One of the most common things I see with people using the Autodesk Vault or Autodesk Productstream is over time user forget to check their files back in. With the new year starting soon I figured this would make for a good best practice you can implement during 2007 to keep your Vault nice and clean. If you are familiar with lean manufacturing or some six sigma methods you will know often the first thing you should do is clean up your area before making improvements. Outlined below is a quick method for creating a saved search for you to run that will provided you all of the files that are checked out. In a perfect world at the end of each day when the whistle blows there will be no files checked out so everything is safe and can be backed up. The more realistic goal would be to have less than one page of checked out files each day and try really hard to get everything checked in each week.
1. Start the Advanced Find tool by selecting “Advanced Find” from the Tools menu.
2. You can configure two different searches one for each user and one for a manager or group leader.
Per User = Select the “Checked Out By” property and “Contains” for the condition. Then enter your Vault login user name in the value text box. When complete select the “Add” button.
Per Group (Vault) = Select the “Checked Out By” property and “is not empty” for the condition. When complete select the “Add” button.
3. Now you can save the search so you can quickly use the search at any time. Select the “Save” icon and then name the search. When complete select “Ok”.
Hope this helps you and please let me know if you have any questions
Happy New Year
Dan
