Item compliance with revision

[mark.cloyed]

I am experiencing a problem with item compliance in Vault Professional.  I have tested this in version 2020.1 (client vault) and in 2018.3.4 (sample vault).  I have a mapping between the Revision system property and the file's Rev Number file iProperty.  I have an item in the released state at rev A.  The file is also at rev A.  I transition the item to WIP and the revision is incremented to rev B.  I do not see a compliance flag on the item in vault.  I can then release the item at rev B without requiring the file to be updated to rev B.  Why is this allowed?  If I manage files at the file level, I see a compliance error on the file record until the file's rev number field is sync'd with the vault.  I do not see this behavior at the item level.  Is this expected behavior for items?

[cbenner]

I'm not sure I am understanding exactly what you re asking, but there is no way to automatically sync File Revision and Item Revision... that much I know.  Revisions are generally managed on one side or the other, and if you want them to match you need to do that manually.  Or are you just asking why you don't see the compliance error?

[mark.cloyed]

Hi Chris,

Thank you for the response.  Yes, I am asking why I don't see a compliance error.  I am not trying to drive or manage revisions from both sides.  I want to manage revisions from the item side and I want the item to show a compliance error when the item revision does not match the file's revision field, so that the users cannot release the item without updating the file's properties.  I suppose one option that might have been nice would be to perform a property sync as a part of the item transition from WIP to Released, but I believe that syncing only works on file lifecycles.  I tested generating a sync job on the item release, but it does not create a task in the job queue, so the user is responsible for keeping this up-to-date in the file.

[v.dobreaA3C4X]

@cbenner sorry for the intervention on this post! Could you give more details on how revisions (files and items) are matched manualy? 

Is this supposed to be done using manual revision comand for items until we match the file revision? 

[cbenner]

@v.dobreaA3C4X 

In my own experience, I do not match the revision between file and Item.  I made the decision years ago to control revisions on the Item only.  The design documents assigned to Items are the officially released documents we use for production.  All of my revisions are done on these.  The file revision and life cycle state is left alone, and the files are locked when the Item is released.  People may view and print them, but that is all.

If you wanted to match the revisions, I would suggest you choose one or the other (file or Item) to control through life cycles, and then come up with a policy or procedure for manually bumping the revision of the other during the change process.  The problem with any manual procedure is that it leaves it open to human mistakes,... people may forget to do the revision match.

In the end, the CORRECT procedure is whatever works best for your company and your people.  These are just tools.

[v.dobreaA3C4X]

Thanks @cbenner for the quick reply! 

Will try to decide what is best fitted for us! 

Have a great weekend! 

Valentin Dobrea

[mark.cloyed]

If I may clarify the situation, we want to control the revision at the item level.  We are not concerned about managing the revision in the vault file record.  We are concerned about having the file revision iProperty in the file match the item revision.  We can synch properties in Inventor so that the file's iProperty matches the item property.  What is concerning is that there is no compliance checking that would flag us with a mismatch at the item level.  This means there is a higher risk that someone can start a change on an item (incrementing the rev), forget to synch properties, and potentially release the item with the file's internal revision iProperty having a wrong value.  I understand that this will be the user's responsibility to manage this, but it is disappointing that Vault cannot help us better manage this in the item control, as it does when using file-based revision management.

[mark.cloyed]

I ran into this issue again in Vault Professional 2022.1.2.  I have my item controlling the revision and am mapping the revision system property to the file's Rev Number iProperty.  I still do not see a compliance flag if they do not match.  Should the vault client identify this as a compliance error?  In my opinion, it should show the flag and as such not allow the item to change state when the compliance check is enabled.  Does anyone have a different experience here?