Most EPDM users are aware that every checked in changes or workflow state changes are tracked in the document’s history and that comments can be entered (or even must be entered if the vault administrator configures it) for each of these activities. This tech tip focuses on a couple of the lesser known aspects of the history dialog and how you can potentially use it more effectively.
Two areas that many users don’t realize are (1) the ability to set labels in the history and (2) the ability to add or change comments for past history.
Administrators can set group permissions to add/remove labels.
With permissions set, users can then add labels to documents.
Labels serve as logical checkpoints or milestones in the document history, making it easier to find what happened at key points during the product life cycle. Labels can also be added at the folder (e.g. project) level and can recursively set this label for all documents within that folder. Finally, labels and history comments can be edited and searched. These capabilities make it far easier to review history and recall key design changes and decisions later on.
Here is a typical history for a document. John creates the original design per the specification defined by Mary who reviews and approves the model edits provided by Steve leading up to initial release at revision A. Mary then specifies an engineering change order that John follows leading to revision B. Along the way, each user adds some comments while making changes and moving the document through the approval workflow. The engineers also put in a few labels to denote milestones during the design process.
You can edit your own comments by highlighted them in the history dialog, making changes, and then clicking the Update button. This is helpful in that it allows you to provide more details that may have been missed before. Note that you cannot change other users’ comments. You can also edit labels in the same manner. Labels can be removed by clearing out the Name field and then clicking the Update button. Note that you can edit and remove anyone’s labels (as well as create them in the first place) if you have permission set through the administration tool.
Here Mary provides a more detailed comment for her rejection of the initial design:
She also removed John’s label for the rubber plate since it did not meet the specification and no longer warrants a label representing a design milestone. This is done by clearing the Name field and clicking Update. The result is the label is removed from the history:
After clicking OK on a delete confirmation dialog, the history is updated:
Both history comments and labels can be searched. Here are searches for “brass” in the comments, returning the model, and for “P-0001” in the label, returning the model, specification, and change order. The P-0001 label was added at the folder level as a final step and was set to recursively update the documents within. Keep in mind the check-boxes for “Search in all versions” in the Name and Location tab, and note the options in the History and Label tabs.
As you can see, for documents which undergo changes typical to a product lifecycle, having a history that includes up-to-date comments and milestone labels helps users search, identify, and understand the process that was followed. Of course real-life product lifecycles are typically much more complex than this example, so we hope these tips will be beneficial.