Cracking the Vault

Login Vault Problem: Vault is not compatible with the following applications

We get more and more reports about the (usually false) error message when you try to login a Vault Server from a client in different versions and editions of Vault:
Vault Professional 201X is not compatible with the following applications on MyVaultServer:

Vault Basic Server 18.0.110
Vault Workgroup Server 18.0.110
Vault Collaboration Server 18.0.110
Vault Professional Server 18.0.110

In this situation you made sure that the edition of the Vault Server (for example Vault Collaboration) does match the edition of the Vault Client (for example Vault Collaboration).

In this situation the communication from Vault Client to the Vault Server via Port 80 is partially blocked/disturbed from another application or a faulty DNS entry in the network.

Following causes/solutions are known to this issue:

-different types of Antivirus programs. To make sure Antivirus is not the problem it needs to be fully uninstalled on Server and Client

-Proxyserver running in the environment

-DNS: change the windows hosts file (on client machine) via notepad and add the ip address and host name. You can find more information on this blogpost.

-Windows Firewall blocks the communicatin between Server and Client

-Another application which is using Port 80 blocks the communication

-(Update 20th June): there is another kind of this error where the IIS worker process consume an unusual amount of memory and as consequence stopps responding. An IISRESET usually solves the problem

Connectivity Problems solved by Editing the Windows hosts File

We had some cases where we had to "manipulate" the windows hosts file to point to the Vault Server with the IPv4 Address (even though a ping to the Server returned the correct ip Address).

Scenarios where it helped:

-it was not possible to login to the Vault Server from one specific client which got the following error message:
Vault Basic 2013 (17.1.16.0) is not compatible with the data management server found on VaultServername
-connection between 2 sites in a workgroup replication fails with error 26

Changing the hosts file
You can usually find the hosts file here:
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

Open the file via notepad and the following line with then ip4 adress on the left side and the Server name of the Vault Server. For example:
192.168.1.1            VaultServername

...and save the host file via notepad.

To effect the changes you might need to reboot your machine (especially on Windows XP machines).

Attention: please be aware that the IPv4 address of the Server might change if the Server uses DHCP.
So you need to update the hosts file to a later time.

Limiting Users Connecting to A Vault Server

In some situations it is necessary to limit the numbers of Users connecting to a Vault Server.

 

This can be achieved in a number of ways, such as using different licence servers for each Vault Server. In this blog article, I am discussing Limiting Web Site Usage by throttling the number of Concurrent Connections.

In Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, on the Default Web Site, in the Advanced Settings, is an expandable node called "Connection Limits". there is a setting "Maximum Concurrent Connections", which in IIS 7.0, has a default setting of "4294967295". Enforcing a non-default setting requires an IISRESET.

Changing this value will limit the number of connections at anyone time to the Vault Server. When the limit is reached, a user will receive a message like this.

"The request failed with HTTP Status 503: Service Unavailable"

Notes 

Each Vault Client application will consume 1 connection. (Example 1 machine with 1x Vault Thick Client and 1x Inventor, runing and logged into Vault, will consume 2 connections)

Logged in but inactive clients release connections, which is then re-acquired following any client-server communication, such as browsing.

When mulitple users are connected to a Vault, the above error message will persist until the total number of connections to the Vault server drops below the defined limit, or the user logs into another Vault Server.

Vault Professional will poll the Vault Server every 5 minutes, see "Vault Licence Release Behaviour"

 

Monitoring Current Connections.

You can use the Windows Performanc Monitor to see the number of users who are connected to the Vault Server using the Web Service\ Current Connections Counter.

The instance selection will depend on if there are other websites running on the same server. For default Vault Server installations, selecting either the "_Total" or "Default Web Site" should be sufficient.

Properties Extraction with Outlook in a Vault 2013/2014 x64 Environment not possible

Currently it is not possible to extract properties from Outlook to Vault 2013/2014 in a full x64 environment (Vault and Server x64 application).

Even if you configured the Outlook integration as described in the Vault Wiki you will get the error message "The selected file did not contain any mappable properties" or "unable to read the contents of the file" if you try to map the Outlook properties to a Vault property.

It would only work if you have Vault Server 2013/2014 and Vault Client 2013/2014 installed on a x32 system.

Autodesk is investigating the issue and plans to address it in a future update.

Update 28th May: updated blog post as the same still applies to Vault 2014

Not possible to Install Vault Office 2013 on German Vault Workgroup 2013

There is currently an issue that it is not possible to install Vault Office 2013 Server on a pure German environment with Vault Workgroup 2013 Server.

The error message during installation is:

Interner Fehler
2715.utils.j1.5AA2B211_895F_4C59_8C52_8133E2F8B9F9

We are not aware of that this issues occurs in other language environments (such as English, Italian, French etc.) or other German Vault Editions (Collaboration 2013, Professional 2013).

Currently we are working with high priority on a solution.

Vault - Sharepoint 2010 Integration: Exported BCS Model can´t be dragged into the BCS Editor

Issue with Vault 201X and Sharepoint 2010:

You select the exported BCS model and drag it into the BCS Editor. However nothing happens.

The issue is usually a localization problem.

Background: Sharepoint is running one language and your operating system is running another language.

When you export the BDC model, SharePoint doesn't put in data for a "default language".

We are working on a fix for the next release.

In the meantime, here is a manual workaround:

1. Figure out the locale ID (LCID) that matches your OS. There are lots of sites that have a list of LCID codes. You need the decimal format. For example, English-US has the value 1033

2. Open the BDCM file in a text editor.

3. Replace the existing LCID values with ones that match the OS. For example, replace LCID="1033" with LCID="1031"

4. Save the file.

5. Drag and drop into the BDC Model Editor. Everything should work as expected.

Thanks to Doug Redmond for providing this workaround!

This was originally posted here in the forum.

SP1 of Vault 2013: What does it include?

Usually a servicepack such as SP1 for Vault 2013 cotains all previous hotfixes.

However this applies only for global hotfixes (something which is fixed for all Vault languages).

Hotfixes which only applies to a specific localized Vault environment (such as German, English, French, Italian etc.) are usually not part of the a servicepack!

Esepecially this German hotfix Unable to invoke the Vault Log In dialog from Inventor Task Scheduler is not part of Vault 2013 SP1!

So if you experience the problem in German Task Scheduler which was described in the previous blog post after installing SP1 of Vault 2013 please make sure you apply this hotfix.

New Inventor instance is opened when opening another File from Vault

Situation: You already have Inventor open and you open another Inventor file from the Vault.

Issue: a new instance of Inventor is starting

Following solution:

1. disable UAC (User Account Control)
-Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\User Accounts  - UserAccountControlSettings -- Never notify

2. Delete registry information from current Inventor version.
-Open the registry
-Make copy of the following tree (export as *.reg file):
-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\Current Version
-delete all the subfolders in from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Inventor but leave the (Default) String (Type REG_SZ) in the root

3. Reregister Inventor:
-Login in Windows with a local Administrator and open Inventor
-There is a message asking for reregistering Inventor. Say yes.
- In the registry there should be now underneath HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\Current Version the current registry information.

Now the issue should be solved and if opening an Inventor file from Vault no new inventor instance should startup.

SP1 of Vault 2013 and SP2 of Vault 2012 released

I am happy to announce that the SP1 for Vault 2013 and SP2 of Vault 2012 is now released!

Highlight besides many fixes is the reintroducing of Purge.

Please read the instructions in the readme carefully about Purge.

In the readme there is for example mentioned how to enable Purge and how to manually repairing references

Downloads:

Vault 2013 SP1                   Readme Vault 2013 SP1

Vault 2012 SP2                   Readme Vault 2012 SP2

Error 155 Illegal Null Parameter during Assign Item in Vault Pro 2013

In Vault Pro 2012 we also had the issue with the error 155 during assign item and the solution was mentioned in this article Error 155 When Trying To Assign Item on Vault Pro 2012.

However if you have this error "Error 155 Illegal Null Parameter" in Vault Pro 2013 the solution mentioned here (checkout file, rebuild all in Inventor, check back in) usually doesn´t help.

You will need to reinstall the Vault Server 2013.

Before this you should be sure that you have a valid backup of your Vault.

Steps to reinstall the Vault Server:

1. Go to Control Panel

2. Go to Programs and Features

3. Go to Autodesk Vault Professional 2013 (Server) and choose "Uninstall/Change"

4. On the Setup Pick "Repair or Reinstall"

5. Select Reinstall and start the operation

If this was successful the issue with error 155 should be resolved.

Update 28th February: the reinstall option will only recreate and re register the dlls in the Vault Server program folder and won´t do anything with the database!

As consequence you would have to perform this operation on all sites when using Workgroup replication.