.....hate Windburn, er, Windchill, as much as I do? At the 3 different compaines I've worked for now that have gone to it, we've had NOTHING but trouble. I can't think of a single instance where W/C is even close to the equal of Intralink in terms of productivity, let alone faster. In fact, in every metric that I've tried, it's 2 to at least 4 times more difficult to do anything, if not impossible to actually do it. I get to hear all my new Pro/E users coming from Solidquirks complain about Pro/E, when in fact it's Windchill they're having issues with. I want my Intralink back......NOW!
Hi Frank...
It sounds like you have a combination of issues causing you some grief. I believe the first step might be to have someone evaluate your physical Windchill setup and perhaps tune the system for optimum performance. It really shouldn't be slower than Pro/INTRALINK 3.4 Even if you had a Workspace and Commonspace open in the previous version, they'd lock up during checkin/checkout and those transactions prevented you from working in Pro/E. In the new version, you can check in objects and go back to work while the system is churning away. That alone should be saving time.
The PTC internal browser is really the only way to access Workspace information in the new system. You can open a standalone browser but you won't be able to see your local cache (local Workspace). You'll only be able to see your "Server Side" workspace. For this reason you're rather forced to use the internal browser. That internal browser is just a session of either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. You can actually switch which one is being used if you like! My non-scientific tests provided data that suggests the embedded Microsoft Internet Explorer is actually faster. Check the value of the config.pro setting windows_browser_type and make sure it's set to ie_in_process for best performance.
To address the search issue, I was able to create a search for All Iterations and All Versions. I saved this search so I could use it later. This is similar to the way you saved searches in Pro/INTRALINK 3.4 The search worked well. I added a mapkey to pop the search window. It works... but not consistently (not sure why yet). There's an option to toggle searching all iterations of an object during a search. While this doesn't give you ALL iterations, it does give you the latest iteration of ALL revisions. This might offer you some semblance of searches the way you used to see them. If you have revisions A, B, C, D, and E... this option will list all of them (but only the highest iteration of each). If you want ALL iterations of ALL revisions, the "Saved Search" is the way to go.
One final thing that might help... for the BOM, I have a couple of tips here. First, go to the Structure menu and expand the entire BOM. Export the result to a CSV file using File->Export to CSV. This will open the BOM structure in Excel (at least it should if Excel is set as the default for CSV files). You can then process the BOM further in Excel.
A second idea is to get to the Structure menu and use the multi-level report button which gives you an indented list as shown below:
I'm not sure if ANY of these things makes life any easier... but if you keep letting me know where you're the most frustrated with the tool, I'll keep giving you whatever tips I have to try to save your sanity.
The nifty graph tool was a nice touch... that's one I don't have an answer for! 
Take care...
-Brian
Top O' the mornin' to ya Brian!
I remember the system working while check-in etc. in Intralink, and yes, I couldn't use Pro/E then, but the same assemblies were slower in W/C even though theoretically you could work in Pro/E while doing W/C in the background. You guys must be set up a LOT better than we are, because I can tell you in the 3 different companies and installations I've used W/C, it has been nothing BUT slower, in all aspects. It just seems like a logical conclusion that, since it's i-net based, that every little software/hardware/data line glitch is going to affect things, and always in a negative fashion. I'm constantly getting my system hanging up.....only for 15 minutes later or so, getting the error that it "can't find the server", which, since it always appears BEHIND all the other windows, makes it that much more difficult to select a response. Then, immediately after I select "No" in response to working offline, it comes back tthat it magically found the server. I'm tempted to work offline at all times, until I need to try and transfer data. I had one of my users that was having more trouble than I do try that and it worked very well for her. Now she does it all the time.
I'm gooing to try your suggestion and see if I can't get all iterations and all versions, but I didn't see those options. All I got was the last iteration of all the revisions, which is xxxxxxxx and totally misleading.
I also took a quick look at the "windows_browser_type" and I don't see it in our current config.pro, so, thanks, and I'll look into that.
I'm not real happy with the company that did our migration, and I'd be open to suggesting to my boss that we try someone else to fix our problems. Interested?
Yeah, I TOTALLY miss the graph. That was an awesome tool!
Thanks again, have a great day, and I'll be sending some files to ya soon as we discussed!
Frank
Thank you Celia, and no, you don't sound defensive. I don't believe PTC sets out to alienate it's core/experienced users, but, unfortunately, that is what's happened to a lot of us. I don't want to make it sound like I'm adverse to change, only change for the sake of change that has no net gain. I've been using Pro/E since Dec '96, and using 4 different vaulting systems since then: CMS, the old PDMLink, Intralink, and now W/C. I never had or needed any formal training in any of them except W/C, yet was able to easily and quickly perform most admin duties as a librarian at several companies. I'm being honest when I say that I've had nothing but problems with W/C. I think that not only is there a much steeper learning curve, there are also serious flaws in the system, starting with the increased number of screens and pics a user must navigate thru. Every option allows for a mistake to be make. I do not believe that a vaulting systems needs to be this complicated.
The person I talked to was Chris Bergquist, and, frankly, I really liked the guy, and enjoyed showing him via a GoTo meeting all the real-world issues I was having. There have been many times I've felt my conceerns have dismissed off-hand, or the people at PTC and/or the people at the VAR have tried to make me feel like I was an idiot for not understanding W/C, but I got absolutely none of that from Chris, and it was a breath of fresh air. Especially in light of me blasting W/C performance several years ago.....and having PTC then contact my boss and try and get me fired. Further, I have no doubt that incident was part of me getting let go when the layoffs happened some time later. So, to have a guy actually listen, was great. He saw first hand the issues, I showed him all the bugs I found, and he recorded it all. So, I have some hope maybe he has enough pull and the evidence was convincing enough to effect some change. Time will tell. 
But, I DO stand behind my assertions about W/C. I've had a TON of issues, every place I've used it, and some of my other users hatte it more than I do, so that's pretty telling. It seems the only people who support it.....are thos who sell it. Odd, that...... I have been a solid support of Pro/E over the many years I've been using it, and still stand behind it's capabilities, though I hate all these interface changes. But, as mentioned, in light of the issues we're seeing, it keeps getting harder to fend off the solidworks users here.
Best of luck, and thanks again to Brian.
Hah! That's me, "long on candor, short on diplomacy"! Love it!
Thanks for all your help and support Brian. I think you hit several key issues on the head, not the least of which is that no matter how the developer sees this that or the other change as being "better", it is the end-users that should 100% be the deciding vote on whether it truly IS better or not. For instance, for over 20 years the motorcycle industry has played with trying to design a swingarm-type front end for motorcycles. It had some demonstratable benefits in some designs, and theoretically the Engineers declared it "better". The riders, however, universally hated it, because for them, though on paper it might be "better" in a sterile classroom sense, it had an unnatural "feel" to it, and lap times increased dramatically. And, to this day, motorcycles still have a telescopic front end. Me, I want my gas pedal exactly where God intended it.......under my (admittedly heavy....) right foot.
I've known several Intralink admins who had to switch to W/C, and all of them say their work in trying to keep the system running has been exponentially increased. Lets face it, as Engineers and Designers, it is our job to make something as simple as possible that achieves the set goals, not come up with a Rube Goldberg device to use as many parts as possible to screw in a light bulb. So, it's not surprising with the sheer astronomical size increase of the code from I/L to W/C that there are issues. Throw in all the new i-net issues that we never had before and it's a 55-gal drum of worms.
Hmmm...
Hey Frank let's chat more about this offline. Maybe there are other ways I can help without having to take a flight to Colorado. But if that doesn't work, I know a really great Windchill consultant who lives in Tahoe.
Thanks!
-Brian
