Status management in LiveLink

[ferencz]

Good morning / afternoon / evening,

We recently implemented LiveLink as document management tool, but we encountered some problems. The main problem is that the last version is always the valid version, but there is no way to 'mark' this version as 'in draft'.

Let me explain the problem with an example. When we publish a workinstruction for a new function, this workinstruction has version 1 in LiveLink. If this function is changed (due to a change request or project), the workinstruction also needs to be changed. The changing of this document takes some time, so the workinstruction which has version 1 needs to have an 'in draft' version, which is not valid but can be accessed by multiple LiveLink users.

We asked Open Text but there was no answer that was satisfactory enough for us. I know there must be more companies experiencing this problem, so my question is: how did you or your company manage to insert some kind of status management in LiveLink? We run version 9.2.0.

 

[Syntergy]

The best way to do this is with a customization that adds the status to the version and typically adds new function menu items that handle moving versions from "in draft" to "released". The functions only appear for the version that is in draft. We have done a few variations of this customization. Each had different requirements and rules around releasing the versions but the concept and approach is the same.

Although it is not complex, the customization takes some pretty good experience using the Livelink Builder tool. If you are interested in a custom approach let us know and we can give you more insight into that.

The other way that this is implemented is through custom category attributes. Unfortunately you can't place any rules or restrictions around the attribute that contains the version status. It requires a lot of training for the users and relies on the users to use the right process. The custom approach automates all the rules and the process which makes it the preferred method for most organizations.