Rules and Best Practices for Using Change Orders with Items

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

General Rules

• Only users with Administrator or Change Order Editor security permissions can affect change orders.
• An item can only be associated with one active change order at a time. Once a change order has been closed or cancelled, the item can be associated with a new or a currently active change order.
• The Change Order Administrator can make the item editable in all states except Canceled and Closed. The Responsible Engineer can make an item editable in the Work State, changing the lifecycle state. See the next section for more detail.
• An Item Editor Level 2 can edit an item associated with a change order when it is in the Work in Progress state except for the following:
  • Change State
  • Change Effectivity
    Note: The Effectivity feature only applies to Vault 2015. As of Vault 2015 R2, effectivity is immediate when an item is released.
  • New Change Order

Rules for Using Change Orders with Items and Lifecycle States

• If a released item is added to a change order and the Change Order Administrator changes the state of the item to Work in Progress, the item changes to Work in Progress and a new revision is created according to the Bump revision action specified in the Lifecycles rules dialog box. If the Bump revision action is set to None, a new revision is not created.
• The state of an item does not change when it is attached to a change order.

  After a new revision is created, the Change Order Administrator can change the lifecycle state of the item making the item editable or non-editable by using the Change State command available from the context menu in the Change Order dialog box in the Item tab. The context menu displays the available lifecycle states.

Rules for Closing a Change Order

• The change order must be in the Approved state.
• All items 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 Items 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 item cannot be closed until the change order associated with the child item 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 items.
• In general, it is useful to add all items 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 items that are released when a change order is approved.