Cracking the Vault

New Videos - Autodesk Vault and Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Integration

Good News! New integration between Autodesk Vault 2012 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has been announced. Read the press release here. http://bit.ly/mnFaGq

via underthehood-autodesk.typepad.com

Vault Webclient asks you to download the file instead of showing the DWF Preview

When working with Autodesk Vault Webclient for Collaboration/Professional you notice that on some situations you were asked to download the file instead of showing the DWF preview in the Webclient:

You are also sure that a DWF exists to this file when logging in to the Vault Explorer.

You can see the root cause of the issue if you show hidden Files in Vault Explorer (Menu Tools - Options -  tick the option "show hidden files"):

You see that the DWF of your File (Inventor Part in this case) has beend assigned to the Category as well. This works as long as you keep the status in "Work in Progress". If you change the status of your Inventor part the associated DWF won´t change the status automatically (in this case TestDownloadWebclient.ipt is set to Released while the associated DWF keeps in Status "Work in Progress").

Solution is to make sure that DWF is not used in any Category.

Disaster Recovery, its not a "taboo" subject, talk about it with your Reseller

No-one likes to imagine the worst case. Anyone who has been involved in writing their Will, will know the questions that the lawyer asks you are very painful to consider. You can either think about them and find possible answers or just deny it will ever happen.

For many, this has become a subject they just don't want to think about. They prefer to ignore the possiblilty of a major Vault Server failure, "hoping" that it all works out, and denying the existence of possible problems, I think most would agree hope and denial are not sensible business strategies. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you will probably never experience a problem. But, if you don't know the answer to the following questions, then it is time to pick up the phone and start a conversation with your Autodesk reseller.

• How important is the data stored within your Vault to your company?
• Do you have a backup strategy tailored to the needs of your business?
• When was the last time your Vault was backed up?
• When was the last time you restored one of the those backups to a test server?
• In the imminent upgrade, what will you do if you encounter a problem you cannot quickly recover from?
• Do you have a failover strategy?
• What will you do if the server hardware dies suddenly?
• Have you documented a disaster recovery strategy, so that if anything goes wrong, anyone can pick up the document and get your Vault Server back up and running, even if you are not available?

It is far better to ask these questions whilst you are in a healthy state instead of reading this when you are in a production down state. It will be too late then.

There are many many more questions you can ask yourself that are only relevant to your business. Most of them begin with "What if...." if you dont know the answers, you are taking unnecessary risks.

Any Autodesk Vault Reseller should be able to offer you a service whereby they engage you in creating a disaster recovery strategy that also encompasses prevention, maintenance, health checks, and makes sure you have a plan in case something unexpected happens.

Of course this comes from personal and recent experience where a customer suffered significant data loss because they didn't have a strategy. The names have been changed to protect the "not so" innocent.

With my tongue firmly in my cheek, "hope" is not a valid business strategy.....

Splitting Vault Licences

As per a previous posting on how Vault licencing works, one question for the FAQ section is how to split licences so that a certain group of users are always guarranteed to have a certain licence.

It should be understood that its not possible to reserve licences in the paid for versions of vault, but it is possible to have multiple Vault Servers logging into their own Licence Server.

 

Remote SQL is only supported for Vault Collaboration and Vault Professional

 

Why Isn't 64-bit SQL 2008 Express installed on a 64-bit Operating System

You may notice that if you install Vault x 2012 on one of the supported 64-bit operating systems, that it installs 32-bit SQL Express. 64-bit SQL 2008 Express is supported for Vault as listed in the System Requirements.

The reason 64-bit SQL 2008 Express it is not installed by default is because Autodesk tries to minimise the overall size of the of the software. A large number of customers with download limits obtain the software via the Subscription Center. To reduce the download time of Vault Server and minminse the impact on download limits, a decision was made to only include the 32-bit version of SQL Express 2008 with the setup files for Vault x 2012.

To quote the Vault Readme

"ADMS installs 32-bit SQL 2008 Express if SQL is not already installed on the system. If 64-bit SQL 2008 Express is desired, download 64-bit SQL 2008 Express from Microsoft and follow the directions in the Vault Advanced Configuration Guide for installing SQL before ADMS."

Error Reports...Its A Number Game

No one likes to see them. They normally happen at the most incandescently infuriating time and indeed Software vendors don't like to admit that software can sometimes be...slightly less than perfect. Crashes are a fact of life and the reality is that no software is ever perfect. When you experience a crash you are normally, ungracefully dumped back to the desktop, resulting in one of these....

 

All Autodesk software users acknowledge that software is not perfect by accepting the End User License Agreeement (I know you probably never read it :-) ).

However, Error Reports are a fundamental basic tool to allow all software developers to improve the quality of their products. Not only do they provide precise information as to what failed and commands were executed immediately prior to the crash, but they provide invaluable statistical information to development  so they know what issues to fix first based on the numbers submitted. If they get 500 reports from one issue, they will fix that, before addressing the issue reported only 10 times. Simple.

There is a tendency to think that if you send the Error Report, it will disappear into a black hole and the issue will never get fixed. My personal experience is the complete opposite. This is true both of Autodesk products and other vendors like Microsoft. Indeed I have used an erroneous email from home (no way for anyone to tell my name or who I work for) to send an Error Report to Autodesk only to be contacted days afterwards by a QA engineer asking for more information on how to reproduce it. Other times, I have received an email back saying that the issue is fixed in a public hotfix or service pack.

So, if you experience one of the above error reports, and it occurs regularly, it really is in everyones best interests to click "Send Report" every single time.

Autodesk Vault Webclient doesn´t show Items

When working with Autodesk Vault Webclient for Vault Collaboration/Professional 2011/2012 you have recognized that your items of the Vault are not shown:

 

You see that there is a status bar "Loading" inside the Webclient which doesn´t finish.

This can happen if you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 which is currently not supported in Autodesk Vault 2011 and Autodesk Vault 2012 and any earlier Release of Autodesk Vault!
To the supported Browsers of the Autodesk Vault Web Client see also the Autodesk Vault System Requirements in the Readmes of your Vault Version.

However we got some reports of customers who were able to get it working with Internet Explorer 9 by loading the Page with the compatibility View of IE9 (on IE9 menu Tools go the option "Compatibility View"):

Error 29001. Vault Management error: IIS 7.0 Detailed Error - 500.19 - Internal Server Error

During the installation of Vault Professional 2012 (Server) you can sometimes get this error

 

Error 29001. Vault Management error: IIS 7.0 Detailed Error - 500.19 - Internal Server Error.

To address this issue....

 

 Browse to the IIS configuration files located in "C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config"

Open the file applicationHost.config file in Notepad and modify the line <section name="requestFiltering" overrideModeDefault="Deny" /> 

 

 

 

 

 to read < section name="requestFiltering" overrideModeDefault="Allow" /> 

 Save the file and close Notepad.

 

 

PDF:- Unable to view the file selected. Click the 'Open' button to view with an external viewer.

If you are running Vault in a 32-bit environment and trying to view PDF's you may see this message appear in the Preview pane.

 

"Unable to view the file selected. Click the 'Open' button to view with an external viewer."

The Vault preview mechanism is the same as used by Outlook 2007 and 2010. Both use a PDF preview handler which is controlled by Adobe themselves. A discussion on this topic can be found here.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/759361?decorator=print&displayFullThread=true

Until Adobe fix this issue in 32 bit windows, the only workarounds are to either use a 64 bit OS or open the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader itself.

How To... Troubleshoot AUTODESKVAULT SQL 2008 Installation Errors

If you see a message in the "Autodesk Vault <version> (Server) Setup.log"

2011/6/14:10:47:55 Administrator HOWDENFP1 Install ADMS System Check Succeeded 
2011/6/14:10:48:43 Administrator HOWDENFP1 Install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express SP1 (AUTODESKVAULT) Failed Installation aborted, Result=1603

This is not an issue with the Vault installation per se, but with Microsoft SQL.

There are some really good tips on solving this yourself from Microsoft here....

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955396

And

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143702.aspx