View Sharepoint Documents Using URLs and PortalViewer
If you need to view documents outside of Teamcenter - this can save time!
My company uses Microsoft Sharepoint MOSS 2007 to manage all their training documentation and operating procedures. Among the list of documentation are our training materials for new and current Teamcenter users who often refer to them in their jobs. The problem I hear often is that users don't like to have to go from one application to another to look up how to use Teamcenter for a specific business process. Why not put all the documentation in Teamcenter?
Well - that's one way - but we are talking about months of man-hours to migrate not just Teamcenter documentation, but all documentations into Teamcenter.
Thanks to the ability to create URL objects and view web pages in Portal - we were able to address this problem quickly. First we we organized the documentation in Sharepoint by giving each document a series of attributes like user level, training topic and document status.
Then we created different view types that will filter and sort all the documents based on these attributes. In this case we created 3 different views for each user level. Within each view - we grouped the documents by user level and then by training topic
Now we can link to each of these view types from Teamcenter using URL objects. First we need to get the URL which stands for Uniform Resource Locator - also referred to as the web address. To do this we need to select the views in Sharepoint and copy the link from the browser. In this example I selected the Beginners view and copied the web address to the clipboard. Notice that the address has the name of the view.
Now, log into Teamcenter and create a new URL object using the web address you just copied
Before you select the URL object - select the Viewer tab first and then select the URL object. The Sharepoint site will appear in your window and you can select the links to the traning categories and finally the documents.
Of course this works if you have Sharepoint in your organization. However, the URL object is very powerful and can even allow you to access public folders in Windows Explorer using the Windows network path or an FTP site.
Another suggestion is that whether you use Sharepoint as in the example above or another directory accessible via a browser, you should save your documents (Word, Powerpoint Excel) as web pages using html format or use Adobe PDF format. This way, the portal viewer can display the document quickly rather than launching the MS Office application.
The URL object can help you link Teamcenter with other file directories in your organization without the painful and time consuming process of migrating documents into Teamcenter. It can also be a timesaver when looking up information outside Teamcenter on a frequent basis and if the document is stored as html, can increase your productivity by quickly viewing it in portal without waiting for the application to launch it.
Richard P. Meagher
Engineering Applications Supervisor
BorgWarner MorseTEC
Rmeagher@borgwarner.com
