EPDM Empowered: Finding Duplicate Files in Enterprise PDM

It’s a Friday night at 5:00 PM, and you’re all set to check-in your projects and clock out for the day. You go to click check-in, and your worst nightmare happens.

What do we do? There shouldn’t be a file with another name! We could dive into all of our directories to find it, but there must be a better way, right?

Enterprise PDM 2015 and Duplicates

If you are using EPDM 2015, you may have noticed that some new dialog changes make handling this much easier!

Within EPDM 2015, when we come across a duplicate file we see the new and improved duplicate file name dialog box, as pictured above. The error now appears as a blue link. When clicked it provides us with a dialog box displaying all existing files with the same name, and it tells us where they are in the vault!

Enterprise PDM 2014 and Duplicates

I know some of you are thinking, “That’s great and all, but what if I’m on 2014.” If that’s the case, you are about to get an introduction to a very powerful tool in EPDM. You are about to learn all about the EPDM Report Generator!

The report generator allows for us to run reports on the SQL database to get some very advanced management information. With this, we can gather vault growth information, duplicate locations, and many other things.

So let’s take a look at an example with the Duplicate File Name report.

First, you’ll need the report. You can download that here: Download ShowDuplicateFilenames v1.2.

Next, the report generator must be started. To do this, navigate to your vault view and open the “Tools” menu. You’ll then choose “Report Generator.”

Within this new window, you will see the report generator in all its glory. The next step is to import a new query. To do this navigate to “File” >> “Import Query…”

You can then path to the navigated file and click “Open”. You’ll then be prompted to set permissions for the query. These are entirely up to you.

Next you will want to enable the query, and click the “Execute Query” button.

You will be prompted to enter a filename.

You can then click “OK” and it will run the query, showing you results similar to these.

We can see the files unique document ID, it’s Filename, and the Project Path. (Remember that the path is from the root directory of the vault)

With this, you’ve now found the duplicate and can quickly clean it up, allowing you to make it home well in time for dinner!

Happy Vaulting!

BONUS TIP: If you run this report with a blank filename, you can find ALL duplicate files in the vault. The Duplicate File report can be great for cleaning things up and removing extra files.

By: Cody Pendzich, Technical Support Representative

For more ePDM tips and tricks, visit gxsc.com/SolidNotes

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