Usage of Windchill Desktop Integration for MS Office

We don’t use it. We investigated using it in the past (around Windchill 11.0), but it wasn’t worth it at the time.

I remember doing one demo where I had to admit that even for me (a Windchill admin), it was complicated and hard to use. That basically convinced everyone that it wasn’t a good idea to adopt it.

I used it extensively as a customer (I was an admin) for years. It was quirky until around 11.2, but has gotten much better. Even if you don’t directly use the Office integration, the file explorer browser is great for the folks that just like to work from a “shared drive”.

Hi,

I’m admin for our Windchill. We use it extensively for product documentation linked to EBOM. Word and Excel templates have headers with number, name, state, some custom attributes from WTDocuments. We also have Office worker to publish pdf automatically as attachments to WTDoc.

As joe here says it’s a bit complicated experience for the users. The prompts are even misleading. Because of OneDrive you need to set up a local folder for DTI. Mapping of WTDoc attributes is strange, but of course, if you need to set up templates once in a while it does not matter. However comparing to actual document management systems DTI feels and behaves awkward. Still, we have 20+ users maintaining documents, business is booming, so it can’t be all bad  😉  We’re currently on 12.1.2.x, I don’t know if it’s any different in 13.

Years back on 10.2 there was an issue with some Office update which ‘broke DTI’. We were forced to disable updates to Office for quite some time as PTC did not first provide a fix, but an update to 11 would have been required. Then all of a sudden a fix in a CPS appeared, maybe some customers with enough bucks spent on licenses made their point.. 

As jbailey here says it’s gotten better since 11. There hasn’t been any issues for several years, but the experience has left a feeling that anything can happen any time when some update comes and makes a mess. Then PTC and MS first waive the 3rd party flag and you’re doing workarounds and waiting for fixes. And as it is, just this summer when I had started my vacation I got a message saying Office publish to pdf is not working. It’s a Microsoft issue they acknowledged possibly affecting third party usage of Office. So, had to backtrack the KB update from the worker server and disable updates. We have another document management software as cloud service with Office to pdf publish, but I haven’t checked / heard yet about issues. Of course the service provider may be on the case. Point is, if you’re on-premises with Windchill, you’re just waiting for **** to hit the fan. Eventually it will. In vacation time, trust me  😶