Obsolete Document Revisions Notification in Aurena

Hi Anna,

You are right, that warning is not there in Aurena/IFS Cloud. I actually cannot explain why, perhaps it was a try to simplify things.

Can you describe your use case and why your users end up with obsolete documents on the screen? It suggests they search for them, right? Why do they not filter them out? If they find the documents via Attachments / Documents, why are there obsolete documents attached?

Not saying any of the above is wrong or right, I just want to understand the use cases here. The more we know about these use cases, the better we can make the application 🙂 

As for solutions, some are kind of baked into the questions above. Make sure to have only approved or released documents connected to your different objects. Provide good searches for your users such that they don't find obsolete documents. Etc.

It should also be possible to install a document macro that you connect to the View Document command and which warns the user in a very similar way like the system did in IEE.

If you like you can create an idea/feature request here on IFS Community to get this added back.

Thanks!

@Mathias Dahl , so we have a process in play for new structure revisions. We have 1 drawing per structure. Every time we update a product structure, we update the drawing and the old drawing stays attached to the old revision. When production runs a SO, if they double click on the attachments attached to the materials pane and the document is obsolete, when they get the warning this would indicate to them that the structure has not been updated. Most of our operators interact with documents that are inherited from elsewhere. We run the risk in Aurena that they will open an obsolete document and run an “out of date” shop order.

@anna

> Every time we update a product structure, we update the drawing and the old drawing stays attached to the old revision.

Could you tell us what these "structures" are, show some screen shots perhaps? IFS is a big system and we have many structures 🙂 

> When production runs a SO, if they double click on the attachments attached to the materials pane and the document is obsolete

If production runs a SO (shop order, I think you mean), I assume the SO is very much "fresh" (not old), right? Why does it have an obsolete document revision attached to it?

How are you using the Update Revision attribute on the document attachment/connection?

I think, in your case, you want to set it to Latest Revision, possibly Latest Released. Then, when you create a new revision of the doc or release a revision, you should make sure that the new revision replace the old one on all objects.

Ideally, the only way a user should find an obsolete document is to manually search for it in the Document Revision screen, or similar.

> Most of our operators interact with documents that are inherited from elsewhere.

What does "inherited" mean here? How are the documents inherited? Using Object Connection Transformation? Custom events?

Thanks!

@Mathias Dahl
We strictly use “product structure” when we set up parts and we attach dwg’s to the header product structure. Because we do this, when we create a SO, under the materials tab, any attachments that are on the header of the shop order show on the operations tab as an inherited attachment and yes this is base IFS functionality setup, anything attached to the header of the product structure is “inherited” to certain objects through object connection transformations.

Sometimes, we may create a shop order and in the process of creating a shop order and planning to run it, our R&D department could be going through a product structure revision and updating materials. For this reason, if the SO was created BEFORE the change, planning or R&D would have to go to the SO and update materials

If this isn’t done, and production tries to run the SO AFTER we’ve updated the structure and drawing, operators will go to open the drawing and the message pops up that the drawing is obsolete do you still want to view this document. From the attachments pane, you can’t tell that the drawing is obsolete and this is where our operators access the drawing.

Because we have a new product structure header, even if we set the object connection of the document to “latest released revision” the document will stay attached to the old product structure revision.

Thanks for explaining. Since manufacturing is not my area of expertise I don't understand the flow fully, but my naive observation is that something is not right when the system presents an obsolete document revision to the user. Unless they are explicitly looking at an old SO or other old object or explicitly searching for it.

When the user gets that warning, I assume they close that dialog and try to find the most recent revision. How do they do that? Or what other action to they take based on the warning?