Synchronizing Change Orders Between Vault and Fusion 360 Manage

CHRISTIAN GESSNER: Hi, everybody, and welcome to Synchronize Change Orders Between Vault and Fusion 360 Manage. My name is Christian Gessner. I am a co-founder and technical evangelist with COOLORANGE. And at COOLORANGE, we develop software and offer services to help our customers and partners being successful with Autodesk data management.

So in this class, I want to talk about the software powerPLM that now ships with a new workflow to synchronize change or data between Fusion 360 Manage and Vault. So in this class, we will discover the advantages of synchronizing this data. We will see what this workflow does in detail, including a short demonstration. And then we find out how it needs to get set up and up and running.

So we will also see how easy it is to do the configuration installation. And by the end of the session, we will explore a couple of the endless ways to further extend and custom fit the change management workflow to your individual needs.

So before we get started, let me try to eliminate any confusion that's probably caused by the name of this product. I know that the product has been-- the name of this product has been changed a couple of times in the last couple of years. And that's why I feel to owe you a short explanation. So let me introduce you to the history of powerPLM.

Back in 2014, actually, the idea was born and we started to play connecting Vault and powerPLM, or PLM360 as it was called back in the days. And we had PowerShell cmdlets, too. So the technology was there, but the market wasn't, so it took until 2018 until we continued. We talked to Autodesk, and we started investigating in this topic once again. And we came out with a prototype, the Vault-to-Fusion Lifecycle-Connector.

Then, in 2019, we shipped the first version of the product to the market. So we released vaultFLC, which was a configurable connector with four predefined workflows.

One year later in 2020, we added the PowerShell scripting engine to the product and renamed it to powerFLC. So with this, we had a configurable and customizable connector that supported unlimited workflows. However, we shipped it with the item-centric, Items and BOM workflow.

And finally, in 2021, we had to rename powerFLC to powerPLM, once again, because of Autodesk's product name changed from Fusion Lifecycle to Fusion 360 Manage. So we decided to call it powerPLM instead of powerFLC because of that. And we also came up with the change management workflow that this class is about today.

So let's talk about the advantages. And here on the screen, you can see John. This is John. He's a mechanical engineer. And we talked to a lot of customers like John to find out how they use change management with their existing Vault-in-Fusion 360 Manage installations, and almost all of these customers reported the same problems. They all got the same problem that John here has.

So the decision to make the change is done outside of the engineering department. It's influenced by service organizations and other departments. And once a decision is done so that a change needs to be executed, all this information has to be collected and an ECO involved needs to be created for engineering to work on these changes. And you can imagine that collecting this information, which is already there in Fusion 360 Manage is very error prone. It's time consuming. And very important for John, it does not make fun.

Our conclusion was that there is a need to outsource specific faces, or a specific state, from PLM, from Fusion 360 Manage to PDM, to Vault. So instead of going from, let's say here in this example, from implementation to approved, we figured that an ECO can be created automatically in Vault once a Fusion 360 Manage Change Order reaches a specific state. And with that, all the information can be automatically added to the ECO in Vault. And their engineering can do the changes and once they close their ECO in Vault, this information can be synchronized back to Fusion 360 Manage to the Change Order. And with that, all the different stakeholders of that change are informed or notified.

Why we created this new workflow. We also had to find out that what we only can do is we can deliver a sample. We cannot deliver something that fits to everybody's installation. Why is that? Because we see that every customer has different Change Order workflows, Change Order processes, and even Change Order entities. Some have changed tasks and Change Orders. Others have Change Orders. And you can imagine there is a lot of different things, a lot of different routes to go. And so we needed to come up with something that is highly customizable, and I think we did a great job on that.

So this is what we came up with. It's to change management workflow. And it consists of two major steps. First, we decided to use the Change Orders workspace. By the way, the latest one that's available in the Fusion 360 manage tenants, and we ship this with our default configuration. However, this can be customized and changed.

And as I said, it consists of two major steps. One, when the Fusion 360 Manage Change Order is in a predefined state. Vault ECO was created automatically, created or updated. And with that, all the item fields are added as ECO properties, so there is a mapping going on. All the affected items of the Change Order are added as records to the Vault ECOs.

The affected items that cannot be found in Vault are added as ECO comments to the Vault ECO. And all the attachments to the Change Order in Fusion 360 Manage are added to the ECO as file attachments. So this is the first way.

And from there on, all the ECO exists automatically without engineering department to manually add this. And so they can just jump into the change and do their work. And when they close the ECO in Vault, powerPLM automatically updates all the affected items in Fusion 360 Manage on the Change Order. And it also executes a workflow action, which can change the state of the Change Order, but don't necessarily have to. This depends on your configuration.

To make this more visual, here once again, I have a diagram that shows that. On the left hand side, we can see the item, P0002, it's in revision A, it's in Vault, and it already has been transferred using powerPLM from Vault to Fusion Lifecycle. So it sits there in the items-- in Vault's workspace for instance. And it's in the released version A, and we have a working version of that.

So the first thing. Somebody decides a change needs to be done, so a Change Order is created in Fusion 360 Manage. Change Order CO-0001. And as a next step, somebody needs to connect the item, the working version in this case, to the Change Order. So indicating this item needs to be changed using this particular Change Order. So then, somebody needs to transition the Change Order in Fusion Lifecycle to a state. Once this state is reached-- and this is configurable-- once this particular state is reached, powerPLM automatically recognizes there is something going on. We need to create this ECO in Vault. We have to apply the mapping, and we have to link the existing item in Vault to that particular Change Order so that manufacturing knows what needs to be changed.

So then engineering can do their work. They can revise it. They can create new versions of the item. They can even find out during this change that other items are affected, and they can attach that to the ECO as well.

And finally, when the work is done, they have to synchronize everything back so that the item is updated and exists in Fusion Lifecycle-- Fusion 360 Manage. Pardon me. And then they have to close the ECO. And once the ECO is closed, all the information is synchronized back automatically and a workflow action is executed, which can lead to a state change of the Change Order. And with that, notify all the stakeholders.

So I hope this is clear. If not, I also have a demo that shows that. So what we can see here is we are in Fusion 360 Manage, and we see that there is a Change Order. There is metadata. We see there are attachments. Attached a change instruction PDF and and Error description PDF. We see there are four items affected, items attached to that Change Order . And we see in the approval flow that it's currently in the state Perform Change. And this is the change-- this is the state that I configured to be the trigger. Once the Change Order in Fusion 360 Manage reaches that state, something is triggered. The synchronization is triggered. And we see in Vault, currently a change or the list, the ECO List is empty. But since the Change Order in Fusion 360 Manage isn't at particular state, we can go to a job processing machine and start it up and it just synchronizes all this data. It connects to Fusion Lifecycle. It reads all the Change Orders in that particular state. And it automatically creates the ECOs in Vault according to this information.

And back in Vault, if I do a refresh, I will see that the Change Orders have been created. I select the one that I'm interested in. And I see all the metadata is populated in here. I see when I go to the records, the four items have been attached to the Change Order automatically, and in the files list I see these two attachments which have been downloaded from Fusion 360 Manage, uploaded to Vault, and linked here in the files list to the ECO.

And finally, as an engineer, I can now work on these changes. I can use the Vault ECO functionality. I can submit the ECO, and with that, accept these changes. I can work on these changes using Vault functionality.

So for instance, I can go to the items, and I can put this item to work in progress. Work on the item, work on the associated file, do the engineering changes. All that. Here this video is a shortcut. I don't show you how to change the files. I think this is obvious.

What I want to show you is I can also add new items to that ECO in Vault. So during my changes, I found out that some other items are involved in the change as well. So I add it. And then finally I can submit my ECO. And once submitted, I can close it. And when I do the close, Vault asks me to also release all the affected items, and I do so. And this actually causes the items to be synchronized back to the items in BOM workspace in Fusion 360 Manage. And it also triggers a job that synchronizes the Change Orders between Vault and Fusion 360 Manage.

So back on the job processing machine, the synchronization is done. It recognizes this particular ECO has been set to close, so I need to update the information over in Fusion 360 Manage. It does that. And if I go back to the engineer's machine in Vault, I can use the contextual menu of the ECO where we find a new item, or a new button, that allows us to navigate to the browser, to Fusion 360 Manage, to this Change Order. And in here, we see all we have five affected items. The C-Beam that I added in Vault is automatically transferred over to Fusion 360 Manage. I can also see that the workflow action has been executed.

So I better see this if I go to the change log. Obviously, here we have the Workflow Action that has been executed. This can change the state of the ECO but doesn't necessarily have to. In my case, it didn't change the state. But I think you got the idea.

John has powerPLM now, and since this automates the annoying, time-consuming, and error prone tasks, John is happy again as he can focus on the actual changes instead of managing this changes.

All right. Let's talk about prerequisites very quickly. We don't have a lot, but we have two prerequisites that I want to talk about. And the first one is the items in BOM workflow. The change management workflow relies on that items in BOM workflow. And it's also shipped with powerPLM. So it's there. It's in the box, but you have to use it in order to make the change management workflow functioning. Items are only recognized and added to the Vault ECO records when those are previously transferred using this workflow.

There is an entire class that talks about powerPLM, the configuration, capabilities, all the settings, the item centric proof material workflow. And I recommend you to watch this if you're interested in the change management workflow since, again, this is a prerequisite.

Another prerequisite is the "Affected Items" type in your Fusion 360 Manage Change Order configuration. There are three different ways to connect items in Fusion 360 Manage. Actually, it's four, the bill of materials. But three ways to attach items to each other. The Change Order Change Management workflow just works with the Managed Items and the Linked Items types. If you do, for some reason ever used the Item Relationships, this won't work. So the workflow won't recognize the Item Relationships.

However, if you really need that, you can write custom code or you can ask us to write custom code to support even this scenario.

Now, let's talk about installation and configuration. It's a very easy task. So let me quickly go over the list of things that needs to be done. First of all, there is this "Change Management" app in the Fusion 360 Manage app store. This is an optional step. If you have the latest and greatest Fusion 360 Manage tenant configuration, you already will have this. And if you decide not to use this, you can customize the product to work with your own Change Management work spaces.

But what's required definitely is to download and install the COOLORANGE products powerJobs Processor and powerPLM. And once this is installed, you can start the "Configuration Manager" which is in the Tools menu in Vault once powerPLM has been installed. And there, you have to enter your credentials, and you have to import workflows. And once they are imported, you have to adjust these workflows.

And finally, you have to configure two triggers so that the scripting engines can react to the changes. They can periodically check for updated or new Change Orders , and they can react on the Event when the is CEO transitions to "Close."

So the app store-- I think I mentioned it here, but I think installing an app store is pretty straightforward. If you need to learn more about this, there was a class at AU 2019 I think, it's called, "Mastering the Fusion Lifecycle App Store in 60 Minutes." And if you need to learn more about how to install apps from the app store to get your own work spaces or to get these work spaces to your tenant, I can recommend you watch this class.

But what I can show you here is definitely how to download and install the COOLORANGE products. It's a very easy task. Just open your browser, type downloads.coolorange.com, and you will see the download page. You have to select your Vault version. You have to select powerJobs Processor, and the latest product version. Then you have to provide your name, your company and your email address, and simply hit the Download button. And with that, the download gets started.

And basically, you have to do the same for powerPLM. So from the products list, select powerPLM, select the latest and greatest version, and hit the Download button once again. And both installers are available.

So now that they are here, we can execute both installs. All you have to do is you have to agree to license conditions and everything else gets done by the setup. One thing that I need to mention here is this needs to be installed on a job processing machine, both of the installers.

For powerFLC or powerPLM, just do the same thing. Click the Next and wait for the installer to finish.

So once this is done, we can start Vault. And in Vault, we have in the Tools menu, we have Configuration Manager. And this Configuration Manager is asking for a Forge Client ID and Forge Secret one time. So this information is stored as a Vault option, and you only have to provide it once. And the class, the AU class joint effort, Vault and Fusion Lifecycle is a new dream couple, explains this in very detail. So I don't explain about how Forge, Autodesk Forge, is used to do the authentication and to do a trust worth between Vault and Fusion 360 Manage.

So once we provided all the information that are needed to connect Vault with Fusion 360 Manage, we can import the two needed workflows. Just click the Import button, and select the two JSON files that are available to transfer Item and BOM workflow, and the Change Management Workflow to Sync Change Orders Workflow.

So and with that, if you double-click the Synchronizing Change Orders Workflow, we get a list of different settings that need to be adjusted. And I will talk about this in the next slides.

So let's start with the Unique Identifier. The Unique Identifier is actually used to couple the Fusion 360 Manage entity with the Vault entity. So if both systems have an entity with the same value, in this particular fields the ECO and Vault will be updated. Otherwise it will be traded.

In the Vault ECO, by the way, always have the property number. So you don't have to change that. In fact, you must not change it. The Vault property needs to remain number. However, in Fusion 360 Manage, at the other hand, you can configure a property that is called different other than number. If you do so, you can select this from the dropdown here. Again this is used to uniquely identify both entities in both systems.

The next one is the Trigger State. And the Trigger State is actually the state of the Fusion 360 Manage Change Order that is used to transfer the data to Vault. So once a Change Order reaches that particular state, the ECO is created in Vault using powerPLM mechanism. This happens periodically by default every 10 minutes.

The next one, well, the Affected Item Lifecycle Transition is a little hard to explain, but let me try it anyway. When a Vault ECO is closed, and the changes are synchronized back to Fusion 360 Manage, new items may have been added to the Affected Items list because they, in Vault, exist as new records. So if this is the case, the Lifecycle field of this record has to be filled out with a meaningful value. Otherwise, the Workflow Action that is executed afterwards would potentially fail. So in fact, this is the value of the Lifecycle of a newly added affected item.

The Workflow Action, at the other hand, is relatively easy to explain. This is the Workflow Action that is being executed when the CEO in Vault is closed. It's executed against the Fusion 360 Manage Change Order. And it can perform a state change. It doesn't necessarily have to.

And then we have the Vault Attachments Folder. Whenever an attachment is downloaded from Fusion 360 m it gets placed in a subfolder of this particular folder. So you can configure a folder in Vault, and in there will be subfolders with the name of the Change Order. And in the subfolders, there will be the attachments or the files that are downloaded from Fusion 360 Manage.

And besides all the settings for this workflow, there is also a Field Mapping that controls which fields from Fusion to Manage from this Change Order is written to which property of the given Vault ECO.

And to sum up all the configuration, I also need to mention the Triggers. All this is, by the way, all this is explained on the documentations, but I think it's good to mention it here so that you do know where to look, or that you have to look at that steps.

The Periodically Check is an easy task. So this is a functionality of powerJobs, COOLORANGE powerJobs processor. So you will find a file that is called "Sample.SyncChangeOrders.Settings to find extension settings in a folder on your job processor machine, and see program data COOLORANGE powerJobs jobs.

So if you open this file with a text data tool-- it's a JSON file-- you will see two values that are interesting. One is the TimeBased and this is a CRON syntax. By default, it's every 10 minutes, every day. So it actually-- powerJobs submits these jobs every 10 minutes, and you can change the interval in here.

You also have to provide the name of your Vault. And once this is done-- and this is the easy task-- the Change Order works. And every 10 minutes, it's querying data from Fusion 360 Manage and adds records to an ECO records in Vault if needed.

The other thing is the state driven, so we need a trigger whenever a Vault ECO gets closed. We need a job to be executed. And since the Vault UI doesn't allow us to configure that, we need to download the Lifecycle Event Editor. We have to start the Lifecycle Event Editor, log in into Vault using the Lifecycle Event Editor, and there, go to the Change Order tab, and find the Workflow Transition from approved to close. And then add the job type, Sample.SyncChangeOrders. Once this is done, every time a Vault ECO gets closed, a job gets triggered that can finally synchronize the data.

OK, then let's talk about customization capabilities. You probably have seen it in the videos, and this is the first thing that comes into my mind when we talk about extending this workflow. We can add client functionality to this workflow. So we have a GitHub repository where we have the source code written, C-sharp, as well as the installers, pre-compiled, ready to use. These are for free, and they extend the Vault client with contextual menu functionality.

And one of those functionalities is on the Change Order, right click on a Change Order, and hit the Go To Fusion 360 Manage Item button, and this will bring you directly to the Fusion 360 Manage Change Order. This is a cool feature for everybody who wants their engineers to be part of the PLM experience. We see also companies that don't want their engineers to use Fusion 360 Manage, but if you want to do so, this is a very great tool. It comes for free, and it adds a lot of value to the Vault clients.

All the following samples would require some consulting work to be done in the from of coding or of extra configuration. But anyways, I think it's worth mentioning it because it adds so much value, especially if you customize your workflows, or if you customize your Change Orders or change tasks in Fusion 360 Manage.

So as I mentioned at the beginning of this class, it's hard to provide something that fits to every installation since Fusion 360 Manage is highly customizable. So for instance, you can use Change Tasks in combination with Change Orders. And probably you want the Change Tasks to be synchronized with Vault instead of the Change Orders. This can be done, but requires some extra coding.

Another example is the synchronization of two or more state changes. So we learned this particular Change Order-- or this particular workflow, I'm sorry-- synchronizes data from Fusion 360 Manage to Vault one time, and back from Vault to Fusion 360 another time. But you probably want to have some steps in between where you want to synchronize data. This can also be done, but would require some additional coding.

You probably want to synchronize UDPs, User Defined Properties, from the ECO in Vault back to the Fusion 360 Manage Change Order. That's also possible, but would require some coding.

And I also need to talk about the "Decline" use cases because I was asked a lot how to deal with this one. So in the ECO in Vault, you can cancel this workflow. Somebody decides not to continue this change. Somebody would notify the Fusion 360 Manage Change Order about this change. This can be done using custom coding.

And the other way around, if a Change Order is declined in Fusion 360 Manage, and the ECO in Vault is already there, somebody needs to cancel the ECO in Vault as well. Or at least let the engineers know that something happened and the change doesn't have to be finished.

So this is just a couple of samples how all this can be extended. It's sky's the limit. All these workflows are based on PowerShell cmdlets. It's easy. It's scripted. And there is UI that allow you to do configurations, so this is the right tool to connect Vault Change Orders and Fusion 360 Manage Change Orders.

So finally, let me talk about additional resources that are available for you. First of all, and probably the most important one, is the documentation of these workflows and of powerPLM in general. Just go to doc.coolorange.com, you will find workflow descriptions there. You will find installation instructions, and also detailed configuration hints and documentation.

The next additional resource I cannot stress enough is the AU 2020 class Joint Effort, Vault and Fusion Lifecycle as the new dream couple. This, once again, talks about the architecture of powerPLM, all the components that are involved in the solution. It shows the installation and configuration in detail. It talks about different customization capabilities. And it also shows the items in BOM workflow in detail. So if you're not familiar with this class, and you're interested in connecting Vault and Fusion Lifecycle, or Fusion 360 m I can recommend this class. You can find it at Autodesk University online.

And finally, I want to talk about some additional workflows. We have a GitHub repository that is called powerflc-samples, and in there, you can find some additional workflows that are not shipped with the product, but available for you.

So for instance, we have a new product introduction workflow that reads Fusion 360 Manage products and creates folders in Vault that represent these new products. These folders then can be used to add the design data in Vault.

Then we have a file centric Items and BOM workflow. Unlike the one that we ship, which is item based, we have an alternative file centric Items and BOM workflow that actually reads the file BOM from Vault at a specific state change, and adds this as records to Fusion 360 Manage including the bill of materials.

And we have a Drawing File synchronization that uses metadata, or that synchronizes metadata and attachments, from Vault drawings to Fusion 360 Manage.

And we are interested in additional ideas and requirements. So if you want to see some workflows other than the ones that are listed here, let me know, or go to GitHub and submit an issue. And we are happy to work on your ideas and your requirements.

So with all that being said, I hope you liked this class. If so, please recommend it and leave us a thumbs up. Thank you very much.