We are soon to go live with EPDM, however, I need to see if I can make the ECP (Engineering change proposal) process more user friendly. Unfortunately we did not purchase any EPDM collaborator licenses, only CAD editor for designers and then viewers for everyone else.
Anyone must be able to raise an ECP using a viewer license. The only way to do this from what we could tell was to include a ECP transition in our workflow where the user can enter details of their change request in the transition comments section.
At first it seemed like this could work, however, it seems like it could be a problem in future. There is not an obvious way in which we can "package" the associated files to that specific change request. ie. If there are multiple users changing the state of multiple files to Change request, the person responsible for approving the change request has no easy way to see all the files related to a specific ECP.
Does anyone perhaps have a suggestion of how we can group files associated to a change request?
Is it possible to have an ECP variable which is automatically written to during the state change with a serial number? That way perhaps the person responsible for approving the request could then filter by ECP number?
Hi Wayne, is your ECP an actual document? such as a word or excel document?
Most times when my customers have enquired about ECP/ECN processes, they have a ECP document.
You can then create a EPDM template which uses this document as a source and creates a new file everytime the template is run, places it in the vault, names it according to rules or serial numbers you set up. You can then attach files to it, using the Paste as reference functionality within EPDM.
Normally people would have two workflows, one for their CAD files, and one for the ECP documents. You can even name transitions within the workflows the same, so that as you "release" the ECP document, the associated CAD files are "released" as well.
I hope this helps, let me know if oyu have any questions.
Thanks
Prasad