Printing a Multi-Level BOM Report for an Effectivity Resolved BOM
Experts - How do I print a multilevel BOM report for an effectivity resolved BOM? More details: We built a 150% BOM with model effectivity. We resolve the BOM to 100% by applying the model effectivity. Now we want to print this as a Multi-level BOM Report so that procurement can do their stuff? Exporting to excel is not an option, since the report is formatted and does not need all of the properties. Kamran
Effectivity for Documents instead for Parts?
Hi community, is anyone of you familiar with the "Effectivity" features? If yes, do you know if we can use it for other ItemTypes than 'Part' and 'BOMs'? From my opinion "Effectivity" in Product Engineering was one of the most bizarre ideas our Boston friends ever had. It´s a feature that I never understood cause it doesn´t blend into the rest of Innovator. Not into change management, not into standard versioning and definitely not to other application like MPP. I already wrote about this in a previous forum post: https://community.aras.com/f/community/5344/will-effectivity-destroy-product-traceabilty For me Effectivity looks like a custom solution built for a single target customer that was never indented to incorporated with the rest. BUT: Maybe this feature is useful for tasks outside BOM control. I think it would work much better for Documents! Case Document can change independent from the product, for example when legal requirement changes or you just have to update some generic information in the document. For this use case, Effectivity for Document suddenly sounds very useful. Maybe also Compliance data could be handled that way, cause here effectivity according to date or other factors is something common. But for addressing these use cases, Effectivity has to be supported by other ItemTypes. Something, that I never have seen or tested by myself. Has anyone tested something like this and can share experience? Thanks for any input! Angela
Searching by effective date when adding relationships
Hello - We have an application built within Innovator that is similar to the Digital Twin concept, with configurations of components within modules tracked as versions of the module item, and 'hard fixed' relationships between the recorded jobs and the specific version of module which was used. This works really well as long as the job is entered at the time, but quite often jobs are entered retrospectively after new versions of the modules have been created, and users often forget about the process to find a specific historical version (using generation > 0 search criteria), instead just selecting the latest. In the main search grids you can search with the 'query type' set to 'effective' and set which date you're interested in (e.g. in my case the job date), which returns the relevant historical versions rather than the latest. Does anyone know a way to mimic this in the relationship search dialog? Many thanks
Defining a New Effectivity Scope
In a previous blog post, we demystified the recently released Effectivity Services. That post provides an overview of how to assign Effectivity criteria and how to then use that criteria to resolve your 150% BOMs. An out-of-the-box (OOTB) Aras Innovator database comes with a standard Effectivity Scope with a few simple variables, but as usual, it's also possible to define your own Effectivity Scope to fit your needs. In this blog post, we'll cover how to create your own custom Effectivity Scope by walking through the use case of wanting to resolve our 150% BOMs based on manufacturing information. Defining the Effectivity Variables Before we create the scope, we first need to figure our what sorts of information should be contained in our manufacturing scope. For simplicity, we'll keep this to a manufacturing date, a batch number, and a manufacturing location. Let's start by opening up the Effectivity Variables and checking the existing variables. Log in as admin Navigate to TOC > Administration > Effectivity Services > Effectivity Variables Run an empty search to see all the existing variables Manufacturing Date We want our scope to be able to resolve based on when a particular batch of parts was manufactured. By following the steps above, we should see that there's already an existing Date variable. This seems generic enough that we can re-use it for our manufacturing date. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be existing variables for our other two pieces of information, so we'll have to create new two new Effectivity Variables. Batch Number We also want our scope to be able to resolve on a specific batch number, so that in the event that we have a faulty batch, we can check what the BOM looked like at the time those parts were created. Create a new Effectivity Variable Name - Batch Type - String Save and close this Effectivity Variable Manufacturing Location Lastly, we want our scope to be able to resolve on the location where our parts are manufactured. There's actually an ItemType that comes with the Manufacturing Process Planning (MPP) application that represents exactly this piece of information, so we can point our new Effectivity Variable to that ItemType to save the work of creating one ourselves. Create a new Effectivity Variable Name - Location Type - Item ItemType - mpp_Location Save and close this Effectivity Variable There's one extra step we'll need to do for this variable. Because this points to an ItemType, we need to configure Effectivity Services to be able to resolve based on this ItemType. We can do this by following the steps below. Navigate to TOC > Administration > ItemTypes Search for and open the ScopeCacheDependency ItemType Select the Poly Sources relationship tab Add a new relationship to the mpp_Location ItemType Save the close this ItemType Creating the Effectivity Scope Now that we have all of our Effectivity Variables, we can create the new Scope that uses them. Navigate to TOC > Administration > Effectivity Services > Effectivity Scope Create a new Effectivity Scope Name - Part BOM Manufacturing Scope Builder Method - effs_scopeObjectBuilderMethod This is a standard method that exists in the database In the Effectivity Scope ItemType relationship tab, add a new relationship to Part BOM In the Effectivity Variables tab, add a relationship to the Date, Batch, and Location variables Save and close this Scope We're finished! Effectivity only needs to be configured on a per ItemType basis and not on a per scope basis. Because the BOM Structure relationship tab on Part is configured to work with Effectivity OOTB, we don't need to do any additional configuration to add support for our new Scope. We can just hop right into using it. Using the New Scope Because we've already covered how to author and resolve on effectivity in our previous blog post, we'll instead focus this section on pointing out how our now two existing Effectivity Scopes will interact. To begin, we'll open up a Part BOM that has a few relationships and, more importantly, has some effectivity already defined under the default Aras Part BOM Scope. As a quick refresher, we can right-click and anywhere in the grid and select View Effectivity to open up a panel on the right of the grid. This panel shows us more details about the effectivity of a selected row and also lets us quickly and easily edit the effectivity of the selected BOM. Authoring Effectivity for Two Scopes on One BOM If we take a look at the Effectivity editor, we'll see that there's an existing row describing an effectivity condition for the Aras Part BOM Scope. We can easily add a new row here to define another condition under our new scope. Click on the button to add a new row In the Effectivity Scope field, enter Part BOM Manufacturing Scope In the Effectivity Expression field, enter some expression such as Batch = 123 AND Date = [10/8/2020] AND Location = Detroit Click Apply to save this condition We'll see that in the Effectivity Pane, a new row was added with our provided effectivity criteria. Additionally, we can see that there is now a comma separated list in the main grid showing all of our effectivity criteria together. As a note here, it's also possible and sometimes encouraged to add multiple rows of effectivity criteria for the same scope. In our example, perhaps this same part is used in multiple different batches that were created on multiple different dates in multiple locations. We could write this using only one very long expression but that added complexity could quickly make it hard to maintain. Instead, we could just add a new row for each batch. Click on the button to add a new row In the Effectivity Scope field, enter Part BOM Manufacturing Scope In the Effectivity Expression field, enter some expression such as Batch = 234 AND Date = [10/15/2020] AND Location = Detroit When we choose to filter the results, this BOM will be returned if either of these expressions match our criteria. For example, if we choose the filters below, the item will still be returned when the BOM is resolved because it matches our first effectivity condition. One thing to keep in mind is that each expression on the item is treated as an individual entity even if they both belong to the same scope. For example, we can select the filters below where the Batch matches one of the expressions and the Date matches another, but the combination of Batch and Date does not match any of the expressions. If we apply this criteria, we will see that the BOM is not returned when the structure is resolved. Two Effec Scopes with the Same Variable At the beginning of this design process, we decided to re-use the Date variable from the default Aras Part BOM Scope for our custom scope. In practice, this effectively functions as if there were two different Dates. Let's look at a BOM that has two different expressions: one for each Scope. Now if we try to resolve this structure under our Part Manufacturing Scope with the date 10/1/2020, we'll notice that the BOM is not returned when the structure is resolved. While this BOM does have an expression referencing 10/1/2020, it is only valid under the Aras Part BOM Scope. Similarly, if we try to resolve this structure under the Aras Part BOM Scope with a date of 10/8/2020, the BOM will also not be returned. Conclusion Each part of Effectivity Services is fully customizable. Adding new Effectivity Variables or entire new Scopes is quick and simple with the most time consuming part being the actual data entry itself. As we continue to explore Effectivity Services, future blog posts will cover topics like adding effectivity to a brand new ItemType like Part Document. Each business has it's own unique challenges, so go out and try adding a new Effectivity Scope to solve yours.
Aras 12.0 effectivity with OR condition
Hello, I'm using effectivity in tree grid views in Aras 12. One use case I had was to have effectivity on different levels. So that the top level of a structure has certain effectivity configurations and lower levels have their own that refer to the top level. But in order to do this I think I would need to have an OR condition in my effectivity criteria. I have been able to programatically set the "EffectivityCriteriaDefinition" parameter of the query definition to filter by 1 option for a variable by setting the parameter like this: <eq> <variable id="item_id_model" /> <named-constant id="item_id_z5" /> </eq> but when I try to use this type of OR value for the parameter the tree grid fails to render: <or> <eq> <variable id="item_id_model" /> <named-constant id="item_id_z5" /> </eq> <eq> <variable id="item_id_unit" /> <constant type="int">10</constant> </eq> </or> Is this a bug in the tree grid/query definition implementation of effectivity or am I approaching this the wrong way? Best Regards RickAras 12 effectivity on custom itemtypes
Hello Is there any help documentation available for effectivity in the open Aras 12 version? I know that there's documentation for the sample application for Aras 11, but the part BOM effectivity seems to be set up differently in Aras 12. I've been trying to use effectivity with a custom itemtype by mimicing the way the Part BOM effectivity scope, query definitions and tree grid views are set up, but I've been unsuccessful. I would greatly appreciate any advice. Best Regards RickWill Effectivity destroy product traceabilty?
Hi, Sorry for the clickbait title. But I really struggle to understand the purpose of the Effectivity feature integrated in newer Aras versions. It tried to find somebody at Ace Europe 2018 who could explain me the practical use of Effectivity, but somehow even most of the Aras employees didn´t seem to understand the feature. From my current point of view, it´s a nice feature…that will only work in theory. I especially struggle to understand how Effectivity shall integrate into the regular change and variant management. One answer I got was: "Effectivity defines an item structure based on conditions, like date." So is Effectivity equal to Change Management – just without revision handling? But how can stackholders then identify an item in reality? How do they track changes? Let´s assume you have 3 versions of a product with the same revision E, but 3 effectivity structures. How will you handle these products in your storage area? What about product compliance? How do employees know, that the three products are not equal (maybe via serial number?)? And will a revision change destroy your effectivy structures? Would be happy if somebody could explain me the puprose of effectivy and how to use it! Maybe things are easier, than I rate them right now. Thanks! Angela
