About Desktop Integration
Introduction
Here some note's about Desktop Integration. My input is based on Windchill 9.1 and MS Office 2003. Feel free to add additional tips, based on others versions, and to change this introduction when appropriate.
Summary
Desktop integration has two main goals :
- enabling access of documents from inside the MS Office application
- synchronization of document properties with Windchill attributes.
Installation and Setup
Install Desktop Integration
This has to be done on every client.
Go to Home>Utilities>Software Downloads>Accept>Windchill DTI 2.0 Installation and follow the instructions.
Tune Windchill Preferences
Go to Home>Utilities>Preference Manager>Attachments>File Download Mechanism "Use windchill Desktop Integration ..."
Remark:
An administrator may set this on organisation or site level.
Mapping Windchill attributes to Office properties
Attribute to property synchronization
There are two scenario's to have the Windchill document attributes synchronized with the office document : or via Download from Windchill, or via the DTI in Word. Both require Desktop Installation to be installed on the client.
MS Word
In MS Word, go to File>Properties. In case your document is downloaded from Windchill with property synchronisation, you will find the mapped properties, or in the Summary tab, or (mostly) in the Custom tab.
To add the property to your document, go to Insert>Field>Field Name "DocProperty">Property "wtname" ... Soft attributes are preceded by IBA|
| Windchill attribute | Ms Word property |
|---|---|
| Title | Title (see Summary tab) |
| Description | Comments (see Summary tab) |
| Primary Content URL | URL |
| Name | wtname |
| Number | Document number |
| Type | Type |
| Context | context |
| Version Info | versionInfo |
| RevisionInfo | |
| Life Cycle State | lifeCycleState |
| Object Reference | obid |
| Context Last Modified Timestamp | |
| Created By | |
| Context Creator | |
| organization | |
| context |
<<I didn't check yet whether this mapping is specific for Word or not>>
Remark:
Fields in the header and footer are not updated automatically with the custom properties.
MS Excel
It's a little more complicated to get Windchill attributes into Excel.
Steps
- rename the cell name (to create the link)
- go to File>Properties>Custom tab
- select the property
- tick "link to content"
- select the field name specified earlier
- finalize with Modify
MS Powerpoint
<<Can someone add a similar procedure to bring document properties onto a slide? The property synchronization is OK, but I can't find a way to make these custom properties usefull>>
MS Outlook
<to be completed>
Additional attribute mapping
OOTB, not all attributes are mapped to document properties. But you can map additional attributes :
- on your Windchill server, go to \Windchill\codebase\com\ptc\windchill\enterprise\nativeapp\msoi\server\
- backup msoimap.xml
- add a little xml code :
<msoi_attributes>
<type key="wt.doc.WTDocument"> (exists already)
- stop and start the Method Server
- redownload your document, and check whether property "Created By" is added.
Other examples :
--------------------------------------------
<attribute>
<ms_name>Last Modified Date</ms_name>
<wt_name>thePersistInfo.modifyStamp</wt_name>
<display>true</display>
<attrFormat>UTC</attrFormat>
</attribute>
<attribute>
<ms_name>Last Modified By</ms_name>
<wt_name>modifier</wt_name>
<display>true</display>
<attrFormat>string</attrFormat>
</attribute>
DTI Usage
<to be completed>

