How feasible is it to use Part Structure Tab as pseudo Query of Files and Folders?

[New_User_R]

I am new user to this PLM and am in this situation where our company has just migrated files from different Location into Windchill. It now hosts different Documents (word excel and PDF) and CAD Drawing files, but when the files were migrated, we keep it as it is.

My goal is to relate different files from different folder based a Role's context (e.g. Engineering or Quality team). Essentially query the migrated files that is only related to this Group of People.

Unfortunately, despite that this PLM has Folder to Role access Feature, limiting the Folders that can be accessed based different Teams is not an option right now because we don't have people to maintain that. Meaning every team can see every Folder. We also cannot use the Query Feature which supposed to create Global and Local saved views, which reduces the files being populated in the view OR create some custom view depending on the Role.

Rearranging Files and Folder through automatic means might not be good as it will create confusion to all global users.

Could i ask how feasible is this? Should we move forward with creating Multiple Part Structure Tab to work as a pseudo saved Query? what are the downside? have you had same situation? what can you recommend to move forward?

[Fadel]

I don't really follow you , but generally customers use different subtypes and set-up access policies based roles/groups 

[New_User_R]

We are trying some lightweight, non-disruptive approach by keeping the newly migrated Folder Structure as is to avoid confusion from 500+ users when they try to find their files. All the files from different teams are combined based on how they were before in Sharepoint into PTC. 

    example of how files are folder per Sharepoint:

        one folder for ALL Drawings of different products from Engineering,

        one folder of ALL Marketing info of different products

        , etc.)

Now we want to RELATE all information (different files from different folder) related to per Product, NOT by access policies per folder BUT by using the (part) Structure TAB as a solution that if we query a Product series, all related information will be "referred."

    example content of proposed part Structure TAB:

        Product Printer 1 - Marketing related files, Engineering related files 

        Product Printer 2 - Marketing related files, Engineering related files

Could i ask if this is feasible? of is there other way to Relate files related to a Product for easy Querying of files related to it? 

(Pardon for confusing post. i hope this is clearer)

[avillanueva · Accepted solution]

I see your problem kind of. Trying to manage different ways to organize data can be difficult. My preference would be to organize data by Product first this way you can have ACLs and access aligned to the product. Folders can be used to organize data underneath but keeping consistent might be a challenge. Are those engineering drawings PDFs or CAD EPMDocuments? Note that folder location matters little to retrieval, it can find it where ever it is located. 

A note also about file management vs document or object management. Windchill does not managed files but larger concepts like objects. For example, a document can be seen as a  single PDF. But there is also the Word file it originated from, supporting files like Visio, excel and images. A single document object can contain all of that since it can store multiple files, attachments, and visualization data. Its possible that SharePoint, which was managing the files, could not do that. A change here for some improvement.

Also look into document classification to help you tag and organize your data. This was added and is similar to the PartsLink classification of parts. You can tag and organize documents by type with custom attributes and structure. This might give you an alternative. Extra license required for this.

I do not recommend using a Part Structure to do what you are asking. Parts represent physical things, components and assemblies. Using them as an organization framework for files would be a misuse. This will just cause problems down the road. 

[New_User_R]

Thank you very much for your patience to reply.

I am very new and am still doing a lot more trainings but am starting to get a hang of PTC Windchill. 

But i am realizing more how it works and your reply is now making sense to me.