Aras Office Productivity Connector Basic Operation
Copy
This section overviews the available Connector commands and other basic information.
When the Aras Office Productivity Connector is installed on a local computer or as a Microsoft Office Online add-in, it adds an Aras ribbon within the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications:
| Section | Command or Field Name | Icon | Description |
| Documents | New Aras Document | Creates a new Office file managed by Aras, optionally using a template stored in Aras. | |
| Documents | Save As | Saves the current Office file as a new Office file managed by Aras. | |
| Documents | Open Aras Document | Opens an Office file managed by Aras in the Office application by searching directly for a document. | |
| Documents | Open from Linked Item | Opens an Office file managed by Aras in the Office application by searching for the linked Item, such as Part or Project. | |
| Documents | Version History | Allows opening an earlier saved version of the file. Comparing versions is possible in MS Word. | |
| Editing | Edit | Sets the edit claim on the current Office file. | |
| Editing | Save | Saves the current Office file in Aras and retains the edit claim. | |
| Editing | Save and Generate PDF | Enables selecting whether a viewable will be created during the save process (Optional). | |
| Editing | Done | Saves the current Office file in Aras and removes the edit claim on the current Office file. | |
| Metadata | Refresh | Refreshes all ribbon information from Aras. | |
| Metadata | Promote | Promotes the current Aras Document to a new lifecycle state (optional). | |
| Metadata | Properties | Displays a list of all file synchronized properties. | |
| Metadata | Links | Opens a dialog enabling adding or removing links to other Aras Items. | |
| Metadata | Discussion | Accesses the Discussion Panel, where comments can be added and sent. | |
| Metadata | Detach | Removes the Aras tracking information from the current Office file. | |
| Metadata | Settings | Accesses the Settings task pane to manage user settings for logging in. | |
| Metadata | Refresh Settings | Refreshes new settings and properties from Aras. | |
| Metadata | Session | Displays session information and allows logging out of Aras. | |
| Metadata | About | Displays information about the Aras Office Connector. |
Users must log into Aras Innovator with their username and password to use the Aras Office Productivity Connector. After starting any Office application and selecting a command from the Aras ribbon, users will be automatically prompted to log in with the following dialogs:
The URL for connecting to Aras Innovator can be entered manually or stored as a dropdown selection. The URL connections for the dropdown selection are stored in Settings under the System button in the Aras Ribbon:
The Connector functions can be used once the appropriate values are entered and Login is clicked. A separate login to Aras is required for each Office application. The Aras login will remain active if the Office application is active.
Users can log out of Aras by clicking the down arrow in the System section and selecting Session and Log out:
Files managed by the Aras Office Productivity Connector are kept in the default working folder. The default location is the Documents folder.
The Aras Office Productivity Connector does not affect the ability to use the normal Office Save and Open commands. Even when managing files in Aras, files can still be saved and opened locally.
Aras Innovator manages data using several different Item Types. Items can be things like Parts, Projects, Process Plans, etc. The type of Item Aras uses to manage files is generally referred to as a Document but could have a different name in an environment. An Aras Document should be considered a container that can hold one or more files and has properties (metadata) describing the content of the files. Aras Documents can be linked to other Item Types like Parts and Projects using Relationships so that when someone looks at a Part for example, they can easily navigate to the related Document to find and view the files.
While Aras Documents can contain an arbitrary number of files, when you use the Office Productivity Connector, you will have only one or two files per Document. One file will be the native Office file (such as .docx or .pptx), and the other will be an optional viewable file (such as .pdf).