Several of the existing ProjectWise modules have been renamed to make them more consistent and also to reflect some positioning changes. It should be noted that we define a server as something you need a license for, and a service as components that extend the capability of a server but with no additional license required.
Old Name
New Name
ProjectWise Application Server
ProjectWise Integration Server
ProjectWise File Transfer Server
ProjectWise Caching Server
ProjectWise Connection Server
ProjectWise Gateway Service
ProjectWise Index Server
ProjectWise Indexing Service
ProjectWise Authentication Server
ProjectWise User Synchronization Service
ProjectWise Automation Services
ProjectWise Automation Service
ProjectWise Automation Services Client
ProjectWise Automation Service Administrator
ProjectWise Distribution System
ProjectWise Distribution Service
ProjectWise Distribution System Plugin for Digital InterPlot
ProjectWise Distribution Service Plug-in for ProjectWise Plot Server
ProjectWise Distribution System Client
ProjectWise Distribution Service Administrator
Bentley Orchestration Framework
ProjectWise Orchestration Framework Service
N/A
ProjectWise Web Server Components for Web Parts
ProjectWise Web Server
ProjectWise Web Server Components for Web Explorer
ProjectWise Web Explorer Lite
ProjectWise Web Explorer
InterPlot Organizer
ProjectWise Plot Organizer
Digital InterPlot / InterPlot Server
ProjectWise Plot Server
Bentley Publisher
ProjectWise Publishing Server
ProjectWise Publishing Gateway
ProjectWise Publishing Gateway Service
Bentley Driver Packs
ProjectWise Plot Drivers
Using distributed DGN technology in ProjectWise V8 XM Edition, users can participate in true distributed engineering. ProjectWise users can distribute multiple copies of a DGN document to many users, contractors, or partners at the same time. These users can then edit their copies in parallel and submit them back to ProjectWise, where the changed files are automatically merged into the original DGN with a complete change history.
For users to be able to leverage this distributed technology for a particular DGN document, the datasource must first be enabled for document sharing in ProjectWise Administrator, and the individual document the user wants to export or check out as shared must be marked as shareable in ProjectWise Explorer. Finally, MicroStation V8 XM Edition and ProjectWise Explorer V8 XM Edition (with iDesktop Integration support for MicroStation V8 XM Edition) must be installed on the computer on which the shared export or check out occurs.
For the initial release of ProjectWise V8 XM Edition, distributed DGNs is intended for evaluation and workflow testing only. It is not recommended that this functionality be used in production workflows at this time.
The management of workspaces by ProjectWise has been enhanced to allow the administrator to import workspaces into ProjectWise and define various workspace configuration settings blocks from the datasource. Configuration settings blocks offer improvements over existing workspace profiles by:
Workspace configuration settings blocks, or managed workspaces, are in addition to the existing workspace profile functionality of ProjectWise. You can use one convention exclusively, or you can configure and use both conventions in the same datasource. This is supported with MicroStation/J, MicroStation V8 2004 Edition, and MicroStation V8 XM Edition.
ProjectWise V8 XM Edition introduces the concept of the project in your datasource. While ProjectWise has always enabled you to manage your project documents, you either had to use a single datasource to simulate or represent a project, or more realistically, you used folders to do the job. In ProjectWise Explorer you can now create real projects, which are containers that map one-to-one with real-world projects. ProjectWise projects are designed to complement your existing project management software, by providing a single place to manage and organize documents, data and resources related to a given project. Projects can contain or reference saved searches, documents, folders, components, links to other sources of data, and so on.
ProjectWise Web Server Components for Web Parts lets you add ProjectWise Web Parts to your existing Microsoft SharePoint portal. ProjectWise Web Parts provide users with access to ProjectWise documents, folders, components, and saved searches - all through their existing Microsoft SharePoint portal. Assuming you have added the respective web part to your portal, users can perform document searches, download documents, view document and folder properties, and view and redline documents.
With one installation of ProjectWise Web Server Components for Web Parts, you can create multiple virtual servers, each having a different set of ProjectWise Web Parts, depending on your users' needs, or what you want to present to your users.
Link sets are new in MicroStation V8 XM Edition and are supported in ProjectWise V8 XM Edition. A link set is basically a group of links to other files, models, references, and/or saved views that can be stored in a DGN file or a DGN library.
Link sets are created in ProjectWise automatically when you create link sets (in MicroStation) in existing ProjectWise documents, or when you run the Scan for References Files and Link Sets wizard on newly imported DGN files that contain link sets. In ProjectWise Explorer, link sets and their links display in the Link Sets tree under the project in which the link set exists. Any link sets that exist in documents that are not in any project are displayed in the main Link Sets tree under the Documents root folder.
You can expand any Link Sets tree to display all the link sets in that ProjectWise project, and the specific links in each set. Since link sets are stored in ProjectWise documents and contain links to other ProjectWise documents, right-clicking an item in the Link Set tree is the same as right-clicking a document in the documents window and therefore opens the same right-click menu. The options enabled on this menu depend on your user settings and your permissions for the selected link set or linked document.
The following are some general enhancements to ProjectWise Administrator.
•· Projects - Folder for template projects - Sets the default folder that the Project Creation Wizard in ProjectWise Explorer looks for existing projects, to be used as templates for creating new projects.
Storage areas are required before you can create folders (and therefore create documents) in your datasource. Creation of the initial storage area used to be included on the Data Import Wizard, which was an optional part of datasource creation.
The creation of an initial storage area is now a mandatory part of creating a datasource. To facilitate this, storage area creation has been moved up from the Data Import Wizard to the Create Administrator dialog box. This dialog box, now called the Create Administrator and Storage dialog box, opens shortly after you start creating tables in the datasource, but before ODS tables are created in the database (this is because the ODS tables require a storage area).
You can now add attributes to and remove attributes from an existing environment in ProjectWise Administrator. Also, environments are now an optional part of the datasource.
You can now delete a state from a workflow even when that state has documents in it. To make this happen, upon deletion you must select another state in the workflow to put the documents in. Also, you can now rearrange states or add states to a workflow that is currently associated to a folder in ProjectWise Explorer. To see the change in ProjectWise Explorer, you must log out of the datasource containing the workflow folder, then log back in.
The following are some general enhancements to ProjectWise Explorer.
A progress indicator has been added to show users the progress of various ProjectWise Explorer operations, including:
Since it is now possible to have a datasource that has no environments, you can now create a folder that has no environment assigned to it. This is done by setting the Environment option to <none> on the Folder Properties dialog box. Note that you can set can the Environment option to <none> whether or not any environments exist in the datasource.
In ProjectWise Explorer, you can now right-click in the address bar when a document, folder, or component is selected, and choose either Copy URL or Copy URN, which can then be pasted as a shortcut somewhere outside of ProjectWise. When you click a shortcut that's a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), the item is found in ProjectWise using the item's datasource path. When you click a shortcut that's a URN (Uniform Resource Name), the item is found in ProjectWise using the item's GUID.
Once you choose Copy URL or Copy URN, you can paste the item as plain text or as a link into some document or file outside of ProjectWise - for example, inside the body of a Microsoft Outlook email message or Microsoft Word document. If pasted as a link, clicking on the link opens ProjectWise Explorer V8 XM Edition on your computer (if not already open), prompts you to log in (if not already logged in) to the datasource containing the item, and then finally takes you to the item. You can also paste the link into your Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer address bar, as well as the Run dialog box (Windows Start > Run).
If you paste a URL to document, folder, or component as plain text, you will see the entire datasource path to the item, just as it appears in the address bar in ProjectWise Explorer. When you paste a URN to a document, folder, or component as plain text, you will see the item's GUID instead of the full datasource path to the item.
Until now, the columns that display in ProjectWise Explorer's documents window and in various document selection dialog boxes were controlled by custom views that each user created for themselves in ProjectWise Explorer. These views were saved on the ProjectWise Explorer computer on which they were created.
In ProjectWise V8 XM Edition, users can still create their own personal views in ProjectWise Explorer, but now these views are saved in the ProjectWise database, making users' personal views available to them no matter what ProjectWise Explorer computer they use to log in to their datasource. In addition, administrators can create global views from either ProjectWise Explorer or ProjectWise Administrator, for all users to use in a given datasource. When assigning views to folders and projects, users can then choose from available global and personal views.
The Organizer dialog box has been renamed Local Document Organizer, and with it come several enhancements:
The Check In dialog box that opens when closing an exclusively checked out document has been enhanced to let users check in the document, update the server copy of the document, free the document, or simply close the document without performing any action on it. If the user decides to check in the document,
they can optionally choose to create a new version of the document on check in. This new version will contain the latest changes made to the document. If comments are either required or optional for checking in / updating, the dialog box will contain a Comment tab for users to enter their change comments.
If a user has added comments on previous check ins, they can also select from a dropdown list box containing their previously entered comments.
Selecting a checked out document in ProjectWise Explorer and choosing Document > Check In checks in the document with no additional prompts, or if comments are required or optional, the standard audit trail Check In dialog box opens for you to enter comments before check in.
By default, choosing File > Save in an integrated, ODMA-compliant application, such as Microsoft Word, now saves the changes locally, instead of directly to the ProjectWise server as it did in previous versions.
Managed tables allow MicroStation users to utilize the underlying relational database of ProjectWise to store attribute data.
The following are the new users settings added for ProjectWise V8 XM Edition.
This setting allows administrators to control when a client's or service's connection to the ProjectWise Integration Server expires. If the user setting, Allow user to change general settings, is also on, then the user will be able to change their default setting for this after they log in to a datasource in ProjectWise Explorer. Options are:
This setting is for use with ProjectWise Web Server Components for Web Parts, to simulate single sign on for users using ProjectWise Web Parts. When this setting is on, it authorizes this user to request passwords for other users who are connecting to a datasource from a ProjectWise Web Part, when those other users are attempting to log in with their ProjectWise / Windows domain account. For this setting to work, you must also go to the computer on which ProjectWise Web Server Components for Web Parts is installed and specify that this user is the delegate user.
When this setting is on, dragging a document or folder from ProjectWise Explorer onto the desktop creates a shortcut using a URN (Uniform Resource Name) link. URN links find the item in the datasource using the item's GUID. When this setting is off, dragging a document or folder from ProjectWise Explorer onto the desktop creates a shortcut using a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) link. URL links find the item using the item's datasource path. If you open the shortcut's Properties dialog box, you will see what kind of link was created by examining the Target field on the Shortcut tab. If the shortcut uses a URN link, you will see the item's GUID in the Target field. If the shortcut uses a URL link, you will see the datasource path to the document or folder in the Target field.
When this setting is on, the user can free documents they have checked out or exported.
When this setting is on, the user can turn on or off the Shareable setting that is on the Document Properties dialog box for a V8 DGN document. For this setting to have any effect, document sharing must also be enabled at the datasource level in ProjectWise Administrator.
When this setting is on, the user can turn on or off the Shareable documents setting that is on the Folder Properties dialog box. For this setting to have any effect, document sharing must also be enabled at the datasource level in ProjectWise Administrator.
When this setting is on, shareable documents will always be checked out as shared when the user selects a shareable V8 DGN document and chooses Document > Open.
This group of user settings has been added to accompany the new workspace management features.
This group of user settings has been added to give users permissions to work with projects.
If necessary you can install ProjectWise Explorer or ProjectWise Administrator V8 XM Edition along side an existing installation of ProjectWise Explorer or ProjectWise Administrator from a previous version (2004 Edition or V8.1). The new installer will detect the previous version if one exists, and if there is a conflict with the installation location, you will not be able to proceed until you change the installation path of ProjectWise Explorer or Administrator V8 XM Edition. Once installed, use the previous version to connect to previous version datasources, and use the V8 XM Edition version to connect to V8 XM Edition datasources.
Once the new version is installed, it will be the active version of that module. When you want to use a previously installed version of ProjectWise Explorer or ProjectWise Administrator, you may need to run a command line switch ("...\ProjectWise\bin\versionSwitch.vbs") that sets that version as the active version. When you are finished using the previously installed version of ProjectWise Explorer or ProjectWise Administrator, you can switch V8 XM Edition back to the active version. For the most part, both versions of ProjectWise Explorer and ProjectWise Administrator can be used interchangeably without running the switch. Mainly it is an issue of iDesktop Integration and the ProjectWise Network Configuration Utility that requires the switching back and forth.
Network load balancing is a clustering technology included with Windows Server 2003. It offers to have multiple computers on the network acting as a single server. Each server in the cluster is fully self-contained, which means it should be able to function without any other in the cluster. If a node in the cluster fails, network load balancing automatically redirects incoming requests to the remaining nodes. If you take a node in the cluster offline for maintenance, you can use network load balancing to allow existing client sessions to be completed before taking the node offline. Network load balancing is also capable of weighting requests, which allows you to mix high-powered servers with legacy servers and ensure all hardware is efficiently utilized.
Network Load Balancing is used to provide high availability for applications that scale out horizontally, such as Web servers, proxy servers, and other services that need client requests distributed across nodes in a cluster.
A new user setting exists in ProjectWise V8 XM Edition called User Credential Expiration Policy. This setting is used to control when a user's connection to the datasource will expire, once logged in.
For Distribution Service and Automation Service users creating new jobs, this user setting must be set to No Expiration. Also, if you have any existing pre-V8 XM Edition job definitions, the user whose credentials are stored in the job definition must likewise be a user with the User Credential Expiration Policy set to No Expiration. This is to ensure that if a job is running with that user's credentials, the job will be able to run through without interruption.
To be able to create new jobs, all you need to do is make sure that the user creating the job has the User Credential Expiration Policy setting set to No Expiration. To be able to run existing pre-V8 XM Edition jobs, you have two options:
To reassign existing jobs, Distribution Service Administrator and Automation Service Administrator both provide a tool that first shows you all of the users who have credentials stored in job definitions, and then lets you search and replace all instances of that user with a user you know to have the User Credential Expiration Policy set to No Expiration.
For ProjectWise V8 XM Edition, a Trusted Servers list has been added to the dmskrnl.cfg file on the ProjectWise Integration Server computer. This list is used by ProjectWise Distribution Service and ProjectWise Automation Service, and also by ProjectWise Web Server Components for Web Parts when single-sign on is used. If you implement Distribution Service or Automation Service at your site, the Trusted Servers list must be configured to include the IP addresses of all computers running Distribution Service / Automation Service software, including Distribution Service / Automation Service Administrator. If you are using ProjectWise Web Server Components for Web Parts and you happen to be using single-sign on with it, then you need to add to the list of Trusted Servers the IP address of the computer on which ProjectWise Web Server Components for Web Parts is installed.
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