Creating and Saving Documents

As shown in the Use Case Overview section, there are several different ways to use the Aras Office Productivity Connector to create and save documents. This section describes the procedures associated with these different use cases.

Creating a new Aras Document allows the creation of a new Office file while using company-standard processes such as templates and numbering.

To create a new Aras Document:

1. Click the New button in the Aras ribbon and select New Aras Document. This opens the New Document task pane.

2. Select the appropriate Document Type by clicking the down arrow in the Document Typefield. The selected Document Type drives the behavior of all the other options. An administrator sets the Document Types available. Standard examples are provided with the connector, such as Document / Product, Document / Project, and Document / General. For example, a Document / Product Document describes a product you are designing for a company, while a Document / Project Document describes an aspect of the project being worked on. The following is an example of the selection list for Document Type:

3. Click the ellipsis (...) button in the Document Template field to browse for a template to apply to the document. The following is an example of the search dialog:

The entries in the list show the available templates in Aras that correspond to the selected Document Type. Additional search filtering can be performed by entering values in the search bar.

Templates need to be defined prior to using New Aras Document and may be defined by the administrator or by other users. For details on creating templates, refer to the Creating Document Templates section.

• Link to

Based on the Document Type selection, the selection list for Link to shows the available Aras ItemTypes that can be linked to a document. For example, a user can link a Product Document to only Parts, and a Project Document to Projects and Activities.

In Aras terminology, links are also known as Relationships. The advantage of creating them at the time of document creation is that the item linked to can drive numbering.

For example, if a Product Document is created and linked to Part P12345, the File Name could be automatically set to something like P12345-DOC-1.docx.

An example of the selection list for Link to is shown here:

Once the Item Type to link to is selected, click the ellipsis (...) button to open a search dialog to select the specific item in Aras:

Capabilities within this Search dialog include: Entering search criteria in the top search row. Executing a search with the Search button. Clearing search criteria with the Clear button.

Once the desired Item is located, select it and click Select. It will appear in the main dialog as the Link to Item.

After making selections in the left column of the dialog, the New Document task pane appears as shown here:

• Title and Other Properties

4. Enter a title for the document and, optionally, any other Properties configured in the environment.

The values displayed when selecting Properties reflect the Office naming.

An administrator may define properties in Aras as “required”. Creating a new document cannot continue until all required properties are entered. An administrator can also pre-define default values for properties in Aras.

5. Click OK to complete the process. The connector automatically creates a new open file within the Office application and saves it to the work folder. The Office application will notifies that a new document will be created and displayed in a new window.

If using a template, the file’s initial content comes from the template file; otherwise, it will be blank.

The following figure shows an example of an Office application at this step. The file has been created and saved in the working folder.

Since the file has not yet been stored to Aras, values are not displayed when viewing the Aras Document properties. If you have these properties imbedded in your document, they will not be updated yet.

At this point, edits can be made to the file.

6. To save the file into Aras, click the Save button and select Save. The task pane will appear to confirm the file to be saved. Click OK. The task pane will then confirm the document is saved successfully.

The properties are updated because the file is saved into Aras.

If the Document is in Aras Innovator, the Form below is displayed:

A File Name can be manually entered for the new file depending on the Document Type selected. An administrator sets this option. Typically, this will be for document types like Ad Hoc that don’t need to be highly controlled. The File Name field will appear in the dialog when this option is enabled. After clicking OK, the file is created with the File Name entered.

If there are many Document Types in the Aras environment, one way to quickly find the desired type is to select the Link to the item type. This automatically filters the Document Type list to those valid for the selected Item Type.

To attach a file to an existing Aras Innovator Document, first create a New Aras Document, as described in the Creating a New Aras Document section. Before selecting OK, use the following steps:

1. Click the ellipsis (...) button in the Document Number field. The Search dialog box appears.

1. Click the Search button to see a list of existing documents without an attached file.

2. Select the existing document and click OK. The Document Number is applied to the new document.

An existing Office file can still be saved to Aras, but the options will be slightly different from those for creating it in Aras. To save an existing file to Aras, simply open it in the Office application, click the Save button, and click Save. After saving to Aras, the Aras ribbon is updated. Behaviors compared to creating a new document are:

• Document Type: Document Types that do not require a template will be shown since a template cannot be used for an existing file.
• Document Template: Not selectable since the file already exists.
• Link to: Any Item to link to can be selected based on valid Item Types for the selected Document Type.
• Title and Properties: All capabilities are the same.
• File Naming: The File Name field will not appear regardless of Document Type. If the Document Type does not automatically rename the file, it will use the existing File Name.

As described in the previous sections, the behavior of the Save command changes depending on the state of the current file. If a new file was just created using New Aras Document, the Save command creates the Aras Document and attaches the file to it. If saving an existing file, the Save command opens the task pane to enable defining the various options. The Aras Document can be created, and the file can be attached. Once either of these has been done to start working on an Office file managed in Aras, the Save command can update the file. This is referred to as an Update Save. Use it to ensure the latest file is available in Aras.

The Aras Office Connector includes a Done command indicating that work is complete on a particular file and control is given back to Aras.

Use the New, Save As command to perform a Save As on a file already managed in Aras and have it become a new file also managed in Aras. This command is only available if the current Office file has already been saved to Aras. When using Save As, the same dialog appears as when saving a new file, but with different available options. Behaviors compared to creating a new document are:

• Document Type: The Document Type of the original document appears. If this original Document Type requires a template, it cannot be changed. If it does not require a template, it can be changed.
• Document Template: The Document Template, if any, is displayed but cannot be changed since the file already exists.
• Link to: Any item can be selected to link to based on the valid Item Types for the Document Type.
• Title and Properties: Properties from the original file will initially be displayed and can be edited if desired.
• File Naming: The File Name field will appear only if the Document Type does not automatically rename the file. In this case, a File Name can be entered for the new file. Otherwise, the renaming logic for the specific Document Type will be used.