Hi folks,

We recently deployed PDM Workgroup and have been having pretty good success with the transition.

One thing I'm wondering is how to deal with end-of-lifecycle documents. We have a simple lifecycle chain that goes Prototype -> Production -> Obsolete. Prototype parts are revisioned 01 to 99, Production A to Z, and Obsolete has a single revision called OBS.

What I want to do is to hide obsolete documents from the standard vault view, since they add clutter. So far I can think of two ways to do this:

1. Remove users' read access to files in the Obsolete lifecycle stage through the Lifecycle tab in VaultAdmin
2. Manually move Obsolete files to a separate project called Obsolete (kind of like the Trash method of deleting)

The problem with approach #1 is that making a doc obsolete is actually a two-stage process for us; first the document's lifecycle is changed to Obsolete, then its revision is bumped to OBS (BTW, is there a way to make the latter happen automatically?). Problem is, once the lifecycle changes to Obsolete the user no longer has access to the document in order to bump its revision.

I also hesitate to implement method #2, since doing so loses the part's original project. It's not a big deal but we do see it as a drawback.

So... any best practice recommendations here? In the end I just want to keep the vault view tidy and free of old (obsolete) stuff, while still maintaining the ability to resurrect old parts if necessary.

Thanks

- rdo