Importing Participants with Replication Packages

Replication packages support the import of participant (user, group, or organization) data into the target Windchill system. Participant data is usually imported as an attribute of an object. For example, if you import a part using a received delivery of a replication package, the part has the Created By and Modified By attributes. These attributes contain a reference to a user on the source system. Depending on the configuration of the target system, a participant on the source system may match a participant on the target system. If there is no match by distinguished name, the participant is matched through name. You can configure your system to match users by other attributes, such as email.

For example, the user Mary Simmon with user name msimmon created Part ABC. Part ABC was later imported using a replication package into another Windchill system in which Mary Simmon was also a user. The imported part would still list Mary Simmon for the Created By attribute as long as the user name (msimmon) matched on both the source and target system.

If there is no corresponding participant on the target system, several options are available. When import is attempted, a conflict appears stating that the object cannot be imported because a matching participant is not available. The following resolutions may appear, depending on the object and attribute being imported:

• Set Current User: Use this option to set the importing user as the participant associated with the object attribute. For example, instead of setting Mary Simmon as the creator of the part, the user data for the user completing the import would be listed. When an object is imported using other means or by another type of package, this is the standard behavior.

• Create Replicated User: Use this option to create a temporary user to represent the user on the source system. For example, a new replicated user would be created with the user name msimmon and any other user data that was included in the export files. Other user data could include user attributes such as full name, last name, or email. Replicated users appear in Windchill with a status of Replicated and with a replicated status glyph

. For more information about replicated users, see Replicated Users.

If a participant exists on both the source and the target system, the participant attributes between the two systems do not need to match, except for those attributes that are used to identify the participant. For example, if a group called Document Reviewers exists on both systems, the group membership does not need to be the same on both systems. If the source group is updated to add new members, the target group is not updated.

Updating user data on the source system may cause a mismatch on the target system. For example, your target system may be configured to match users with email. If you send an initial delivery with Mary Simmon’s email address of msimmons@example.com, but then update Mary’s email to mary.simmons@example.com, the target system is no longer able to match to the original user entry.

For more information about configuring how users are matched on the source and target systems, see Identifying Users in Data Replication and Activating Replicated Users.