Adding Office Documents to Vault

As most engineers and draftsmen know that project data is more then just .dwg's. In Autodesk's first release of Vault with Civil 3D, I am glad they gave us the ability to add more then just dwg's to your project database. A lot of time it seems that the first release of a product doesn't always have what majority of users need. In my opinion Vault is diverse enough for big firms with a lot of users or a one man shop trying to his manage data. In Land Desktop we had to associate the data to the project which is really no different then what we do in Civil 3D but what I really like is the ability to manage all of your Microsoft data as well, i.e. Word documents, Excel, etc. What is even better is that in each of these programs they give you a Vault toolbar which helps users add, check in, and check out data from the database. So I guess the only thing we need to worry about is making sure that users actually open the data correctly. Most of us are use to doing the typical routine of File->Open and select the file. Since Vault is managing the data we have to change out way of thinking just slightly, all we have to do is Log into the Vault and Check out the data. Which in my opinion is a better way of working with your project data. Now you still can do a File->Open but you will get the data in a Read-Only state.

The one item that I noticed with Vault that you have to be careful about is how you add the Microsoft data to the Vault. As you are finished with your document you are probably going to save it under the project directory, possibly under another sub-folder i.e. (C:\Civil 3D Projects\Overview_2007\Word Documents). The first thing you would have to do is Log In to the Vault, just like you would in Civil 3D, only in Office products you click a toolbar or select the File menu. Once that is complete, you have to check it into the Vault, simply click the "Check In" button on the new Autodesk Vault toolbar, then it will open up another dialog box entitled "Check In (and the name of the document)". The most important part about this dialog box is the "Close file and delete local copy". This check box is good and bad. If you are planning on keeping a consistent folder structure then you need to uncheck this box. However if you are planning on using Vault to store and manage all of your data then you can check this box. Now let's take a step back, earlier I saved a document under C:\Civil 3D Projects\Overview_2007\Word Documents, by unchecking the "Close file and delete local copy" it is literally going to delete the file under my folder Word documents and place it under the root of the project, which in this case is Overview_2007. This can be good and bad, some firms still want Vault to manage their data but they also want to keep a logical file structure, as some of you may know Vault completely rewrites the book on file structure. Since Vault is tracking and managing all of your data it is creating it's own file structure which is completely different then what you are used to. So by unchecking this box you are able to have the best of both worlds a project management system that has all of your data in it and a logical file structure for the project. This especially helpful when you some of the admin or other non-project people needing the data to either send out or print, using this method you can still find the data without having to use Vault and it is Read-Only. If users want full access, well they are going to have to learn Vault.