Your Windchill system may contain objects that were imported from another system. The imported objects are owned by the originating Windchill system. Often, these objects are being actively modified in that other system, but they have been included in your system so that your Windchill users can work with these objects simultaneously. For example, if you are collaborating on a product with another company and need to share design data, you could exchange information using importable packages. When you import their design data into your system, you do not want your Windchill users to be able to modify the objects as these objects are not owned by your company and may be further updated from the other system. Managing the access control rules using a special domain or context for these objects to control unintentional change require additional time to define and maintain.

To minimize the impact, a special lock is available on objects imported using a received delivery. The lock is automatically applied and limits actions that can be performed on the object by restricting the authorization of most users. Lock restrictions can include limiting access control permissions for the object or limiting the actions that can be performed on the object regardless of the authorization rights of the user.