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Electronic Signatures and Aras Authentication

Dennis Lindinger — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:05:02 +0000

The Aras Innovator workflow engine has many options and features that enable the modeling of robust business processes in PLM. One of the options available is Read More...

SP2 for Aras Innovator 9.2.0 Available

Dennis Lindinger — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:53:27 +0000

Just this month (October 2010), Aras announced the release of Service Pack 2 for Innovator 9.2.0. The service pack resolved several issues identified by subscribers, provided some performance enhancements, and addressed some issues related to error handling and messaging. Like all Innovator service packs, 9.2.0 SP2 is a free upgrade for subscribers. Contact Aras or work through your Aras business partner to schedule your upgrade. For those subscribers who want to upgrade on their own, Aras publishes a document that outlines the basic procedure for upgrading Innovator 9.2.0 to 9.2.0 SP2. This document can be found in the Documentation directory of the downloaded 9.2.0 SP2 package. Please let us know if you have any questions about Service Pack 2, the changes it introduced, or about upgrading your Innovator environment.

Aras Releases SP 1 for Innovator 9.2.0

Dennis Lindinger — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:30:44 +0000

In June 2010, Aras announced the release of Service Pack 1 for Innovator 9.2.0. The service pack resolved several issues identified by subscribers, but its primary Read More...

Aras Innovator CMII Affected Items Wizard with Bulk Change

Dennis Lindinger — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:39:03 +0000

As you may know, Aras offers standard Project Management, Quality Planning, and Configuration Management solutions for their Innovator product. What you might not know is that Read More...

New Open Release of Aras Innovator

Dennis Lindinger — Fri, 28 May 2010 21:25:05 +0000

In late April 2010, Aras announced a new open release (9.2) of the Innovator software suite. The new release can be freely downloaded from the Aras Read More...

Multiple Vaults in Aras Innovator for Global PLM Support

Dennis Lindinger — Sat, 01 May 2010 01:53:01 +0000

The majority of businesses these days have a need to manage documents in at least one location other than the “main” site. If the documents have any size to them, the vaulting process can be very painful and time consuming, regardless of the PLM system in use. Luckily, most PLM systems, including Aras Innovator, have the ability to house vaults in multiple locations to support such a multi-site environment. This allows for the vaulting operations to be moved local to the user, saving time and money. To create a new vault in Aras Innovator, follow these few steps:

Allocate a server at the secondary location (Site 2) that is capable of running Windows Internet Information Server (IIS) and has sufficient available storage to house the vaulted files.
Run the Innovator setup, InnovatorSetup.msi, to begin the installation process.
Perform a custom installation and select the Vault Server setup component only.
Choose a name for the vault. The default name in the installation is “Default”. You may already have a vault named “Default” in your Innovator environment, so you should specify a different name. A name indicating the location can be helpful when looking at a list of Innovator vault names.
The installation will also ask for the Application Server URL. This is the URL to the Innovator server instance at Site 1. The URL has the following form, http:////Server/InnovatorServer.aspx. The hostname and alias can be gleaned from an existing Innovator shortcut.
Identify the local path on the server where the vaulted files will be stored.
Complete the installation.
Browse the installation path and open the file VaultServerConfig.xml in a text file editor. Confirm that the (from Step 5) and (from Step 4) parameters are correct per the values entered during the installation.
Login to Innovator as an administrator and expand the Administration -> Vaults branch of the tree.
Add a new vault record.
Set the Name on the form to the vault name used during the installation (Step 4).
Set the Vault URL to http:///vault/VaultServer.aspx.
Save, unlock and close the Vault record.
Update the Default Vault value on the user records that will be using the Site 2 vault.
Login as one of the Site 2 users and create a new document object and attach a file to it. Unlock the document object.
Confirm that the file has been added to the Site 2 vault in the path specified in Step 6.

While implementing additional vaults adds some hardware and software administration overhead, the performance gains from the use of vaults local to the users can be significant and greatly enhance the user’s experience and efficiency with the software. For more information or help on setting up an Aras Innovator multi-site environment, please contact us.

Basics of Aras Mark-up Language and NASH

Dennis Lindinger — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:00:36 +0000

Aras Innovator has an underlying mark-up language it uses for all of its database transactions. The language is referred to as Aras Mark-up Language, or AML. Aras also provides a sandbox interface for developing and running AML, called NASH. Here's a short primer for getting familiar with AML and NASH.

Aras Mark-up Language is written in XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) syntax and takes the following form:

This piece of AML will return, or “get”, all of the ECN records in your Aras Innovator database. This basic syntax can be used to return the records of any item type by changing the type attribute of the Item tag. So how do you use AML? One place is in the Innovator Application Programming Interface (API). Once the syntax is determined, it can be used in the API or a web service to get the ECN records or whatever information is desired. Another place to use the AML syntax is in NASH. NASH is a mini-application that is available in most Aras Innovator installations. You can start NASH by opening a browser and pointing it to the URL, http:////client/scripts/nash.aspx. If you are not sure of the values to use for or , you can review the properties of you Aras Innovator desktop shortcut. When your browser resolves the URL, the following page will be rendered.

Follow these steps to run the Aras Mark-up Language.

Specify a user, password and database
Select the Login button. A confirmation message will be displayed in the lower textbox stating “Login complete for user”
Change the Action dropdown to ApplyItem
In the XML textbox type replacing the type attribute with the name of any item type in your database
Press the Submit button
The lower textbox will update with all of the records of the item type. The textbox is not a very readable format, but by pressing the ShowXml button, the results will be displayed in a new browser window in an XML view

The AML can be modified with search criteria to filter the results down to specific records. For example, the following AML will display all of the ECNs in the Released state:

Released

For more reference on Aras Mark-up Language syntax you can reference the Aras Innovator 9.1 – Programmers Guide.pdf available for download from the Aras web site. Aras Innovator's AML is a very intuitive language for working with the underlying data in your Innovator database and is used in almost all Innovator customizations. It is also the base for communicating with Innovator through a web service. The NASH application provides a great sandbox for developing and validating the AML before writing any code. For those of you interested in a little arcane trivia, there is a short story behind the meaning of NASH. NASH originated as a nickname for the tool, given to it by some of the Aras developers that speak Russian. The name NASH (pronounced slightly differently in Russian) means "ours" or "belonging to us." Naturally, the tool was originally meant to be used by the Aras development team, but luckily they've made it available to the rest of us, too. If you would like further information on using AML or using NASH, please contact us.

ARAS Innovator 9.1 SP6 Compatibility

Dennis Lindinger — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:00:38 +0000

Early in January 2010, ARAS released Service Pack 6 for version 9.1 of their Innovator product, making it available to subscription holders. In addition to resolving Read More...

ARAS Innovator for PLM

Dennis Lindinger — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:48:27 +0000

If you do not actively follow the PLM market, you may not have heard of ARAS Innovator. Innovator is a web-based package that offers a suite Read More...