Tip: How to Push Windchill Information into an Arbortext Document

[Elizabeth Fraley]

Tip: How to Push Windchill Information into an Arbortext Document

You can push and pull information into and out of Arbortext Documents and Arbortext Content Manager (aka Windchill) metadata.

• You can push Arbortext Content Manager metadata information into an Arbortext XML document.
• You can pull Arbortext Content Manager metadata information out of an Arbortext XML document.

This feature makes document metadata actionable in Arbortext Content Manager for workflow automation and other tools, such as the twitter integration we showed using the Arbortext DITA application and Arbortext Content Manager at Gilbane Boston 2010.

In this tip, we show you a simple way to enable the feature that allows you to push information from Arbortext Content Manager into an Arbortext document.

Our example uses Arbortext 5.3M040 and Arbortext Content Manager 9.0.

Let’s get started:

1. Start Arbortext Editor
2. Go to the Object Menu and select Connect
3. Enter your Windchill Username and Password
4. Pick your workspace (The library containing your Burst Specifications^[1])
5. Use the Object Browser window to navigate to the Doctypename Burst Specification file that will designate which XML attribute will house the Windchill Version attribute.
6. Check Out the Doctypename Burst Specification File
7. Modify the Doctypename Burst Specification File:

The Modifications to the Doctypename Burst Specification^[1] File are as follows:

1. Pick an element which contains a metadata attribute suitable for storage of the Windchill version attribute. In this case, we have checked out the Dita Bookmap Burst Specification and have identified the “rev” attribute on the bookmap element as the attribute which will hold the Windchill version information.
2. Once the element/attribute combination within the Burst Specification File has been identified the next step is to add a twowaymetadatarule to the dmsmetadata section within the Burst Specification.
3. Add “rev” as the attrname
4. Add “bookmap” as bndryelemname
5. Add “WC_VERSION_ATTR as metadata
6. Add “bookmap” as metadataelemname
7. Leave sourcetype set to “text”
8. After making these attribute entries to the twowaymetadatarule, check the doctypename Burst Specification back into Windchill and open a new or existing bookmap file from Windchill or the FileàNew Menu.
9. Once you have opened your file, proceed by moving your cursor to the “bookmap” element and hit CTRL-D to open the modify attributes window.
10. Modify the “rev” attribute and add a character to the “rev” attribute. It does not matter what character you add as long as you put something into the field. If the attribute field remains blank, the Windchill version attribute will not populate the “rev” attribute. The application is designed to populate the field only if the user places a character in the field.
11. Click “OK” and then File->Save as Server Object
12. The next time you check out the file or publish the file, the “rev” attribute within the “bookmap” element will contain the current Windchill maintained version attribute.

[1] We’ll be talking more about the bursting spec in a future article. Stay tuned!

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