Introduction to MS Office Integration Plug-In

MS Office integration is an easy-to-use and easy-to-work with documents and messages from MS Office applications to VariPDM, or search and edit from VariPDM database.

Search, create or edit MS office files with ID, attributes and properties, revisions, versions, locking and link documents to existing items or other objects.

Supported applications are Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Installation is done to any PC with VariPDM MS Office plug-in installation. Integration uses VariPDM WebAPI.

Installation

• Run installer and click next until completed.
• On older Windows versions, installer will install .Net framework first which will take a while.
• Add-ins should appear in Office applications after installation..
• To uninstall, use the installer .msi, or remove with Windows uninstall tools.

Login

• You must log in before you can do anything else.
• Log in screen can be accessed from the highlighted button.
• Alternatively, trying to use any other controls while logged out will prompt you to log in first.

• Login screen has text fields for server URL, username and password.
• URL format is same as in VariWeb, supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols.
• Checking ‘Remember login’ saves server URL and username, but not password, in a settings file.

• Saved logins can be found in the dropdown menu in Server URL box.
• Multiple usernames per server URL are not stored, only the latest one.
• Passwords are not stored for security reasons.

• Once you successfully log in, login button will be replaced by a label showing current server name, and a log out button.

Quick Search

• Allows you to run a simple query to find files from server.
• Uses parameters entered in File ID and Full Text boxes.
• Wildcard symbols are automatically added at end of parameters.
• Adds current app’s supported extensions to search conditions, e.g., “*.doc || *.docx” for Word.

Search result view

• Displays results for a finished query.
• Shows one object per row, with attributes determined by query.
• Each row has buttons to open file or browse an object’s structure.
• Buttons will appear depending on object’s kind and facet.
• ‘Open’ button appears when query returns document objects with facet file, otherwise it’s hidden.
• ‘Open’ will open selected file for editing in current application
• ‘Browse Structure’ is always visible.
• ‘Browse Structure’ opens object in structure browser.

• Sometimes you can’t use a query to directly get the object you’re looking for.
• E.g., you know the document you want to open is attached to item HM000000, but you don’t know the document ID.
• In this case, we run a query to find items, and browse HM000000’s structure to find the document.

Structure Browser

• The structure browser can find objects connected to a root object through relationship or sub object connections.
• To open a document, select it in the object tree viewer, then click ‘Open’.

Advanced search

• Allows you to select a query saved on the server and run it.
• Accessed through a button on the ribbon.
• Let’s you run arbitrary queries with limited ability to adjust the condition before running.

• First select a query you want to run with ‘Select query…’
• Once you do, query parameters will be shown in the window.
• You can edit some parameters, such as attribute condition values.
• You can also change condition negations by clicking equals signs and the boxes preceding operators.

Query browser

• The query browser displays all queries saved on server.
• Queries are grouped on two levels: first to personal and shared queries, then based on the target kind of the query.
• To pick a query, select it in the tree viewer, then click ‘Select’.

Advanced search example

• We want to find a document attached to a part attached to item “HM000000”.
• Start by opening the advanced search window.

• Next, we need to select our query. Click ‘Select query…’ to open query browser.

• Navigate to the desired query. We’ll use VariWeb’s find items query for this example.
• Select the query in the tree view, then click ‘Select’.

• This will bring us back to the search window, now showing data for the query we selected.
• Since we want to find an item whose ID we already know, we can disregard most conditions and just fill in the Master ID.

• With the conditions adjusted, we can now click ‘Search’ to run the query and bring up its results window.

• Since we used the master ID pattern, we’ll only get one result, the item we wanted.
• As we’re looking for a file, but our query returned an item, only the ‘Browse Structure’ button is shown.
• Click on ‘Browse Structure’ to bring up the structure browser for our item.

• This is the first view, showing only the root object of our structure.
• To expand a node, click on the small ‘+’ button to see its contents.
• We will now navigate to the document we want to open.

• After following a has_part relation for our root object, we selected item HM000002 and opened its has_document relation node.
• Since has_document targets document revisions but we need to get a file, we need to open the document to see its sub objects, in this case all files in the revision.
• To open the file, select it in the tree and click ‘Open’.

• As the final step, we need to tell VariOffice where to save the document.
• The default location is VariPDM folder under your user’s Documents, but you can save the file anywhere on a local hard drive.
• Saving on a web disk works, but you won’t be able to upload files back to the server directly from a web disk.
• You can use any file name, the file ID for downloaded documents is tracked separately.

• Finally, we are done, and our file is open for editing!

Upload file as

• Upload current file to PDM. Analogous to Save As in office but saves on PDM.
• Allows creating a new master object, a new revision to an existing object, a new file to an existing revision, or overwriting an existing file.
• After uploading, the file’s PDM link will be updated to match its new ID.

• First, you’ll need to save the file somewhere on your hard drive, if you have not done so already.
• Saving on OneDrive or similar cloud services will not work, as VariOffice can’t access files not accessible by the Windows file system.
• Apart from that, any folder and filename should work fine.

• Next, you’ll see a window prompting you to input PDM data for the file.
• If the file is already linked to PDM, most entries will be filled already, but you will be able to change them.
• Start by entering the master ID. You can generate one using a series or enter one manually.

• If the master ID entered is an existing document, the window will update its contents to match.
• The revision field will have options in the dropdown menu to select either a new or existing revision.
• Direct types will update to match master’s types, and you will not be able to edit them.

• Once you hit ’Ok’, VariOffice will first validate entered values, then attempt to import the file to PDM.
• If something goes wrong, you’ll be shown a list of errors returned by the server.
• If import is successful, you’ll see a prompt showing new ID for the file and asking if you want to open the new file in VariWeb.

• Uploads an already linked file to PDM, overwriting the linked file.
• Analogous to Office Save function, it simply overwrites the linked file without prompting any information from user.