Obsolete documents still showing on thin client

[Tertius_vanderWesthuizen]

We use Autodesk Vault mainly as a document management system. When changing a document from Released to Obsolete, the document is still available for download on the thin client, but the older released version. The thin client shows all historical states which was approved, but not the current state. One thing that would be a very nice feature is, whenever a document (or item) is made obsolete (or redundant), the file should no longer be visible to other users.

An interim solution I have found around this, was to make another folder in my project explorer, and changed the permission to have only me and a colleague the only two people able to view this folder. Although this takes up some time. An easier solution to "hide" all previous released versions would really be very nice.

[ihayesjr]

@Tertius_vanderWesthuizen 

Thank you for posting the Idea. Instead of moving the file, have you tried to edit the security for the Obsolete state and set you and a few other users to see the file? This way you don't have to move the files and it is automatic.

[Tertius_vanderWesthuizen]

Hi there, I had a discussion with one of your Customer Technical Success agents, and together we could not figure out another option. The only other option was to change the security settings of each individual file, but seeing that I am the only administrator, this would become a very big task.

[ihayesjr]

@Tertius_vanderWesthuizen 

Try talking to your Vault Administrator to change the security at the obsolete state. You don't need to change every file's security manually if you make the change in the Lifecycle Definition.

[AIT-Hermann]

Several of our customers have reported this weakness. What exactly is the option in the thin client that only 'Released' documents should be visible for? The status 'Obsolete' is definitely not 'Released'.
And now its the year 2025. In actual Vault 2026 the same behaviour.

[ihayesjr]

@AIT-Hermann 

If the Thin Client user is not supposed to see the Obsolete files, remove their Read permission on that State.

[loic_voisin]

Hello,

@ihayesjr 

If you remove the read permission on the Obsolete state and if you put the file with revision "B" to the Obsolete state, You will still see the approved revision "A" of the file.

The goal is to not see a file at all when it is obsolete, regardless of the revision.

[ihayesjr]

@loic_voisin 

Make sure you are not logging into the Thin Client with an Administrator account. The administrator account, or someone in the Administrators group, has a special permission to see files with the read-only permission denied. 

The Thin Client returns all files that a regular user has permission to "Read." It looks at the tip version's permission to see the file, then based on the Thin Client settings, if the Thin Client is configured to see Release versions only, the Thin Client will only show the Released versions of the file. 

If the tip version or the Obsolete version denies the user the Read permission, no revisions of that file are returned to that user.

[loic_voisin]

@ihayesjr 

Good point. Excellent answer—the account used for the query had administrative privileges.
Indeed, now that I've restricted those privileges, everything is working as expected.

Thank you very much!