The help file leads you to believe it is a simple issue -basically saying when this option is off, EPDM will remember and use the rights from previous states. In reality, it is much more complex.

What makes it hard is that some workflow rights from previous states are used, some are not. To compound the confusion, you can have different behaviors depending on the rights in the current state!

So get out your crib sheets, here is how to calculate what rights you will have in a state when the “Ignore permissions in previous states”option is off.

• “Delete“ and “Increment Revision” rights are what I call negatives. If you have ever lost this right, you will not have it in this state even if this state specifically grants it to you.
• “Read file contents“, “Permit or deny group-level access to files” and “Share files to another folder” are positives, if you ever have had this right, you will have it in this state even if this state specifically does not grant it to you.
• The ”Checkout file” and “Rename” rights are not affected by this option. You will have this right if the current state permits it.

A state where the “Ignore permissions in previous states” flag is turned on, provides a temporary override of the above rules…kind of like “base” when playing tag. Once that file moves back into a state with the ignore option off, the above rules come right back into play.

Crazy powerful, and if you stop to think about it, this is the way most companies work. Thus the default is correct, most of the time this option should be off.

However I found a SQL function that will do the conversion for me:
CONVERT(varbinary,<value>)

Cool eh? Thus a SQL statement like this:

SELECT DocumentID, CONVERT(varbinary,DocumentID) as IDHex, Filename FROM Documents where Filename like 'Big Tuna%'

Returns:

Yeah, SQL rocks.

Here is a little excerpt from a screen play I am writing for an upcoming movie, tentatively titled: “SolidWorks Enterprise PDM – The Movie”

The scene opens with our hero [me] teaching an EPDM administrator training class.

[Me] Now that the file is in your “Released” workflow state, it is read only for everyone, the only way it can be changed is to push the file through the workflow again, making a new revision.

[Future Admin] But what if I want to change the file without bumping the revision?

[Me] You can’t. That revision has been approved, it shouldn’t be changed.

[Future Admin] But I want to.

[Me] No, that would be like changing history. What’s the big deal? Revision letters are cheap, bump the revision and go on with your life.

[Future Admin] But I want to.

[Me] No! You just just bought EPDM to protect your documents and now, on the very first day, you want to override it?!

[Future Admin] Yes.

[Me] Fine. However, I insist we still make everything traceable so we still have record of the actual version that was originally approved.

[Future Admin] Deal.

[Me] First, we’ll make what I like to call a relief valve in our workflow:

The “Released” state will stay read only for everyone. We’ll only give permission for the administrator to use the “Override Revision” transition. We’ll only give checkout rights in the “Revision Override” workflow state to a very few trust worthy people. They can modify the file, then re-release it.

[Future Admin] But now won’t there be additional versions after the revision?

[Me] Say! I didn’t think you were paying attention while you were playing with your cell phone! Yes, there will be an additional version. However with EPDM’s API, we can actually roll back the revision number component to any value we want. Then reapply the revision.

By looking at the file’s history we can see that version two was approved as revision “A”, then version three was created, which was also approved as revision “A”. This second approval was done by a little API application that rolled the counter back one place.

Now the entire process was recorded in the file’s history and you still get to have your changed file at revision “A”.

[Future Admin] Thank you Engineering Data Specialist Man! How can we ever repay you?!

[Me] <Laughs> All in a day’s work my friend, all in a day’s work.

Curtain.

Fin.

I thought finding the files would be rather simple until I realized Workgroup’s PDMWSearchOptions (Workgroup’s API search function) does not support wildcard characters. While contemplating harakiri, I finally came up with this search criteria idea:

objSearch.IgnoreCase = True
objSearch.SearchCriteria.AddCriteria pdmwOr, pdmwOwner, "", pdmwContains, "a"
objSearch.SearchCriteria.AddCriteria pdmwOr, pdmwOwner, "", pdmwContains, "e"
objSearch.SearchCriteria.AddCriteria pdmwOr, pdmwOwner, "", pdmwContains, "i"
objSearch.SearchCriteria.AddCriteria pdmwOr, pdmwOwner, "", pdmwContains, "o"
objSearch.SearchCriteria.AddCriteria pdmwOr, pdmwOwner, "", pdmwContains, "u"
'sometimes
objSearch.SearchCriteria.AddCriteria pdmwOr, pdmwOwner, "", pdmwContains, "y"

As long as I don’t have any Workgroup users from one of those countries that do not have any vowels in their names, this search gave me every file in the Workgroup vault that was owned by a user. It isn’t a lightening fast search, but did a nice job.

Drag your blueberry into your favorites list. Make sure the cursor says “Create link in Favorites” and that you are not dropping the blueberry into an existing folder.

That’s it!

Much faster vault access!

• You can easily adjust the “horsepower” of your server. Start small then as more of your company adopts EPDM, you can slowly increase the size and speed of your virtual machine.
• Many data centers include backup services. Let them worry every night about ensuring your backups started successfully.
• Data security. Hackers, firewall settings and security updates become someone else’s responsibility.
• Guaranteed up-time.
• No hardware/server/operating system obsolescence.
• Great bandwidth options.
• Sometimes less latency for your remote EPDM locations.

You still may want to have your EPDM archive server local, but I’ve seen packages where the bandwidth to the IaaS was so great users didn’t even notice when the archive server was moved to the IaaS.

We’re all familiar with the SolidWorks partner program. Some of the best SolidWorks functionality has actually come from it. Simulation, Toolbox, Hole Wizard, Workgroup, Photoview 360 and even EPDM originally started out as 3rd party partner products that eventually became part of the SolidWorks family. This has helped SolidWorks grow and mature very rapidly. Even the 3rd party applications that SolidWorks hasn’t purchased still make SolidWorks a good investment. If SolidWorks cannot do something you wish it could, there is likely an application that can do it.

As I said, it is brand new, but there are already two partner products for EPDM. Keep an eye out, hopefully there is going to be a money saver in there for you, giving you an even bigger return on your SolidWorks Enterprise PDM investment.

Your first thought may be to use a datacard to search but that doesn’t work because any fields left blank are not considered in the search criteria.

You have to search on the variables. Set it up like this:

(The “value” column is empty.) For this example, all files that do not have a value for “Title” will be found in the search.

Tip within a tip…you will likely want to uncheck “Search in all versions” otherwise you may get many more hits that you expect. (Variables in version “1″ of most of your files is probably blank.)

Rodney Dangerfield makes fun of the EPDM’s label function.

What good is it?

I have seen it used three different ways.

First, versions that have a label are never cold storaged. Add a label to a version and you will always know it will be there when needed

Second, you can search for text inside a label. Imagine you have a group of files that you use often. You can give them all the same label, then when you search, you can have them all come up together for quick access. (Think favorite search!)

Lastly, you can use a label as a milestone in your file’s history. Perhaps: “This is the version approved by the FDA” or “Customer rejected this version” or “This file was rolled back because of…”.

An interestingly unique trait of labels is that you can change and even delete them. I don’t know of any other entity stored in a file’s history that can be deleted.

I think that little kid just kicked a ground rule double!

It’s intervention time.

Tell him there are doughnuts in the conference room, get Big Larry to stand by the door to keep him inside and play this video on the projector. It’s only two minutes long, he should be able to pay attention as long as you ensure nothing shiny is in the room.