Record location of deleted content in the audit report

[rpike]

When documents are deleted there is no record in the database of the object's original location in the file vault. If the document was deleted by accident then the only way to find the orphaned content is to manually search through the file vaults which is very time-consuming. If auditing is set to record the 'delete' event then Windchill records a variety of information about the documents that have been deleted...except for the one piece of information that would be really useful - where the original content was stored. If it's possible, I suggest recording the original file location in the audit report. It would make life so much easier.

[rpike]

Does nobody else find this REALLY frustrating? This week alone we've had two instances of users accidentally deleting documents with multiple versions. It's bad enough that there is no recycle bin feature but trying to locate the content is a nightmare. If we had the vault location of the content we could at least grab that. Right now our only option is to restore a copy of the entire database, load it into a clone system, query the content location, copy the files across and then export/import the document back into the production system. It is truly painful and time consuming.

[Marco_Tosin]

You can use a report to match filename and vault location.

Take a look at this article: 

How to prepare a report which shows file vault information (file path and file name) that represents EPMDocuments

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article?n=CS54021

In the same way you can create a report for WTDocuments

[rpike]

But the documents have gone...so the report cannot find their location. That's the issue.

[Marco_Tosin]

But if you can locate the physical document in your vault backup then you can also restore it.

[rpike]

You can only locate the physical document if you have access to the document objects...which the user has already deleted. So we have to restore the DB to get the document objects back so we can then locate the content.

[BrianToussaint]

I guess you would have to run the report and export it every time you run the backup.  That way you could go back to the report without having to restore the DB.

[rpike]

True but we really don't want to be running that kind of report against millions of files on a nightly basis. It really can't be difficult to include the vault information in the audit log...or better still, implement a recycle bin.

[BrianToussaint]

I voted for it, but was just offering another solution until it is fixed.  Because that can be a long time sometimes. 

[rpike]

Thanks I appreciate all the comments...and yes, I'm fully aware of the timescales!

[olivierlp]

Hello,

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