PW Storage Question

Glenn,

 Thanks for the response. You have to understand the frustration. Even the details you supplied could have been put in the SR and alleviated a lot of trouble. We have a number of emails that say that because of SAP, a SR cannot be closed without notification and then it happens, no notification. Very confusing to say the least. Just a little communication would have been great, but closing the ticket and saying, "it's not our problem.." is never helpful. Even the fact that it was customized would have been nice to know. It could have been put in the SR before it was closed. We are just asking for some communication, not sure that is asking too much?

Steve

When I am wrong, I will admit it. I did find that in the closure, the customized application was mentioned. Now if I had been notified of the closure, I would  have found that...

Hi Steve,
I will fill in the details in order to clarify the situation. The application mentioned below by Ron was a paid customization that was created for another user in XM.  It was never part of the released software. All customization are built and supported by our Professional Services team. When we are in that situation users are directed to their AM to check on availability, which is why you were instructed to contact your Account Manager. I did some research and as part of the escalation process it was provided back to your Account Team. As you mentioned in the posting, he is on vacation, so I am sure that is why you were not contacted. That said, I talked to your AM today and I understand that you guys have already spoken this morning.

Over the past few days the application has been reviewed, and as of now Bentley will be able to make this customization available for V8i. As soon as your AM is back the details of obtaining it can be finalized.

If you have further questions, please give me a call and I will provide any other information that you need.

Thank you,

Glenn

 This has been a HUGE nightmare! All the trouble makes us want to dump ProjectWise all together. Our Account Manager filed a SR but it was closed without any notification at ALL. Didn't know why they close things without notification. I guess we don't pay enough fees to warrant communication. Lots of unnecessary frustration.

Seems no one at Bentley wants to stand up and take responsibility or give us answers, other than Ron below, they just keep telling us to go to another department and then another for this mystic V8i version.  I digress, since there is something that works for XM but not V8i, what is the reason for moving to V8i? Should we just forget about V8i and install XM? I don't understand the move backwards. Anybody from Bentley care to explain???

Our AM is enjoying a well deserved vacation. He is the hardest working AM Bentley has...

Is there anyone else I could contact to get this ported to V8i?

SteveMeyer:

Thanks for the responses. I think we are going to pursue the automated services approach. It's odd that Bentley doesn't have a solution for this situation. I can't believe we are the only ones dealing with this. It would be reasonable to think that they could sell more PW if they could help users out with real life situations. Thanks again for the help. 

You are certainly not alone in working this way, That is why the automation services plugin was created. Product ranges are too diverse for us to be able to cater to and integrate with every product and this is really why the plugin was born.

Ron

Thanks for the responses. I think we are going to pursue the automated services approach. It's odd that Bentley doesn't have a solution for this situation. I can't believe we are the only ones dealing with this. It would be reasonable to think that they could sell more PW if they could help users out with real life situations. Thanks again for the help. 

Distro Services doesn't solve his duplicate data issue.  But, if duplicate data is your only hope, here's an idea or two:

- You could grant them web access and have them pull as required to their system until they get full time PW access.

- If you can live with duplicate data, you should determine what they (the rest of the world outside of Cartography) really needs.  Cartography is probably working on Huge Tracks of Land (I had to thrown in the Python Reference), so they are probably working on huge Mr. Sid or TIFF files?  (Assumption, here)

So how about you publish those files to iTIFF or smaller?  At least it wouldn't be so huge of a disk bite.

- If you really want to get spooky, you could probably use your Bentley Publisher engine to point to file in ProjectWise and publish out the Images on the fly and use those published images to push the data via MicroStation/J Image Manager or Descartes.  You'd have to find out if you a) MS/J Img. Manger or Descartes did the whole Published IMage thing and b) can you use a XM or greater Bentley Publisher engine to push to J (I think you could)

 

Those are a couple of wacky ideas to think about...

 

Shawn

I'm presenting in the BIM and the MIcroStation track at the MCMC Conference
Kevin van Haaren, all around ProjectWise Wizard, is presenting many ProjectWise sessions
Check http://www.tmcmcmc.org or the MCMC Community here
August 25-26, 2009

Come along for the fun! Learn something while you're at it.

There are various reasons for wanting to work in this mode (managed in PW, unmanaged exports to filesystem). There is an automation services plugin for V8 XM which does this. 1 pw AS job to 1 external folder, 1 external folder to 1 pw folder. Works both ways (it can import and export) and using the automation services backend it can be scheduled to run every x minutes/hours/days/weeks. It has not yet been ported to V8i (no demand). Have a chat with your account manager.

 

Ron

Dear Steve,

 In reading this I still have the feeling this falls in to the catagory "Do not try this at home.."

 If you crate a new version of a document projectwise will rename files and move them to sub directories of the dms folder I am not sure projectwise will "see" changes that "external" users make to files on the fly.

 Trying to be positive ; May be the distibuition service can help to export files automatically when they change this can be triggered by new version - I am not sure the tigger can be set for say file time stamp change and if there is a setting to write the files to harddisk . May be this would give a supported "auto export changes to a given hardisk location" this would split your internal and external users but would not allow external users to change the files ?

 Another dirty option could be to export the files using the export user function regualt by hand (depending on the volume - select all export all).

 I was trying to think of supported soluton - I hope this helps

 

 

 

I understand the risks but it appears we have no other options. We have asked Bentley a number of times what they might recommend to migrate an agency to ProjectWise. In these economic times, we have limited resources. Our Cartography group needs file management just to move away from J. It's a group of 12 people so it is easy enough to move them to PW but in the bigger realm, how do we allow non PW users to get to their data? Duplicate data is always a problem. It's seems easy for others to say that this is unsupported and not recommended but no one from Bentley has offered any other viable solutions. What do you do? Thanks.

Directories/folders in a storage area are hard-coded to follow the naming format of dmsXXXXX. These should not be changed.

If you are using Windows 2008 Server as the OS for your storage area, you may wish to consider  using Windows Symbolic Links to create user-friendly aliases for the dmsXXXXX folders.

Of course, it goes without saying that this is totally unsupported and 100% contrary to how you safely interact with a ProjectWise storage area.

 HTH

Mike

 

I understand the issues with not getting PW benefits. We have to use this office as a test but they produce maps that all other offices at the DOT use. They have an antiquated File Management system that only works with J so we need something.  This is the best solution we have come up with but we are more than willing to listen to other suggestions.

 Is there any way to force PW to use specific names for folders or are the DMS pretty much what we are stuck with? Thanks

If I got it right you just need to set up usual storage area and share it for other users through windows sharing. Other users could map that location as network drive if they want to. I just see several problems: 1) you don't get all benefits PW can give; 2) you will not get project names as in PW what might be inconvinient;

We are attempting to do something that may very well not be possible, but hey, why not ask. We are setting up a testing environment for our Cartography folks. The problem is that their maps need to be available to all users in our agency. Only Cartography will have PW for now so here is my question. Can we set up a location on out network drive that PW has Full control of so it can manage checked in/out files, but other users could have read access to so they can reference the maps? The premise is the the Cartography folks would be able to check out a file and make changes to it but at the same time, if another user needed to reference the file they could. Is this possible and if so, how would we set up that storage area? Thanks in advance.