Workgroup Collaboration: Pro/INTRALINK 3.x Status and its Pro/INTRALINK 8.0 Equivalent

In my last blog, I talked about "Roundtripping" ( Def: In Pro/ENGINEER data management, "roundtripping" is the checkout of a Pro/ENGINEER dataset to a Pro/INTRALINK workspace, modifying the design in Pro/ENGINEER and checking it back into Pro/INTRALINK). Now, as promised, I will talk about Pro/INTRALINK 3.x statuses and their equivalents in Pro/INTRALINK 8.0.

How do you ensure that others aren't changing the same designs at the same time? How do you find out if someone is changing a design you need to change? The answer is "statuses" - the cornerstone of workgroup collaboration.

A little review: in Pro/INTRALINK 3.x when you add a Pro/ENGINEER design to your workspace, you can set the commonspace status to "Locked."

1. it "locks" the object - which grants you the exclusive right to check in the design (meaning no one else can check in any changes except you) and
2. it displays "Locked by: " under the Status Description column in the Commonspace next to the object.

1. The "Commonspace Status" - the same as Status Description in the Commspace;
2. the "Workspace Status" - telling you whether you can modify the object or not and;
3. "Compare Status" - for indicating if an object is out-of-date (meaning someone has changed the object since you added it to your workspace)

So that's Pro/INTRALINK 3.x; let's look at Pro/INTRALINK 8.0 and the similarities and differences between the two. Here's the cheat sheet:

Try It!
Go play with Pro/INTRALINK 8.0 and try checking out some files. Try just adding them to your workspace then checking them out from the model tree within Pro/ENGINEER. Create a new design and save it to the workspace. Now open connect to Pro/INTRALINK 8.0 using a web browser and look at the workspace using the web browser. It will probably not contain all the same files that are listed in the workspace when you look at it from within your Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire browser. That's because the browser view of the workspace only shows what has been uploaded. Next, upload everything in the workspace. Keep in mind if you modified something that was not checked out that Pro/INTRALINK 8.0 won't allow you to upload that file (I can explain why later). Last, go look at the Pro/INTRALINK workspace from the web browser. What do you see? The same files that are in your workspace on your work station. But now those files are also on the server - but not checked in. Being able to upload your files at the end of the day allows you to "back them up" with out creating unnecessary iterations. That's a good thing because it minimizes the unnecessary clutter in your Pro/INTRALINK database, slows the growth of the Pro/INTRALINK database, and minimizes the time necessary to backup your Pro/INTRALINK database because there is less data to backup.