I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m still around!

Work has been very hectic over the past few months, my dad has been in the hospital with heart problems since the first of October, and my mom was in an auto accident the night before Thanksgiving. All that and making time for my family has been a funky-weird balancing act, to say the least!

However, it does seem that there is light at the end of the tunnel.  My mom was released from rehab yesterday, my dad should be released from rehab on Monday, and work should slow down some after the first of the year.  Then I can hopefully get back to blogging a little more often. 

Unfortunately, due to my workload, our PDMWorks Enterprise implementation has been somewhat stalled.  We are using it to manage our data, but not all features that we are planning to use have been implemented yet.

I have much more work to do implementing PDMWorks Enterprise here, and plan to post some of my observations with that as I go.  I am still learning more about it as we go, but it has already paid for itself with the remote site syncing, in my opinion!

On a lighter note, I do hope to meet some of you at SolidWorks World 2008 in San Diego!  I am definitely looking forward to the conference.  It is only about a month away – can you believe it?

Today we installed our production vault at headquarters and set up the archive server at one of our remote sites.  We got the replication running and tested it.  It works great!

We also finalized our workflows and transferred all of the users, groups, and settings from the test vault to the production vault.  I really like the fact that you can run multiple vaults on one machine.  PDMWorks Workgroup limits you to one vault per machine, so you are somewhat limited in how you can test things.

We also got all the training laptops configured and set up in preparation for the user training tomorrow.  I can’t wait to see the reactions of our users!

This week, my company is implementing PDMWorks Enterprise (PDMWE).  As a matter of fact, I am currently getting trained by Razorleaf Corporation in the implementation and administration of PDMWE as I type.

On Monday, we got the SQL server installed and configured, and the PDMWE server software installed with help from via Remote Access.  We also installed a client so that we could verify that the server was functioning properly.

On Tuesday our Razorleaf representative arrived onsite to verify the server and client installs.  I also got trained on the administration of the PDMWE vault and how to tweak all the settings.

We have currently set up a test vault, and are in the process of setting up our default workflow and revision scheme and creating groups and folder structures.  Tomorrow we will install an archive server at one of our remote locations and implement the file replication.

Friday, we have user training, so I am expecting to hear some grumbling.  But I hope after everyone sees it and interacts with it, that they will see that it is a needed tool and has much more to offer than the PDMWorks Workgroup install we have been using.