Change Order Comments and Attachments

[john.nogajWLGCB]

After adding an attachment to a comment on a change order (this is typically a .pdf in our use case) it is unintuitive as to the required steps to open and view the attachment. 

Current process is:
1. Right click on the comment that has an attachment and select "Attachments..."

2. Attachments window pops open, and it prompts you to select a file to view. Notice that there are two buttons in the top right that will disappear in the next step, "View..." and "Update..."

3. Here's where things could be improved, once you have selected the file you wish to view, the thumbnail for the file version pops up. This has been a dead end for most of us using this feature as the "View..." button disappears from the UI. You have to click on the thumbnail to open the file. This is not intuitive.

4. Better yet, if you don't have the PDF viewer installed, you are told to click the "Open" button to view the attachment with an external viewer. The "Open" button does not exist, and you have to click the "View..." button to open the attachment in an external viewer. 

How to improve this process: Make it so that when you double click on any attachment in the Attached Files list, it opens that file using an external viewer.

[ihayesjr]

@john.nogajWLGCB 

Thank you for posting the idea.

In the Options dialog, click the Document Previewers button.

Then click the checkbox next to PDF.

Try your workflow again and let me know if this works for you.

[ihayesjr]

@john.nogajWLGCB 

Also, with Vault 2022, we have a built-in Viewer to view PDF files. Adobe Reader isn't needed.

[john.nogajWLGCB]

@ihayesjr 

Selecting the option you suggested in your first comment does not fix the issue, which could be something not set up properly on our end. Regardless, the dialog still shows to select the "Open" button, which does not exist and causes confusion. If this was changed to say select the "View..." button, that would be a step in the right direction. 

For the second comment on viewing pdfs directly in Vault, that is a great option for the Project Explorer environment, but does not exist in the Change Order List environment. The issue that we run into is that there is no way that we know of to see which pdf is attached to which change order via a comment in the Project Explorer environment, which is where the pdf viewer is located that you referenced in your second comment.

If you could just double click on an attachment in the attachments list and invoke the same command that is being run via the "View..." button, this would be an intuitive process. This is also important if you want to utilize some of the functionality of the external viewer for the file rather than just previewing the attachment.

[ihayesjr]

@john.nogajWLGCB 

I believe that we have already resolved what you are asking. You must not be using Vault 2022.

With Vault 2022, the PDF, inside of the Change Order with that option set will automatically open in the window. Then the Open button is available.  

[john.nogajWLGCB]

@ihayesjr 
We are running Vault 2022. Here's the build we are running:

The image you screenshot above is of the "Files" tab on a change order. That is working exactly how you have shown. 

My post has been referring to attachments to comments on a Change Order, which are under the Comments tab.

While this has been fixed in the Files tab like you show in your screenshot, the issue still exists in the File Attachments dialog when looking at attachments on a Comment on a Change Order.

In addition to renaming the button to Open, the suggestion of being able to open files in any Attached Files list by double clicking on them would be a great improvement.

[ihayesjr]

@john.nogajWLGCB 

Please set this option to Autodesk Viewer.