How to Delete Latest Revision from Vault 2013

[bschupbach]

My company is poised to start rolling out Vault outside of our product development group and into production areas but one major obstacle is the seeming inablility to delete/purge the latest revision of a file in the event that the revision is accidentally bumped in Vault or an Engineering Change Request/Order is rejected in the workflow and the rev needs to stay as-is.

in order to start an Engineering Change Request, one must revise the drawing/files in question and of course you want to bump the Rev first so that your changes are applied to a new Rev, leaving the current/old one untouched.  However, it's not uncommon for an ECR to be rejected at some point in a workflow and the need to fall back to the old Rev instead of incorporating the new one.

In Vault 2011 I could find no way to work through this issue.  Is there a solution or work-around for this issue in Vault 2013?  Surely this has been recognized as a major problem by now!

[olearya]

Hi there,

Unfortunately there is no way to roll back the revision or remove latest on files - note that this is possible when you are working with Items as these provide a separate record but to date files behave differently.

As you mention it is not uncommon for an ECR to be rejected - for this reason in ECO's we typically do not change the document state until it has progressed to the "work" phase.  Even here this is not a true ECR process, many manufacturers would actually require a separate documentation process and sign off which does not yet have any relationship to the actual CAD file prior to ever creating the ECO in Vault Professional.  

[bschupbach]

Allan,

Are you saying that if we use the change order process in Vault that there is a way to overcome this issue?  Our change management process is currently done in our ERP system, but if we needed to utilize a super-simple workflow in Vault to overcome this issue, then that might be an option.

Can you outline a step-by-step process that woudl allow us to make the changes we need to a drawing or document with the ability to throw that all out if the ECR is rejected, keeping in mind we never want to affect the historical rev?

p.s. after looking at the idea exchange, I see that I'm not the only one with an issue here.  Multiple people said this would be their top request for Vault.

Appreciate it.

Brian

[olearya]

Hey Brian,

Yes this request is well documented.  In terms of the ECO Process though you do not need to revise the document until you are ready to work on it - in fact the ECO has no direct control over the document state at all (This is different for Items).

You are actually able to map the ECO state back to release conditions for a file (ECO state must be Approved before you can release it etc) but you can simply attach a set of files (as released) to the ECO along with the markup and justification for the change, have the ECO reviewed and then change the state (bump revision) once the ECO has been confirmed as valid and advanced to the "work" state.

However, having said all this it seems from your message that your process allows for the change order to be cancelled AFTER you start working on it, if this is the case then unfortunately I do not have a solution for you.  It may help to understand your process a little more but I typically see customers take 2 approaches:

1. Create a separate ECR process or notification that allows staff to alert Engineering of required change - typically the ECR is not directly related to files yet and perhaps not even managed by Vault - this ECR is approved PRIOR to beginning an ECO

2. Create ECO and ensure the change is reviewed and approved before you put into the work phase.

In both cases from time to time a document will still be accidentally revised and the company has to make notes against the rev to that effect.

I hope this helps.