3 Using the Agile Drive

You can access Agile Drive using Windows Explorer, listed in My Network Places. When prompted, log in using your Agile PLM username and password.

For quick access to Agile Drive, create a shortcut on your desktop or create its menu item in the Start Menu.

Note:

Access to Agile Drive folders and files depends on the roles and privileges assigned to you in Agile PLM Administrator.

MS Vista 64-bit and Windows XP 64 are not supported because Microsoft does not ship the required drivers. To open a folder, click and select Open.

Searching for Agile Objects

You can search for Agile PLM objects using Agile's canned (predefined) queries, such as Global Searches and Personal Searches. A canned search query appears as a folder in Agile Drive, and the Search Results appear as folders within this folder.

Example 3-1 Searching for Agile Objects

To perform a search called Unreleased Changes That I Created, navigate to the corresponding Folder. All unreleased changes created, appear as folders within this Search folder. Navigate to the desired unreleased change folder to see the affected items and its attachments, if any.

Search Limitations

Any search that requires user inputs or search criteria is not a feature of Agile Drive.

Example 3-2 Search Limitations

You cannot search for a specific ECO, say ECO25000. To search for specific searches, you need to use the Explorer feature of file or folders search.

To search for specific folders in (Windows XP):

Click Start > Search > For Files or Folders...
In the Search Results window, click All Files and Folders. Specify the search criteria in the search field(s).
In the Look in drop-down list, select Browse. A Browse for Folder window pops up.
Expand My Network Places and select the Agile Drive.
Click OK to return to the Search Results window.
Click Search button. The specified object appears as a folder in the Search results.

Working with Files and Folders

You can perform the following actions on files and folders in Agile Drive.

Note:

Due to limitations of the client Operating System, Agile Drive error messages do not appear correctly on the client side.

Note:

Intermittent failures can occur while adding multiple files on MAC OSX finder.

How to	Steps
View or read a file	In an Agile Drive folder, double-click a file to read or view. Alternately, select Open from the right-click menu. The system opens the file in its associated application. For example, when you double-click a MS Word document file in an Agile folder, the system invokes MS Word, which opens this document in editable mode. You can only open the MS Office files directly from Agile Drive provided MS Office or MS Office Viewer application is installed on your system. For every other file type, you need to drag and drop the file (or copy the file and paste it) to the desktop or local drive and open it with its associated application.
Save a file	In Agile Drive, you can save a file in two ways: Save a new file in an Agile Drive folder directly: Create a file in an application and click Save (or Ctrl+S). In the Save window, select and save it in the desired Agile Drive folder. Save As: After editing an existing file in the Agile Drive folder, you can only save it using the Save As option due to the versioning aspect of Agile PLM. Use the Save As function to copy a file from an Agile Drive folder to your system folder, and save it after editing.
Delete a file	Deletion of a file from an Agile Drive folder implies removal of a file attachment from an Agile object. To delete a file, select the desired file(s) in the Agile Drive folder and press Delete (Del) key once, or select Delete from right-click menu. The system deletes the file(s) without issuing any warning or requesting any confirmation. Agile Drive continues to display the deleted file(s) until you Refresh the display. Although the file appears to be deleted from Agile Drive folder, and from the corresponding Agile object, the Agile PLM application does not purge it out. Agile Drive does not allow deletion of a Redlined File.
View properties of a file	Select Properties from right-click menu of a selected file in the Agile Drive folder, to view its general properties.
Add a file	Adding a file in an Agile Drive folder implies adding a file attachment to an Agile object. You can do this by - copying & pasting - dragging & dropping, a file from a non-Agile Drive folder into an Agile Drive folder. You can also use the Save, and Save As features to save a file from an application. Agile Drive does not display the added file(s) until you refresh the display. When you add multiple files in Read-only mode of Agile Drive, a pop-up message appears for each file you add. It is recommended that you add only one or two files at a time.
Copy a file from an Agile Drive folder to a non-Agile Drive folder	In an Agile Drive folder, select the desired file. Select Copy from the right-click menu, or select Copy from Edit Menu of MS Windows Explorer. Navigate to the desired non-Agile Drive folder. Select Paste from the right-click menu, or, select Paste from Edit Menu of MS Windows Explorer.
View folder properties	To view general properties of a folder in Agile Drive, select Properties from right-click menu.

Opening files in Agile Drive

Agile Drive supports opening only Microsoft Office format files from the Internet Explorer.

To open files in Agile Drive:

For HTML, DOC, RTF, XLS, PPT and other Microsoft formats which support Microsoft clients: Double-click the file or open within Internet Explorer after authentication.

Note:
Text and PDF files do not open in Agile Drive.

To open text and PDF files:

Select the files from the Agile Drive folder.
Drag and drop the files to the desktop.
Click Open.

To open files in Adobe Reader or Notepad:

Select the file from the Agile Drive folder.
Click File > Open.
Navigate to Network Places > Agile Drive.
Click Open.

Tracking Versions

Versioning applies to Design objects and File Folder objects of Agile PLM. When you add or delete a file attachment from a Design object or a File Folder object, Agile PLM retains the original status of these attachments as a version.

Agile Drive displays these versions as numbered folders under Previous Versions Folder in the 'versioned' Agile object, with Version Number 1 being the oldest/earliest version of the said Agile object.

This can best be understood with the example below:

In Agile Drive, select FOLDER00947, as shown in Screen 1. It contains three files.

FOLDER00947 in Agile Drive is an Agile PLM File Folder Object, which has three file attachments.

Figure 3-1 Select Folder
Add a file in FOLDER00947. The folder now contains four files.

Figure 3-2 Add a File
Wait for a few seconds and refresh (press Ctrl+F5) the Explorer view.

A Previous Versions folder, and a sub-folder numbered 1, appears under FOLDER00947. This implies FOLDER00947 is the 'latest' version of File Folder object, which now has four file attachments.

Figure 3-3 Previous Versions Folder
Go to the folder 1 under Previous Versions folder.

It contains the three files that originally existed in FOLDER00947 before you added the fourth file. This implies, the 'earlier' version of the File Folder object had three file attachments.

Figure 3-4 Earlier Versions
Now, go back to FOLDER00947, which is the 'latest' version. Delete one of the files, say Bike2.bmp. This folder now has three files.

This implies, you have deleted a file attachment from the File Folder object.

Figure 3-5 Delete File

Wait for a few seconds and refresh (press Ctrl+F5) the Explorer view.

The Previous Versions folder now has two sub-folders numbered 1 and 2. This implies, the Agile Drive folder number 2 is the 'previous' version of the said File Folder object, FOLDER00947, and it has the four file attachments that existed before you deleted one.

Figure 3-6 Previous Versions

Likewise, each time you add or delete any file in an Agile Drive folder (corresponding to a Design object or File Folder object), it maintains the original files in version numbered folders under the Previous Versions folder.

Note:

You cannot add or delete files from any of the Previous Version folders.

If you delete, or purge, a version folder in Agile, the deleted or purged version folder does not appear in the corresponding Agile Drive folder.

Note:

The number of version folders that you see depends on the settings you have configured in Agile PLM. Refreshing (Ctrl+F5) the view in MS Windows XP Explorer does not display the changed versions in the folders (left) pane, although the changed versions appear in the right pane.

Traversing Item Revisions

A revision in Agile Drive appears as a 'prefix' to the Change object. The structure of Agile Drive folder, thus, appears as follows:

Example 3-3 Traversing Item Revision

In the image below, the Agile Drive folder B - ECO-00075 corresponds to Revision B of Change Object ECO-00075 associated to Agile object P00058.

Figure 3-7 Traversing Item Revision

The Agile objects, whose revisions are not yet defined in Agile are represented as

Example 3-4 Traversing Item Revision

In the above image, since the new Change object, ECO-00077 has not been assigned a Revision Number, it is in the Pending state and hence appears as (UNDEFINED) - ECO-00077 in Agile Drive.

When you create a Part, its revision state is Introductory. When you bring about a change to this Part, a Revision is created, which is identified by a Revision Number. Once the Revision Number is assigned, it remains in the pending state until released. Enclosing the revision number in brackets represents the pending state. In this image, (C) - ECO-00076.

Other than the latest released revision, Agile Drive moves the 'earlier released revisions' into an Agile Drive folder called Other Revisions. Every time an Agile object goes through a Change, the latest revision appears as an Agile Drive folder under the folder for the main object.

Example 3-5 Traversing Item Revision

In the above image, the Agile Object P00058 had undergone a change because of Change object ECO-00064, which was revised only once as Rev-A. Later, it went through another change, ECO-00075, which was revised to Rev-B.

Note:

Agile Drive does not display the structure of Design objects.

Traversing a Bill of Material

The Bill of Material (BOM) of an Agile object appears as folders under its corresponding Change object. In a BOM, the file attachments of a Parent object are located in the Change object.

Example 3-6 Traversing a Bill of Material

The file attachments of Part P00058 are located under the folder B - ECO-00075, which corresponds to the Change object of this Part.

Example 3-7 Traversing a Bill of Material

The file attachments of a Child object are located in its corresponding folder. 100-01014-A is the child object of P00058.

Figure 3-8 Traversing a Bill of Material