Rules and Best Practices for Using Change Orders with Files

Certain rules apply to closing a change order or releasing files with relationships. Follow these rules and best practices for using change orders with files.

General Rules

• Only users with Administrator or Change Order Editor security permissions can affect change orders.
• A file can only be associated with one active change order at a time. Once a change order has been closed or cancelled, the file can be associated with a new or a currently active change order.
• Change orders do not drive file state changes. However, a change order will prevent certain lifecycle state changes for the file depending on the change order's state and if linked to change order is added as a criteria in the file's lifecycle transition.

Rules for Closing a Change Order

• The change order must be in the Approved state.
• All files associated with the change order are released.
• Vault 2015–The effective dates are set and edited using the Set Effectivity dialog box.
• Vault 2015 R2–Effectivity is immediate.

Rules for Releasing Files with Relationships

• Vault 2015–Releasing and setting the effectivity of an assembly on a change order that has unreleased children (not on a change order), releases and sets the effectivity of the children.
• Vault 2015 R2–Releasing an assembly on a change order that has unreleased children (not on a change order), releases the children. Effectivity is immediate.
• If a previously unreleased child is on another change order, the change order containing the parent file cannot be closed until the change order associated with the child file is either closed or cancelled.

Best Practices

• As a best practice, you should add all children to a change order with an assembly. Reviewers and Approvers are notified of all affected files.
• In general, it is useful to add all files affected by a design change to the change order. For example, in Autodesk Inventor, changing a part also changes the parent assembly.
• It is recommended that you add all previously unreleased children to a change order with its parent assembly since they are automatically released when the assembly is released.

  Reviewers and Approvers are notified of all files that are released when a change order is approved.