External objects are requirements that are managed outside a Windchill system. In Windchill, they behave as local objects and follow rules of local change processes. Business rules are not supported for external affected object types.

The Requirement External Resource type, Architecture External Resource, and their subtypes are the external affected object types that are available out of the box.

For more information on the subtypes, see the topic System Compatibility and Requirements.

The external affected object types in Windchill are controlled by the wt.change.remoteChangeableObjects.enabled property located in the wt.properties file. The default is false. When set to true, all external affected object types can be added to Affected Objects table in a change request, problem report or variance. The Name, Number, Identity and State columns in the Affected Objects table support external affected object types in addition to local objects. You can customize the view of this table to display external objects. Change requests that exist in a product, library, or quality context can reference external objects as an affected object. Problem reports or variances that exist in a product, library or project context can reference external objects as an affected object.

In a package, external affected objects are displayed in the Preview Collection table only. The external objects in a package cannot be imported or exported.

For more information on how to configure affected object types in an external system OSLC server, see Configuring the Windchill Digital Product Traceability (DPT) Extension in ThingWorx.