(Fr) Office Connector v2 pour Aras Innovator
Comme je l’ai déjà présenté, Minerva, dans la continuité de la démarche de Prodeos n’a pas pour seule vocation de vendre du service, nous avons aussi pour objectif de packager des produits et des modèles de données pour permettre d’accélérer les implémentations de fonctionnalités et dans le même temps réduire les coûts de déploiement de votre projet PLM. En ce début d’année, nous lançons donc la deuxième version de notre connecteur Office après des semaines de tests et d’améliorations en coopération avec toutes les équipes de Minerva en Grande-Bretagne, au Benelux et dans les pays scandinaves, mais aussi grâce à la coopération avec nos clients nous permettant de valider le fonctionnement du produit sur un maximum d’environnements.
Cette nouvelle version a quelques fonctionnalités ajoutées qui aident grandement à la gestion de documents en lien avec Aras Innovator.
- La reproduction du formulaire de document permet de gérer les méta-données du document sans faire d’aller-retour entre l’application Office et Aras Innovator
- La synchronisation de champs du document avec le fichier Office vous permet de récupérer les informations des méta-données telles que la version, la génération, les responsables ou même certaines valeurs et ainsi les intégrer dans vos impressions.
- La customisation de la barre d’outil devient beaucoup plus simple, choisissez le label à faire apparaître et sélectionnez la variable Aras Innovator correspondante.
- Le lancement de l’application office avec les modèles de document depuis Aras Innovator vous permettant de toujours partir du cœur d’une solution plm : la définition du produit.
- L’installation du connecteur depuis l’application Office facilite sa mise en place, surtout dans le cadre d’une période d’évaluation.
Je vous propose donc cette vidéo de présentation pour mieux en apprécier le fonctionnement.
Yoann Maingon
(Fr) Connecteur Aras pour Ms Office- Création de documents depuis Aras
Nous avons déjà réalisé quelques présentations de notre connecteur office, il est d’ailleurs en production chez plusieurs de nos clients. La première phase d’utilisation du connecteur avait pour but de concentrer toutes les fonctionnalités du côté de l’application Office. Dans ce cas l’application Office est le client Aras et permet de créer des items, d’appeler des modèles de documents, etc… Cependant nous voulons fournir une solution qui permette d’appliquer des flux d’utilisation qui respectent les bonnes pratiques de gestion de documents dans un environnement PLM centré sur le produit plutôt que de fournir un simple outil de GED. Ainsi une des fonctionnalités importantes à réintégrer dans le connecteur était la capacité à partir du produit pour générer une documentation au lieu de créer de la documentation avec cette même documentation pour seul point de départ.
Pour mieux comprendre le processus présenté dans la vidéo en voici une description graphique:
Et maintenant la vidéo de création d’un fichier Excel:
Puis la vidéo de création d’un fichier Word:
Suivez la réalisatrice de la vidéo sur twitter
Yoann Maingon
(Eng) Thinking “out of the box” with “out of the box” features
This is an article following a discussion I had a while ago with Graham McCall from AESSIS (yes, one of our competitor/friend in the UK) when we were working on a common Aras Pilot implementation in France. When I was working at Accenture some years ago, I went to this Worldwide training close to Chicago called “Core Analyst School” which you need to go to during your first year. My colleagues, during exercices described me as an “out of the box” thinker. Then, when I worked with Graham on this Aras Innovator pilot implementation we were trying to work as much as we could with “out of the box” features to avoid customizing (always scares customers when they are not aware of the Aras Unlimited subscription covering Upgrades). So I found it funny that in English you could have a same expression having two real opposite meaning in different context like this. And with my recent experiences on customer sites and working in the particular business environment made by the Aras open model in PLM I wanted to talk about how you can benefit really quickly from a Innovator PLM solution by thinking out of the box about PLM and using the out of the box features of Aras to fulfill IT needs.
Thinking out of the box about PLM
This is one of the main reason I came into PLM. Even if you can read in many articles that “PLM is a company-wise strategy”, PLM manages”the whole product lifecycle related information from marketing to support and recycling”, in real life (meaning “on customer’s sites”) PLM is still mainly focused on engineering. Think about all the information that are related to the product, maybe not directly, but for example skills management throught the company will be somehow related to the product. In order to detect these process and informations I suggest you list all the Ms Excel files and Ms Access databases you use in the enterprise and think about how these informations are related to the product or how they need to be managed in a collaborative way.
From this statement, you should see that it is almost impossible to get one single manager for the whole company leading the initiative of thinking how you should manage these informations with a new IT systems adding collaboration and process status follow-up features. Does that mean it is not possible to work on it? Of course not. But you need a tool which could handle that. And so far, Ms Excel and Ms Access where the one you found right to do the job.
Using Out of the box features from Aras Innovator
Now that you’ve tought about all the process in the extended enterprise and you have some first Ms Excel files, Ms Access databases and process to replace and manage, you have Aras Innovator just a few click away. And don’t think about customizing yet. You don’t need to be a PLM expert to understand what Aras Innovator can be as a start. Out of the box, it’s a toolbox (some people will hate the fact that I use this naming, as this word became banned of any PLM marketing these last years) providing Item management features with Lifecycles and workflows features. So think about all your files that are in fact managing Items. Start managing them with Aras. Until then you may have bought maybe one training session from an Aras partner, you have not signed any other contract and your data can be exported freely as XML. You can have 1, 2, 10 Aras databases for a start. Small projects won’t need much infrastructures (it works on a simple PC) and it will still be more reliable than your distributed Ms Excel files on the network.
Use the Aras forum, look for simple question like:
- how much time it takes to install Aras Innovator?
- does it crash sometimes?
Answers should be some like 30 minutes and no (IE crashes not Aras :-)).
Then you can look into the PLM datamodel, but that may be more directly product management related… you’ve got time to get there.
Enjoy testing Aras Innovator !
Yoann Maingon
(Eng) Amazon EC2 Aras innovator PLM Hosting slides from ACE2011
This is not a big news if you have followed our activities for more than a year year, but as this one of our important new service since ACE2010 we presented the Aras Innovator hosting service on Amazon EC2 at ACE2011. We recently had discussion with a few SMBs who were interested by the cloud hosting offer. Mainly because we’ve added new capabilities such has VPN services provided by Amazon. Here is a little description of what I presented on stage while ACE2010 in Detroit, Mi. These two slides were first to explain the difference between, SAAS, IAAS and PAAS. (The presentation is mainly inspired by this one from Logica). The second slide is to show the different offers we have regarding cloud hosting on Amazon.
Yoann Maingon
(Fr) Les 5 articles les plus lus sur Prodeos.fr au mois de septembre
Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Unknown modifier 'p' in /var/www/minerva-plm.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscribe2/classes/class-s2-frontend.php on line 225
(Fr) Coût et chiffrage d'une solution PLM
Cet article fait suite à un ensemble de discussions que j’ai eues depuis que je travaille avec la solution Aras Innovator et surtout récemment concernant le rapport entre le coût de souscription Aras Unlimited (qui englobe un certain nombre de services) et son contenu en termes de valeur apportée. Même si ce blog traite quasi uniquement d’Aras Innovator lorsqu’il s’agit de présenter des développements techniques ou tout simplement un outil (en même temps le logiciel est en téléchargement gratuit donc, vous montrer une solution que vous pouvez utiliser derrière me semble plus pratique), je voudrais ici simplement discuter des différents éléments auxquels il faut penser pour pouvoir évaluer le coût d’une solution PLM que l’on désire implémenter.
Lors d’un avant-projet d’implémentation d’une solution PLM, dans le cas où l’on pense implémentation globale dès le début (ce qui n’est pas toujours la meilleure des solutions), une fois que le retour sur investissement a été défini, ou, au moins sans être chiffré il est important qu’il soit ressenti comme important par les responsables de l’entreprise, vous pouvez ensuite rechercher l’enveloppe de coût globale d’une telle solution avant de voir ce que proposent les éditeurs et les intégrateurs. Pour cela il y a un site qui présente un bon découpage de ces coûts et que je me suis permis de reproduire ici: (retrouvez l’original ici : http://plmtechnologyguide.com/site/?page_id=1184)
| Cost Element | Cost Type |
%1) |
Cost Dependent On n |
| Software | One-time capital investment | 30% |
|
| Software maintenance | Annual recurring expense | 6% |
|
| Hardware | One-time capital investment | 8% |
|
| Education and software selection |
One-time expense | 8% |
|
| Process optimization |
One-time expense | 8% |
|
| Implementation services | One-time expense | 25% |
|
| Training | One-time expense | 5% |
|
| Data migration | One-time expense | 5% | |
| Post-go-live support | Annual recurring expense | 5% |
|
Il y a un autre site qui propose ce découpage à peu près similaire:
http://www.product-lifecycle-management.info/plm-implementation/plm-cost.html
Alors bien sûr le modèle économique Open Source est quelque peu différent et va donc impacter ce découpage. Dans le cas d’Aras les éléments “Software Maintenance” et “Post go live support” et même une partie des formations, qui à eux trois rassemblent 16% du coût total sont compris dans la souscription et le coût de la licence, 30% du budget disparaît. Donc sans pour autant que ce modèle soit plus économique sur le papier (oui on est convaincu que l’on se bat sur la technologie et non sur le prix), il convient sur un plan économique de comparer environ 40% du prix du budget PLM à la souscription Aras pour permettre de comparer les deux modèles économiques.
Yoann Maingon
(Eng) Alternative Structure Browser (v0.15)
This is an update about our Structure browser for Aras Innovator using Cytoscape web graph library. We changed the layout and added some event management allowed by the library. You can now click an item to get its full description with all the properties each user is allowed to see. You can also double click on an item to open it. This is really cool when you need to watch a drawing which is 4 or 5 level down in the BOM of a product. It really enhance your productivity to directly reach the right information. Some more feature are to come, like saving layout change, offering other layout options, changing item colors based on item state, changing item shape based on itemtype… Many cool things allowed by the flexibility of both Aras Innovator and this graph library. Here is the video which shows the latest developments. Hope You’ll like it!
Yoann Maingon
(Eng) AML Studio – Open Source on Codeplex
When we started working on Aras Innovator we created a Codeplex page to gather some developments we were doing open source around the PLM solution. We now have two projects, one has some sources for different solutions and the other ona which is on hold today is the Innovator ETL, an ETL solution for Aras Innovator and based on the Open Source ETL solution Talend. I was looking at these pages again and made a search about “Aras Innovator” in codeplex and I found a new project which is not made by us.
Here is the result of the search:
So this new project is called “AML studio” and has been created recently (late June 2011), less than a month ago to share a very nice tool. Natively, when you install Aras Innovator, you can access a very useful interface to test your developments by querying the PLM solution through AML queries (Aras Markup Language). This online tool, called “the Nash”, is very important but you need to know the syntax and all the possibilities you can add to your queries. The problem for me is that I have a very bad memory and I always need to have some documentation around to be able to be efficient on producing queries. This tool is fixing my memory problem by adding sort of intellisens feature while editing the AML.
Here is a screenshot of the “Nash” tool for query test:
And this is the much more friendly user interface provided by tge codeplex project AML studio
I made a quick video to show you the difference and mainly the intellisens feature.
Yoann Maingon
(Eng) Video presentation for the New Aras Innovator Release 9.3
As it was announced at the last Aras Community Event in Detroit this may, Aras has released a new version of Aras Innovator and it is available for free on Aras.com. So, this is the release 9.3 and it is presented in the following video by Rob McAveney the director of product management right after a introduction by Marc Lind. The upgrade from 9.1 to 9.2 was more including technology changes to support latest Windows and Internet Eplorer version. It was also enhancing the network and performance management including enhanced replication stategies. During these versions there have been more and more discussions about features and data-model. And month after months we’ve seen more project delivered to customers who were willing to share their use case, implemented in Aras, to the community. So when you’re downloading the solution you benefit from real use case application. So enjoy this presentation, I’ll be writing many more blog articles to present most of the feature that have been implemented like the new impact matrix or the team feature. And if you don’t want to wait. Just download it on Aras.
Yoann Maingon
(Fr) Retour sur ACE2011 – Fédération de données et webservices
Dans la suite du chemin “advanced” de la conférence, Peter Schroer revenait sur scène pour nous présenter les capacités de fédération de données et de gestion de webservices autant en publication depuis Aras Innovator qu’en consommation. Ces capacités de la solution Aras Innovator forment un argument essentiel de la prédisposition d’Aras Innovator à s’intégrer dans un environnement IT Cloud dans lequel Innovator distribue et consomme de l’information on-demand à travers des services web. La démarche que l’on a en présentant cette capacité de communication avec d’autres systèmes d’information de l’entreprise est que la solution ne prétend pas assurer absolument la gestion de toutes les informations du cycle de vie de vos produits. Les entreprises utilisent déjà un grand nombre d’outils de collaboration (email, calendrier, gestion documentaire…) qu’il n’est pas obligatoire de supprimer étant donné qu’ils font partie d’une stratégie PLM. Dans un cours que je donne actuellement à l’ITIN sur le PLM un élève m’a demandé “mais monsieur le plm ça peut-être plein de logiciels reliés par une solution de type ESB?”. C’est complètement vrai et Aras par son intégration offre cette fonctionnalité d’ESB en apportant en plus une solution flexible pour combler les manques en termes de gestion d’objets dans l’environnement SI existant.
(Fr) Retour sur ACE2011 – des interfaces métiers spécifiques
our poursuivre ce retour sur les présentations auxquelles j’ai assisté lors de l’Aras Community Event 2011, j’ai intégré dans cet article la présentation réalisée par Peter Schroer sur les différentes interfaces métiers que l’on peut concevoir pour Aras Innovator. Une des difficultés que j’avais au début, lorsque je présentais Aras Innovator à diverses industries, est que je n’avais pas à disposition une solution verticalisée pour chaque industrie. Je sentais dans le regard de mes interlocuteurs que j’étais en retard par rapport à d’autres solutions car je ne répondais pas dans l’immédiat (“out of the box”) à leur besoin métier.(Eng) Update on CAD'Inn Project CATIA connecting to Innovator
Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Unknown modifier 'p' in /var/www/minerva-plm.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscribe2/classes/class-s2-frontend.php on line 225
(Fr) Un tour d'horizon d'Aras Innovator en 2:30 par CycleOp
Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Unknown modifier 'p' in /var/www/minerva-plm.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscribe2/classes/class-s2-frontend.php on line 225
(Eng) Autocad integration for Aras Innovator (presented at ACE2011)
Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Unknown modifier 'p' in /var/www/minerva-plm.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscribe2/classes/class-s2-frontend.php on line 225
(Fr) Troisième et dernière journée de l’ACE2011
Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Unknown modifier 'p' in /var/www/minerva-plm.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscribe2/classes/class-s2-frontend.php on line 225
(Fr) Les 5 articles les plus lus sur Prodeos.fr au mois de Avril
Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Unknown modifier 'p' in /var/www/minerva-plm.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscribe2/classes/class-s2-frontend.php on line 225
(Eng) vote for the Aras Collaborate and Contribute Awards 2011
The Aras Community Event 2011 will take place in Dearborn, Mi (Detroit Area) on April 26, 27 and 28th. This will be a great opportunity to meet the growing number of people working with Aras Innovator, gathering the Editor with customers, partners, consultants, etc. Just like last year, I will be attending this event for Prodeos and will present some of our developments and special offers (like cloud hosting). Last year Prodeos was also recognize by the Collaborate and Contribute award. The competition for 2011 Collaborate and Contribute award is open again and need your vote to decide what are the best feature that have been developped this year as major contribution to the Aras Innovator community. Here are the different contesting contribution:
- Classification tree structure branch import / export – Lear Corporation
- Concurrent development on multiple simultaneous Bill of Material configurations with effectivity – XEROX
- Custom search sample code for community solution customizations – Amscan Inc.
- Electronic signature connector – Datasquare
- Expanded International time zone functionality for program project management – Freudenberg DS
- File converter framework – T-Systems
- File replication performance acceleration for CAD integrations – Xyratex
- FMEA visual risk management matrix – Processia
- Google Maps GeoMap integration – Prodeos
- Hebrew Language Pack – CycleOp
- InnvoatorETL data load utility – Prodeos
- iPhone / iPad and Android client frameworks – Porchys Technology
- Korean language pack – Zionex
- Large-scale / mass change affected items release improved use case – Spartan Chassis
- New use case for Team & Role security permissions in Workflows and Lifecycle maps – Technical University of Kaiserslautern / IPEK Institute
- Outlook-style item preview pane in grid – Lear Corporation
- Outlook-style Table of Contents navigation – MiTek Corporation
- Spanish language pack – Ana Turner
- Structure browser for large configuration viewing – ITT Defense
- System event usage tracking enhancement for administrators – Lear Corporation
- Windows authentication in workflow maps – Carestream Health
- Workflow enablement of cross-generation on Items (simplifies collaboration on Versionable items) – Textron Defense Systems
The number of contesting project is impressiv and quality of projects will makes difficult for us to win again the award but we’re glad anyway to have these new development to provide to our customers.
To get more information on our projects:
Thanks in advance for your contribution by voting for the three best projects in the competition. I will soon write another article about this event to talk about the program and the speakers. And of course i’ll be reporting everyday from Detroit the content of the event.
Yoann Maingon
(Fr) T-Systems apporte une contribution à Aras Innovator
Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Unknown modifier 'p' in /var/www/minerva-plm.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscribe2/classes/class-s2-frontend.php on line 225
(Eng) Tech – Integrate Google Map in Customer form in Aras Innovator
Following the recent article about how easy it was to customize an Aras Innovator form to integrate QRcode, today we publish a guide writen by Anthony Ponceot about the integration of Google Map in Aras Innovator. The aim of this quick guide is to show how easy it is to integrate features into Aras innovator using 3rd parts. In this example, we will integrate a map to the customer form ItemType using Google Maps Javascript API V3 (http://code.google.com/intl/fr-FR/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/). We have chosen Google but of course you can do the same with Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps or any other Map service that provides an API.
The specification of this addon includes the following points
- Only integrates innovator methods and forms events
- The map will be updated when loading the form
- The map will be updated real time when updating the fields related to the address
- We do not want to store the GPS coordinates in an item property. The address will be geocoded every time the form is updated, avoiding legacy data.
Here is the result :
In order to do implement this functionality, we will create 2 methods, one implementing the functions of geocoding and calling Google Maps API and the other will be calling the function and be linked to controls events.
- Prodeos_GeoMap :
// Dynamic load of Gmaps API
// There is a callback in this API that will fire 'document.initialize' afer beeing loaded
var script = document.createElement("script");
script.type = "text/javascript";
script.src = "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false&callback=document.initialize";
document.body.appendChild(script);
document.initialize = function(){
// Initialize Geocoding service
var geocoder;
geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();
// MapDiv is the html element of the form
var mapDiv = document.getElementById('map-canvas');
// Creating the map
map = new google.maps.Map(mapDiv, {
zoom: 15,
mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
});
// Fetching form informations in order to build the address
var adresse = document.getElementsByName("address")[0].value;
var city = document.getElementsByName("city")[0].value;
var zip = document.getElementsByName("zip_code")[0].value;
var pays = document.getElementsByName("country")[0].value;
var customer_name = document.getElementsByName("name")[0].value;
var adresse_complete = adresse + ", " + zip + " " + city + ", " + pays;
// Geocode the address
geocoder.geocode( { 'address': adresse_complete}, function(results, status) {
if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
map.setCenter(results[0].geometry.location);
var marker = new google.maps.Marker({
map: map,
position: results[0].geometry.location,
title: customer_name
});
} else {
return;
}
});
};
- Prodeos_LoadGoogleMaps :
document.initialize();
Into the Customer form, we need to place a new html component 
And also implement the methods into the events. First, binding the Prodeos_GeoMap with the onLoad event of the form 
And then, binding the Prodeos_LoadGoogleMaps to every field that will update the map when changed (e.g. : address, city, country…) 
Package file to import in Aras
{title} ({hits})About Anthony Ponceot
Working in CAD/PLM for 6 years…
In my early career, I developed a PDM software in a design desk for a small industrial company handling CAD data, manufacturing shop data, planning and project data. Written with .Net and MySQL database.
Then, I joined a CAD VAR reselling Siemens PLM products and Autodesk products. I add the pleasure to work with some major french companies in industrial or consumer goods industry providing technical support, advanced training, data management implementations or specific software development.
My goal is now to expand my skills in PLM area.
You can join my LinkedIn network right here : http://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyponceot
(Eng) InnovatorETL Project's First Beta Version !
I recently announced on this blog the start of a project called InnovatorETL (in french on January 25th and in english on January 28th). The aim of this project is to provide tools for migration to Aras Innovator and from diverse source like excel files, Access database, other PLM datastore… So far the project is running pretty well. The version 0.1 specification was delivered right on time as planned. The first beta release is 15 days late because of an issue we add on the SOAP sending module from Talend. Collaboration made possible to fix this issue as Anthony Ponceot provided the solution to replace the SOAP module with a tJava module in Talend to fix the issue.
In order to show you the result of this first Beta Version and how it could help you to migrate some data from your existing system to Aras Innovator in order to test this PLM solution, here is a short video that shows how to use it.
Feel free to join the project on http://innovatoretl.codeplex.com to either participate on Specifications, discussions, test, development… This is fully Open Source.
Yoann Maingon
