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sgylden1-Visitor
1-Visitor
September 7, 2016
Question

What are best practice for working with documents without using DTI

  • September 7, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 2794 views

Hi

 

We are very close to dropping DTI due to issues we see with it, mostly issues related to lack of support for mixed office versions.

 

So instead we look into using the Browser with preference for "Use Basic Browser functionality" for download and upload.
 - We would not like to use java for this, and this option will also be removed anyway.

 

This is however also giving us 'challenges' so I hope that someone can tell me how they use this.

 

Main issue is that the browser will not delete local cache files on check-in, so the file to download might already exist in downloads area and the new download will get a name with addition of (1), and next time (2) and so on. So you need to be very careful - what version are you editing and what to check-in. We see people messing this up.

How do others handle this?
Best Regards, Soren

 

2 replies

S
sgylden1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
September 7, 2016

This also has the side effect that you are not shown your latest change if it wasn't checked-in, the browser will just download the old version from the server and show you that. It will not open the cached file with your changes!

S
sm_011-Visitor
1-Visitor
September 9, 2016

You did not mention what version of Windchill you are running. DTI supports Offce 2010, 2013 and 2016. Curious to know what types of issues you were having in a mixed Office environment? DTI only supports Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Are you not running all the same versions on a single machine or are you running different versions on different machines? Do you have a Technical Support ticket this was investigated under?

If I remember correctly, the documents will simply go to the browser cache if DTI is removed. If users don't understand how to use the browser cache, they will more than likely lose their documents since they do not understand where they are or how to find them again. For me, this means using the best practice of always choosing the Download action in Windchill to make sure the document is located in a place the user is aware of, ie. Downloads folder.

You're second comment is correct. Once DTI is removed, it is very easy to lose local documents that were modified and not checked in. Without DTI, Windchill does not know you have previously downloaded a document and will always pull the latest file from the server, potentially overwriting your local file.

Would be nice if Windchill allowed you to drag-n-drop upload and download documents from the folder browser. This would be a big help for non-DTI implementations.

B
BrianToussaint19-Tanzanite
19-Tanzanite
September 9, 2016

Scott,

The last time I looked Office 2016 was not supported on 10.2 M030 and wasn't supported until 11.0.  Has this changed?

Thank you,

Brian

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sm_011-Visitor
1-Visitor
September 9, 2016

No, the support is as you stated. Office 2016 is available with Windchill 11 only. Personally, I have been using 10.2 M030 with Office 2016 for a few months now without any major issues, but I do understand the "official" support policy.

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