we filled in the properties. We'll check that in. And what we'll see is that when I take a look at my user-defined properties is that that information came across.

Now here's a case where I have that title block. That TL title block, you can see that it's got a part number description. And again, I'm going to set some document properties, because it's not all or none. So the title is one that I don't manage within that TL title block. But I still want to manage it within Vault. I still want that to be available.

So here's the case where I'm going to use to document properties and the title block to set the required information. So with AutoCAD, you can have that combination of document properties and then extract from title blocks, blocks, I guess I shouldn't call them title blocks. But typically, it's title blocks where you have a lot of that metadata already.

Last little bit here about property maintenance is that there is the option for compliance. So you can actually have properties that are mandatory, or other maybe mins or maxes. And when it gets the file gets checked in, now that property is not compliant.

And Vault will flag it say, hey, this isn't compliant. And you can set up rules against it. So maybe a document couldn't be released if the description is empty. So things like that that you can do with compliance.

Now moving in to Vault Workgroup and Vault Professional is we can start working with categories. And categories are labels or way of grouping and organizing your objects. In addition to that is it allows you to have properties per particular category. And we talked about this with NPI.

Maybe I have a R&D category that I want that property to be available. But I don't need that for anything else. So why have that kind of clutter or noise when it's only required in certain areas? So it's the categories where we have that ability to do that.

So I'm going to create a new category for a folder. And when it's a project, what I want is I want the description property to be available. So it's not available by default right on a normal folder, because it's just not that important with a regular folder, because the name tells me everything I want. But maybe on projects or R&D related things, I want some kind of description, more information about what that project is. So I can create these categories.

I can also do the same thing for files and for items. Again, I'm just creating this R&D category and just allows me to group the files by that particular case. So then what we'll see is that as I start changing is I can change this to a particular category. And then certain files or properties then become available to me, because it's now in a different category.

So here I've changed it to R&D. And we can see that NPI was required. So it flagged it as not being in compliance. And now I was able to set that. And when I go and take a look at within Inventor by changing that, we can see it's been updated.

So this one's going a bit fast. But what it's showing you here is that that NPI property didn't become available until I changed it to the R&D category. Once it was in the R&D category, then it popped up. So I set it.

I open in Inventor and went, wait a minute this isn't what I wanted. So I changed it. Then I checked it back in, and it updated the Vault property. So we were able to go kind of round stream with that.

And then you can assign rules so that, maybe based on a certain description. So if the description contains the word drill, we want it into our drills category automatically. So as you check that file into Vault for the first time, it automatically goes to the proper category. So that's an option within Vault as well.

With change orders, what you can do is you can have properties that are specific to change orders. What we do is we have one for an NC number. So that if a non-conformance is created on the floor in our other system and during the disposition it turns out that it was engineered wrong or there was a missing dimension, then what we can do is we create a Vault change order. And we refer to the non-conformance number.

So we can see OK, this was created, this change order was created because of that non-conformance. And then instead of having to fill in all the details, we can just go to the other system and look up that non-conformance. We don't need that non-conformance information anywhere else. So here's a case where we have a property that is available just for change orders.

So to tie this all together, I've got one more demonstration on this. So to kind of wrap this all together, I'm going to go into the properties. And I'm going to do a few things here.

One is I want to make sure the mapping on the item number is correct. So I'm going to pull the part number from the Inventor part. So that when I create an item from it, it's going to use the same information. So the part number is going to generate the item number for me.

What I also want to do is I'm going to make sure that the rest of the mapping and the other properties are available. So I'm going to create a new property here. And we're going to call this paint type. And we've kind of seen this. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to associate it with the item.

So I want to make sure that when I do an item that that paint type is available on it as well. So we were showing how we could do this with files. But I want to make sure that it's on the file, but it's also available on the item, because the item is what I transfer into my system for procurement. So I want to make sure that the paint type is there. And I want to make sure that it's an uppercase.

So if someone types it all lowercase in Inventor, that Vault will convert it to uppercase. I also want to make sure that if the item is a part, that that's required, that has to be there, because in parts, we want to make sure that the paint type is always specified. I'm also going to create a new property called manufacturer number.

In this case, I'm not going to link it to an existing or a custom IProperty. I'm just going to map it to keywords. I'm just going to use the Inventor, out-of-the-box standard property for keywords. And we'll just select that. So I just got to select really any Inventor file here, because it's always going to be there. And then I'm just going to link it to the keywords.

So I've created my properties, items, and files, and the associations in the categories. So now let's go through the process of working with this file. One thing I did forget is that I didn't map that paint type. So let's go back to that paint type. And let's edit that paint type. And let's map it. So I forgot to do that step.

So what we're going to do is we're, again, we're going to go pick an Inventor file that has that custom IProperty in it. So pick paint type. We'll create it again if it's not there.

Now that re-index here-- let's just pause that for a second. What that re-index was telling me is-- if we just back this up here a little bit-- is that re-index was telling me that I've added this new property, this new mapping. And it's telling me that all my existing information in Vault is not going to have that. So either I need to check in and check out all that. Or I need to go to the EDMS console.

I need to run a re-index so that Vault will go through all those files and make sure it extracts out all that new information. I was backed up here too far, just so I could show that re-index message again. So, you can see here, is that it may require re-index, because keywords wasn't mapped to paint type before. Well maybe I do want that. So then it can go back, that re-index will go back, touch all those files, and pull that information in to the paint type.

So we'll take our file. And what we're going to do is we're going to change the category. So we're going to put this into the proper category, so design review or design representation. And we can see all the extra information it brought across, including the paint type.

Now I just put it into work in progress, because I want to make some changes to it. So I'm going to pick the property I want to change, which is that new paint type. And we're going to change this to brushed in this case. So we're actually seeing that this lever is brushed.

Now what we're going to do is go back into Inventor. What we'll see is that the keywords was set to joints. So we're to set it to the manufacturer number now. And we're going to change the paint type, because it's not really brushed. What we want here is we want this to be sprayed.

So we're going to change that property as well. So we've changed that information in Inventor. And now we're going to go back into Vault. And we'll see that the information has changed. So what it's showing me here is that, notice, the keywords now is keywords.

But notice that the manufacturer number is now also the keywords. And maybe it's because I want to use that manufacturer number on my item. So I don't want it to be called keywords on the item, because I want it to be called manufacturer number.

We can also see is that the paint type has changed to spray. So we can proceed from here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to assign an item to it. So now that I'm happy with the properties, what I'm going to do is I'm going to assign an item to it.

But before I do that, let's just change it to purchased. And by changing it to purchased, what we're going to see is that some other information becomes available. And now that manufacturer number is there.

So what we're going to do is we're going to assign it to an item. So by assigning it to an item, notice that that part number, remember how we mapped it, that part number has created the item number. So, in our situation, that's what we like, because we name our drawings, and the component, and the item all with the same number. So it's just really easy to say, yah, I'm working on this drawing. And it's associated to this item.

It could be anything. It could be description. It could be the title. It could be any property that you want to map, just to make it easier, so you don't have to redo when you can just reuse.

Notice that the paint type is empty. And we made it a mandatory field. And that's because we forgot to map it. Now we mapped it for the file, but we forgot to map it for the item. So because of property compliance, it's telling me that it's missing.

So we'll go back into our settings. We'll go back into the property information. And what we're going to do is we're going to go to our paint type and do a mapping, but this time to the item. So for the item, what I want is from the associated Inventor file, the primary attachment on it, is I want to pull in that paint type. So we'll pick that paint type, property.

It's going to go both ways in this case. We want to make sure that it goes from item to file and back. In some cases, you may not. Now when I assign that item, what we're going to see is that notice that it's pulling that information from the Inventor file.

Well let's go change it on the item. Let's test this mapping out. So we're going to change it back to brushed. We'll change the, or we could change the NPI, but we'll change the title just to see that the item information is going to go to the file. And what we'll do is it we'll open it, so we can check in Inventor.

So it went from file to Vault, Vault to item, change the properties, which in turn changed the object obviously. And now what we'll see is that when I go and take a look at the properties, is that the title has changed. And when we go look at our custom IProperty, notice that the paint type has changed as well.

So hopefully this shows you the power of properties, but also how easy it is to configure. Is there some work to it? Yeah, there's some work. You got to do a little bit of thought about, how do we want to track this? And does it need to be uppercase or lowercase?

But because of how much information comes out of the CAD files and the Office documents kind of just inherently, it's not a difficult process. And when it's set up correctly, what that allows you to do is I could take five AutoCAD files and change the title on them. And it's going to update those files. So instead of having to go to each file within AutoCAD or Inventor to change it, I can do it in Vault.

Once it's in Vault, all that property information is searchable. So I can search by the description, or the part number, or the paint type. And I can start grouping and categorizing it. I can have that information flow into my items.

Like I said, we use items to pass information off to procurement. So that's the bridge between engineering and procurement. So why should we duplicate that information? Engineers putting it into the Inventor documents, then it just flows through when they're released and that information's already there.

So I want to thank you for sticking through this and watching this video or this session. And hopefully it gives you some food for thought. So, thank again.