Parts
Windchill ESI allows you to publish parts created and changed within Windchill PDMLink to a distribution target such as SAP or Oracle. You can configure the Windchill PDMLink system to publish particular attributes of a part, as well as documents that are associated to the part. The Windchill PDMLink part information is used to create a part in the distribution target.
ERP Connector passes the following part-associated attributes from Windchill PDMLink to a distribution target:
• Number
• Whether the part is a phantom part or not
• Default Unit
• Control Characteristics
• Type
• Name
• Source
• Version
• Iteration
• Date Effectivity
• Last Changed By
• Distribution Targets
• Serial Effectivity
• Lot Effectivity
• Lifecycle State
• View
• Storage Location
• Previously Published Part Version
• Extended Data
• Department Data
Publishing an Enterprise Version of a Manufacturing Part
Every downstream part is manufactured based on the specification of the upstream part. For a particular part, the Enterprise Version attribute displays the linked upstream part version. For more information, see Enterprise Version.
When publishing a manufacturing part, the ESI response contains the information of the Enterprise version (upstream version) along with the manufacturing part information.
For example, when you publish the manufacturing part (version A.1), the ESI response includes the upstream design part (version B.1) information, along with the manufacturing part (version A.1) information. Refer to the image below.
This feature is useful when you want to track the part revision using the engineering revision (in this case, the design part) in the downstream ERP system.
Follow these steps to enable this preference:
1. Open the Preference Management utility. Click > >
2. Select > >
3. Set the preference Publish Enterprise Version of manufacturing part as Yes.
The Enterprise Version is consumed in the SAP ERP system for material through a change notice, and in the Oracle ERP system, it is consumed for material and BOM.
Plant Specific Attributes for Parts
Plant-specific attributes for a part can be published using the view-specific capabilities of Windchill MPMLink. To publish plant-specific attributes:
• Ensure that the Publish Plant Data Information preference from the > > category is set to Yes.
• Define a specific view corresponding to each of your plants in Windchill MPMLink.
• Define your plant-specific attributes in the corresponding view attributes tab.
• Use Windchill ESI to publish your part.
Windchill ESI then retrieves the plant-specific attributes for the part from Windchill MPMLink and sends that information to the relevant plant in the distribution target.
 | • These attributes must have their mapping defined in the ESI response meta information file. Also, the EAI software components should be extended to map these attributes to SAP as appropriate. • While publishing department data or plant data for parts or resources using Send to Distribution Target action, Send Material to Distribution Target action, Change Notice, Promotion Request, Set State, or Saved Filter is used from: ◦ BOM Settings on distribution target when publishing part or BOM. ◦ Resource Settings on distribution target when publishing resource or resource structure. ◦ Process Plan Settings on distribution target when publishing process plan structure. ◦ Change Notice Settings on distribution target when publishing using change notice. |
Publish Extended Data
Extended data is a versioned, workable object in Windchill that is used to store data that needs to be published to an ERP system. The extended data can be published in the ESI response to a distribution target using the ERP connector.
To publish the extended data, enable the preference Publish Enterprise Data Information by setting it to Yes.
To know more about extended data, see the topic Extended Data.
| | • To publish version information either from the Part or from the associated Enterprise Data, set the property com.ptc.windchill.esi.useVersionInfofromPartOrED in the esi.properties file as preferred. The valid values for this property are PART or COMMON_ENTERPRISE_DATA. For example, to publish version information from the Part, set the property as <Property default="PART" name="com.ptc.windchill.esi.useVersionInfofromPartOrED"/>. The default behavior is to publish version information from the Enterprise Data. • The attribute Distribution Targets (in the elements Destination and TargetID that appear in the ESI response) identifies the distribution target in which the part should be created or changed. • Windchill PDMLink passes the Part Date Effectivity in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. • When using the object-centric mode of publishing a part, with the distribution target attribute Publish Related Documents when Publishing a Part set to Yes, documents associated to the part are published as well. |
Department Data
The department data attributes are published along with the part or resource attributes in the ESI response from all the relevant department data objects associated with the plant data.
For more information, see the topic Department Data Overview.
Ensure that the Publish Plant Data Information preference from the > > category is set to Yes.
For more information about the department data, refer to Department Data Overview.
Configuring Data to Publish Automatically with Life Cycle State Change
The extended data or department data can be configured to get published automatically in the ESI response if the life cycle state of the plant data is changed. You can configure this by enabling the preference Extended Data Life Cycle States To Trigger Part Publication Automatically from > > . You can specify multiple life cycle states in a comma-separated list. The default value of the preference is empty.
After enabling this preference, when enterprise data or plant data life cycle state is changed as specified in the preference, ESI will render the relevant part iteration and the department data as per the configuration specification or filter associated with the distribution target to publish the part in the ESI response.
| | • The publishing of a part is enabled only if the preference Launch ESI Workflow Automatically is set to Yes. • If the plant data is released, the plant data and the enterprise data will get published. Whereas, if the enterprise data is released, then the relevant plant data is published. |
The extended data and department data can be published in separate buckets in the ESI response. This can be done by customizing the ESI response. Refer to the applicable ERP Connector Customizer's Guide on Document Reference Site to know more about customizing the buckets in the ESI response.