Total newbie here with Vault 2015 Professional and I seem to have caught myself in a Catch 22.
I entered a bunch of items in the item master. I then added a bunch of CAD files. The reseller doing some orientation with me last week made some changes to this and today I wanted to purge everything and repeat the process of adding these items and files for another training session. I managed to get rid of all but two of the items. The last two hold outs, (items and CAD files) are associated with one another. So I highlight both of them and attempt to delete which does not work. So I try to change the state to Obsolete which also does not work. I'm getting an error message which states "Opertaion cannot be performed on an old version of the file that is associated with this item."
This is a total test environment right now so deleting everything and starting over from scratch is no big deal.
You could delete the vault in ADMS-Console, and then create a new, empty vault with the same name.
If that it too heavy handed, you should be able to override the delete restrictions if you are logged in as an administrator.
-Dave
Thanks. Since this is only testing, whacking the entire vault also seem to me to be viable. But here is my quandry. The Vault Server is running on a Windows 2008 Server back in the IT department. To access the ADMS console I need access to this Windows 2008 Server...and IT has said no f'n way. We are building our case now so that someone in upper management can fight this for us. I totally understand IT's concerns for security, etc... but I can't truly utilize the Vault with access to the ADMS console.
Now, there is a chance that there is a way around this, but until I get a chance to research a remote method that mitigates IT's concern I will have to pound sand.
BTW the account I'm using has full Admin rights, still I'm getting a message that I don't have permissions for this action.
If your vault login has the Administrator role, then start by deleting all the items. If you get delete restrictions, you can override them, which will delete the items unconditionally. If you are getting permission denied on some of the items, that means you have applied ACLs to the items that prevent Administrators from deleting them. You can resolve that by changing the ACLs (which Administrators can always do) to give yourself delete permission on those items.
The same goes for files. You don't need to delete the items first, but by doing so you remove one source of delete restrictions for the files.
If you are familiar with the API, you could write a simple program that does all this without any prompting.
-Dave
Wow, it's never going to be a smooth ride if your I.T dept aren't letting you onto the Vault Server. Good luck getting that sorted, for what it's worth it might be worthwhile asking them to create you a domain account which can remote onto that server and that server only, with only as much rights as you need to do ADMS stuff. Which to be honest depending on your responsibilities, it's hard to do much without full admin rights outside of the ADMS console.
You sound switched on so I guess you've already looked for this, but the option Dave is asking you to select is this one here when deleting:
If that tick box is greyed out or totally unavailable, your account isn't an administrator account.
If you're able to tick this and it still says you can't delete the item/files, then again as Dave said above there'll be additional settings overriding this. By default the security on a released state will prevent the unconditional delete, but check the obsolete state and make sure the administrator user or group has been given the rights to do it. This is tools > administration > Vault Settings > Behaviours > Lifecycles > *select the lifecycle that the files are on* > Obsolete > Security. Wow, that's a lot of clicks to get there
If it's just a test Vault, take screen shots of how the settings are now and then go nuts with ticking boxes until it works if you're unsure of which setting applies to your login.
We have the same situation at my company. The fact that you need access to the server itself to do so many things is one of my big problems with vault. All content administration should be able to be done from a client. From what I've heard, severely restricting access to the servers themselves is fairly common and Vault just isn't made to handle that, which makes it seem like less than an enterprise tool. This is a restriction that Autodesk should plan for, not one that it should try to force customers to comply with.
We have a SQL DBA that administers the server side things for us and for the things that we need done (like setting up autocad blocks to map or creating content center libraries) we just request it and they do it. Setting up backups and maintenance plans is completely taken care of by them. If you have a group that is somewhat responsive, it works just fine. The things that need to be done on the server aren't things that you should be doing on a daily basis.
For a test environment, they might be a bit more lenient, but if you put together a plan for what you want to do with respect to configuration, you shouldn't need to get on the server very often.
As an example, I helped configure our development, test and production environments without any server access and it really wasn't that bad. The key will be that, assuming you don't get access to the server, your admin group is committed to providing you the service that you need.
That said, you shouldn't need to wipe the entire vault to get rid of those two items, although you might want to do that anyway, since you will be starting from a clean slate in your production environment.
Yea I agree with that, I guess it's a no win situation for Autodesk with regards to managing Vault. Obviously Vault is entirely dependent on server side components, if you manipulate those from a client and something goes wrong... there'll be inherent delays whilst a staff changeover in responsibility occurs. You make the client-side change, SQL trips up, your IT guy is on holiday for 2 days... what do you do? But then you could argue that's our problem, not Autodesks.
Vault is a strange beast. It's managed on a server and to administrate it past the basic GUI options requires good skills and knowledge on stuff like IIS, SQL, credentials, services, it can often require someone to alter AD accounts to suit Vault. In most businesses that's the job of IT, but generally IT want nothing to do with Vault and see it as someone elses problem to troubleshoot!
As tmoney above said though if you have an internal team of experts who specialise in the areas that Vault requires help with, bonus. Let's hope they know that tinkering with the back end too much can render your site 'unsupported'
Personally I'd love to be able to do more from the Client, even with full server access it's a royal pain in the jacksy having to remote desktop onto a server whenever something happens. First world problems eh
"Wow, it's never going to be a smooth ride if your I.T dept aren't letting you onto the Vault Server. Good luck getting that sorted, for what it's worth it might be worthwhile asking them to create you a domain account which can remote onto that server and that server only, with only as much rights as you need to do ADMS stuff. Which to be honest depending on your responsibilities, it's hard to do much without full admin rights outside of the ADMS console."
Man, does that bring back memories! I had the very same issues as a CAD Admin a few years back. A new IT manager came in, fired the original IT guy and hired a whole new crew that locked the place down, he even demanded me to hand over my key before I could get any of my CAD stuff out of the room. I threatened to walk right there and then until 1. they let me get my stuff out, 2. Explain to me what the heck was going on and 3. give me the access I needed to continue with my job. After some shouting between them, myself and my boss, they met my demands and had me set up to remote into the CAD server as needed from my laptop. They even went as far as removing every disk of CAD and Vault software that was in the server room, put it all in a lockable file cabinet and stored it under my desk...lol
They were your typical IT "we are Gods" type....oh the joy. BTW - None of them are currently employed by that company.
Jim O'Flaherty
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There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread for new functionality in the product.
Can you please add your comments to the following idea on the IdeaStation?
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-ideastation/web-based-adms/idi-p/3538384