Hello Community
After I have been to the ACE 2018 in Hamburg I thought it might be a good idea to make more use of the forum/community.
So I start with my first topic right here. Beforehand I have read through most of the forums. Unfortunately I found that the vast majority of the topics deal with specific technical questions and not with general topics. From the Heading this forum ("Community") seems the most general one so I post here.
We have introduced Aras Innovator 11 approx. 2 years ago as a replacement for our previous PLM System eMatrix which we had in use and customized/optimized for over a decade. Recently we updated from SP5 to SP11. We mainly use the parts/document/BOM/Change capabilities (I do not know the specific terms how the apps are called in Aras). As subscribers we also use the NX CAD integration (Connector from ITI).
As a lot of our users were so used to eMatrix, many of them visited the "valley of tears" thoroughly. Some are still opponents and would favour other tools due to user friendlyness and other reasons. (if only available)
Some months ago we also changed to Office 365 with all its apps and collaboration features (OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams...).
Most of the users not yet realized this (as there was no real "introduction"/Training from IT side) and continue to see Office 365 as "Word, Excel, Powerpoint". Which was my viewpoint as well until I bite the bullet and tried to learn about the features...
Interestingly there is a 64 pages "Adoption Guide" available, I wonder how many companies have made use of it...
fto365dev.blob.core.windows.net/.../Office_365_Adoption_Guide.pdf
Yet some project leaders and opponents realized that SharePoint/Teams is a nice and easy way to avoid the obstacles of PLM and handle general team/product documents there, as also the chat like communication makes emails, shared documents and the like easy to access for the team.
If we take the so often cited "digital transformation" a significant portion (maybe not always obvious) of part relevant information is handled in MS Teams or SharePoint due to its easy and common user interface etc....Especially the chat-like communication is worshiped as there is no need to share emails etc. Currently the use of MS Teams is not really established but I think a "parallel universe" of information will build up which contradictes the idea of PLM.
Now to my question:
How is Aras addressing this situation? I believe we are not the only company with this topic.
Will there be some "Connector" to plug Sharepoint/MS Teams to the Innovator Platform?
Or is Secure Social the proposed solution to render MS Teams redundant? If the latter is the case: We just started to try it out but compared to Teams it is not really clear or userfriendly in terms of interface. Is there a proper documentation of intended usage and features available?
I am looking forward to some feedback or dicussion, hopefully not only from Aras but from end users/customers who might experience the same situation.
Best regards
Olaf
Hi Eli
Great! Thank you for the update on the ongoing tasks regarding the community platform. I really appreaciate this!
Also I am reliefed to hear that there are more people than just two looking for non-code topics and general PLM questions. I have been on the ACE Europe as well and talking with Aras users in the coffee breaks or on the evening event I got a similar impression.
Basically this is why I started posting my topic in the first place.
Because I thought being unsatisfied and lamenting around on one's own doesn't help. It needs the communication and feedback so that things can be changed and improved. And this dicussion proved that it can happen and work within a few days. It only needs a first step. Hopefully it is not just a flash in the pan.
With regards to the original topic, we had a discussion as well. We believe there will never be an "either/or" but a "both/and". Not all team/product based discussion needs to be "tracked" via Visual Collaboration in PLM/Aras, nor is every document created in MS Teams really product relevant.
So once a project comes to the finish line, someone has to decide, with information of MS Teams need to go to PLM. And this import should than be as easy as possible. Or maybe a import is not necessary but some kind of relation or link that a user can "connect" both worlds by a mouse click.
Because let's be honest: no one has the time nor the knowledge to decide what information will be important in the future and what not after a project is finished! So "all in" is probably the approach that will be used by the most. We need just to take a look at our private photo databases...;-)
Hi Eli
Great! Thank you for the update on the ongoing tasks regarding the community platform. I really appreaciate this!
Also I am reliefed to hear that there are more people than just two looking for non-code topics and general PLM questions. I have been on the ACE Europe as well and talking with Aras users in the coffee breaks or on the evening event I got a similar impression.
Basically this is why I started posting my topic in the first place.
Because I thought being unsatisfied and lamenting around on one's own doesn't help. It needs the communication and feedback so that things can be changed and improved. And this dicussion proved that it can happen and work within a few days. It only needs a first step. Hopefully it is not just a flash in the pan.
With regards to the original topic, we had a discussion as well. We believe there will never be an "either/or" but a "both/and". Not all team/product based discussion needs to be "tracked" via Visual Collaboration in PLM/Aras, nor is every document created in MS Teams really product relevant.
So once a project comes to the finish line, someone has to decide, with information of MS Teams need to go to PLM. And this import should than be as easy as possible. Or maybe a import is not necessary but some kind of relation or link that a user can "connect" both worlds by a mouse click.
Because let's be honest: no one has the time nor the knowledge to decide what information will be important in the future and what not after a project is finished! So "all in" is probably the approach that will be used by the most. We need just to take a look at our private photo databases...;-)
