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ProductDashboard

Companies have realized the significant benefits of managing product data and processes in a product data management (PDM) system like ProductCenter™. Today’s challenge, met uniquely by the ProductDashboard™ PDM Web portal, is to allow users themselves to transform and organize the product data contained in your PDM system in a context more relevant to them individually. This transforms product data into personalized product information, significantly enhancing each user’s decision-making capabilities.

Designed for use with SofTech’s ProductCenter collaborative PDM solution, ProductDashboard is a unique user configurable PDM Web portal. Similar to My Yahoo!® or other Web portals, ProductDashboard is easy to set up and use, yet is sophisticated and fine-tuned to support your product lifecycle processes, offering flexibility and ease of use out of the box — at a fraction of the cost of custom, toolkit-developed Web clients.

ProductDashboard lets you organize your own product and process information on a user interface framework, called a dashboard, with your selection of content and functions included as a set of instruments. Multiple instruments can be sized and placed on a single page or multiple tabbed pages for accessing your commonly used ProductCenter functions, workflows, reports, queries, bookmarks to Web pages and FTP sites, links to email and other information.

ProductDashboard enables you to create your own personal view into ProductCenter and to access functionality from your own tailored PDM Web portal to better support you in the performance of your specific job functions.

Create Your Personal Dashboard

Here are just some of the many ways ProductDashboard can enhance and expand the usefulness of your ProductCenter implementation:

As an Engineering Manager…

For assessing departmental workload and assigning tasks, easily configure one instrument of your dashboard to list the current workload for each of the designers reporting to you. Clearly separate these tasks from others you’re responsible for. Add access to ProductCenter functions to check-in/out drawings, vacation schedules, and other information you need. View an attribute form for a product, run a process report, or place an activity on hold from your dashboard.

As a Designer…

Tailor instrument tables to display only the attributes that are important to you. Set up your dashboard to include information relevant to you, for example, your Worklist of current projects, your group’s Claimable project list, Checked Out Items tables, and a list of extended project team members. Add a link to an engineering association Web site or on-line trade magazine you view frequently.
ProductDashboard can be used as a ProductCenter home page, a workflow assignment portal or a find, view and print client. Whether you’re in engineering, manufacturing or any department in between, you can configure it to assist you in your role throughout the product planning and development process.

Highlights

The ProductDashboard PDM Web portal is the optimum environment to access ProductCenter data, processes, and other helpful information, improving the usefulness of your ProductCenter implementation:

• Presents important product information in user specific context
• Simplifies navigation to desired information
• Minimizes user training and promotes use by infrequent users
• Maximizes information use, reuse, and value
• Reduces on-going support and programming costs

Benefits of Using ProductDashboard

Anyone Can Tailor It. Portal-like dashboard editors allow easy personalization of your product web page. For example, you can use the Dashboard Editor for adding, deleting, and modifying panels. The Panel Editor can be used for adding and positioning the instruments within a panel. The Instrument Editor can be used to tailor instrument behavior and display characteristics. Several style sheets are provided to simplify the process of establishing a company-wide presentation theme.

Data Security Guaranteed. The safety of your product data is always secure with standard ProductCenter user, group, or role permissions. No one can access information, reports, or other data without your authorization, making it easy and secure to roll out ProductDashboard to your extended product teams, suppliers, and other partners.

Query Table Support. Create an instrument with content from saved queries run against the ProductCenter database, with the option of including both the query and output for display. As with ProductCenter, queries can be run on items, as well as workflow processes or instances for reports on pending ECOs for example.

Access to Other Content. Create an instrument to access information outside of ProductCenter, including other Web pages, FTP sites, email, or even a local file stored on your computer; extremely handy for accessing vacation schedules, phone directories, and other items that you reference all the time.

Access to Reports. Populate and organize an instrument to access a list of all query-based ProductCenter reports. Tailor your list to add or delete reports from the pull-down menu for brevity.

Access to ProductCenter Functions. Embed ProductCenter functions in your dashboard instruments, such as Add File, Add Project, Issue Form, and Run Search, which can be additionally specialized to suit your needs.

Display Attributes. Configure table columns to be any item attribute and in any order. Include attributes from multiple forms by adding entries from one form or another. Click on any item to ‘drill down’ for further analysis, such as Where Used.

Configure Your Information Refresh Rate. Set a preferred time to refresh your dashboard information. Your refresh intervals can be seconds, minutes, hours or days thus, ensuring that important product information is delivered to you in a timeframe that meets your specific needs.