Enterprise PDM provides a secure vault for your documents and the check-out / check-in process prevents more than one user from making updates at the same time. Until you check your changes back in, other users are unable to see them and they don’t have the ability to apply other changes. Since one of the key benefits of Enterprise PDM is multi-user collaboration, documents that are unnecessarily checked out can introduce bottlenecks.
Here I cannot check out this document because John has it checked out:
We’ve found that defining a search favorite that simply returns all documents that you have checked out is a very effective mechanism for streamlining this process. Enterprise PDM search result sets can be managed in the same manner as in browsing through Windows Explorer.
Let’s say you’ve been working on several designs during the day and are getting ready to go home. Furthermore you are looking forward to a much needed vacation. You know that others will need to get the latest changes that you’ve made, and a colleague may need to further modify some of the designs.
You can define a search that returns all documents in the vault that are checked out by you. Then you can go through the result set and take any appropriate actions (such as check in). Since this is a search that you would likely repeat, why not save it as a favorite, just like you would for web sites that you frequently visit? Then you can execute this search without having to go to the search form and reapplying the same search criteria. This is easily done in Enterprise PDM.
First set up the search by entering the criteria in the Checked in/out tab:
Next add it to the favorites, give it a name such as “My checked out files”, and click OK. You also have the ability to define favorites that other users or groups can execute or edit if needed.
Now you have the ability to execute this search favorite at any time without having to re-enter the search criteria:
Hopefully you’ll find this to be a great time saver, and your colleagues will appreciate it too!
