PLC Solutions Drawing/Document Management System. Getting Started Preliminary Manual Revision D

Transcription

1 PLC Solutions Pty Ptd 25 Maitland St, PO Box 173 Muswellbrook PLC Solutions Drawing/Document Management System Getting Started Preliminary Manual Revision D System Concept... 2 User Rolls... 2 User Roll Contributor Roll Manager Roll... 3 Basic Use of the System... 3 Menu Bar... 4 Site Selection Box... 4 Document Details Section... 4 Document Number... 4 Vendor Number... 4 Keywords... 4 Limiting the Number of Search Results Refining the Search... 5 Category and Sub Category... 5 Document Types... 5 Document Status... 5 Show all Revisions... 5 Maximum results to return... 5 Search Results Message... 6 Apply Filters... 6 Reset All Filters... 6 Filters... 6 Reset Document Filters Only... 6 Search Results... 7 Who does the Markups... 9 Approval/Rejection Process... 9

2 System Concept The concept of my system is to give people quick access to their drawings and documents and provide a facility to revise them. This access needs to be simple and intuitive with no special software or training is needed for basic user of the system. I have tried to design the system so that someone with basic experience using the internet can find a drawing, view and print it. To facilitate this there is a pdf version of every document. All a user needs is an internet connection, Internet Explorer (or Firefox) and Acrobat Reader. Further to this if the drawing is found to be incorrect I provide a mark-up service. The system is primarily intended for organising client s technical drawings. However it can cope with almost all file formats. User Rolls Users can be allocated different rolls. The roll allocated to a user determines what that user can and cannot do. To maintain the simple concept there are three levels of user. The basic roll is simply called a User above that is a Contributor and above that a Manager. User Roll. This roll is intended for the base user. It gives access to Download and print out only the pdf version of documents. Download and print out superseded revisions of a document. Mark a document as being Under Change if it is found to be incorrect. A User cannot Access the original editable version of a document Remove the Under Change Status from a document. Update/Revise documents. Contributor Roll. A contributor is someone who can contribute documents to the system. This roll should only be allocated to a trusted person. It is assumed that a contributor has the training, knowledge and software to be able to modify a document and put it back into the system. A contributor can Download the original and pdf versions of documents. Mark and Clear a document as being Under Change Access the Document Detail page Modify Descriptions and Filters (via Document Detail Page) Clear from being Under Change (via Document Detail Page) Page 2 of 9

3 Add new document for a manager s approval. Upload a revised document for a manager s approval. A contributor cannot Add and remove users from the system. Change a user s roll. Delete Documents Approve Revised or new documents Manager Roll. A manager can do all of the previous as well as Add/remove users from the system. Delete Documents Export Metadata (Document Listing) Basic Use of the System. After logging on, the user is presented with the Basic Dashboard. Basic Dashboard Page 3 of 9

4 The screen consists of a number of feature areas. It is designed to work logically from top to bottom and left to right. Menu Bar At the top of the page is the menu bar. The items on the menu bar change with the users roll. Site Selection Box The first option is the Site Selection Box. This is for selecting the Site or Mine. The majority of users will only have one site available to them. However, if an employee services a number of sites, he can be given access to all of them. Document Details Section This can be considered the Basic Search area. There are seven options here. There is no need to use them all. It may only be necessary to use one of them. Possibly none Document Number This is used to search for the Mine allocated number. Vendor Number This is used to search for the Vendor allocated number. Keywords This is a Text Search. This means it searches for matching strings of characters or numbers in the documents description. It searches only the document description. This searches for a whole word or number (or part of a word or number). More than one word or number, separated by spaces, can be typed into this search box. The system will search for documents that contain ALL of the nominated words. This may be all that is needed to find the document you are looking for. You can type the entire word or any part of it. Then by pressing the enter key or clicking the Apply Filters button, you will initiate a search. Limiting the Number of Search Results. When searching for documents the idea is to have the search return as few matches as possible. If you searched for a word such as the you may find that there are 1000 documents that contain the. There is an option box called Maximum results to return at the bottom of this area. This is used to stop the system displaying large numbers of matches. Ideally when you search for something you would like find exactly what you want. This is rarely the case. Inevitably there are other documents that match the search criteria you specify. If the number of matches exceeds this number, no matches are displayed. A message under this box tells you how many matches were found. Page 4 of 9

5 The reason for this. If too many matches are found it is pointless displaying them. You need to refine your search. You can type a larger or smaller number in here if you wish. It initially comes from the users profile. Refining the Search Category and Sub Category This is simply a method restricting the amount of documents you search through. The documents are stored on the computer HDD in Folders and Sub Folders. This is no different to how you would probably do it yourself. The main thing is that there can only be two levels of folders. The first being the Category and those in it are the Sub Category. Each folder groups drawings using some site specific logic and within that folder are subfolders where these main groups are divided up even further. So by selecting a Category, you are limiting the search to the files only in that Folder and the Sub Folders in it. By further selecting a Sub Category you limit the search to that Sub Folder only. Document Types Most documents in the system will have an original version in its native format and a pdf version of it. However there may be instances where there is not an original version available only a pdf version. This allows these to be listed. It should not be used much. This has not been fully tested yet. Document Status Normally a document would be up to date and current. However, if it is found to be wrong it can be flagged as being Under Change. A document can be put Under Change by anybody. This alerts other users that somebody has found something is wrong with the drawing. This allows people to locate the documents that are under change. Show all Revisions Normally only the most recent version of a document is listed on the system. By ticking this box it shows any previous revisions of a document as well as the current one. Maximum results to return Explained in Search Results Limiting Page 5 of 9

6 Search Results Message A message appears in red under the Maximum Results To Return box. This message is to keep the user informed as to why any results may have not been displayed. Usually it is because there are more matches that nominated by the Maximum Results To Return value. Apply Filters This does as it says however it is only necessary when using the Document Types Document Status and Show all Revisions Reset All Filters Clears all of the filters. Filters This is a second way of identifying documents independently of the Category and Sub Category they are in. Look at them as a Label that attached to the document. There can be different coloured labels that immediately identify the documents into groups. Each label can have different information on it. This further identifies the documents. Done correctly this can make things extremely easy to find. The good thing about the filters is that they can bypass spelling errors in a title block. Not all documents need to have a filter Reset Document Filters Only Clears all of the filters on the Right Hand side of the screen but not those on the left. Page 6 of 9

7 Search Results Page showing results of a search The results of a search are listed under the search boxes and buttons. There are a number of columns. Tick Box For selecting single or multiple documents Document Number The Document (Drawing) number. This is hyperlinked (for those above a User roll) and if clicked will bring up a window showing the Document Details. On the detail page, Provision is made to change the database information on a document. All previous revisions are listed. The document history is listed Page 7 of 9

8 Document Detail Page example Revision The Revision number of the document Description The Description of the document For drawings, this comes from the title block and any other specifically added information. For other documents is the Description given by the person entering it into the system. Document Revision Status Page 8 of 9

9 The Revision Status will be Current unless you have chosen to show all revisions and more than one revision exists. See next section Under Change By Under Change By The latest revision of a document is always Current. Even if somebody has marked it as being Under Change If identified as not being correct ( Under Change ) by someone it is still the latest revision of a drawing and as such is still the Current version. If a document is Under Change it is indicated to the user by the fact that somebody s name is in this list. This name is hyperlinked to give the persons details so they can be contacted of necessary. Who does the Markups My opening statement was The concept of my system is to give people quick access to their drawings and documents and provide a facility to revise them. If you already have someone who does your drawing markups, I am not trying to exclude them. Existing drafting service providers can be trained to download, modify and return revised drawings to the system. Approval/Rejection Process When a document is modified, it is posted back onto the site to be approved. This is a special status. Until approved, the document is invisible to all other than the approver and the contributor. The approver gets a list of documents waiting approval. If approved, it immediately becomes available to all users. If rejected it goes back to the Contributor for modifications & resubmission until the document is approved. Page 9 of 9