Understanding GCF basic concepts

The basic GCF terms used in this guide are described below to help you understand how to use the GCF with as little technical detail as possible.

• Share: A Meridian Enterprise vault or SharePoint document library that has been configured to collaborate using the GCF. Each GCF site can have one or more shares, all of which can collaborate with one another.
• Enlist: The act of selecting remote shares with which to collaborate on documents. It is possible to share documents with two or more shares. After a share has been enlisted, it remains enlisted until it is delisted in the GCF.
• Document ownership: In regard to the GCF, ownership refers to a share rather than a person. Each document can only be owned by one share at any specified time. This is necessary to avoid multiple users working on the same document or assembly at the same time.
• Scheduled transfer: The GCF regularly sends copies of documents between collaborating shares in BlueCielo briefcases. These transfers are typically scheduled to occur once daily for low-priority transfers (for example, revisions to documents not currently being worked on) and more frequently for high-priority transfers (for example, when you want to distribute a new revision immediately).
• Offline share: When a remote site is not reachable via the Internet, its shares are considered to be offline. You can continue to collaborate with this site with a few limitations, such as:

• You cannot transfer ownership (in either direction).
• You cannot see up-to-date status of remote documents.

• Collaboration: Sharing documents between multiple locations, including shares that exist at different sites. When a document is shared, a copy of the document resides at each collaborating share. It is possible to share a single document, a set of unrelated documents, or related documents such as an entire assembly. When working with an assembly, it is important to know that after it has been shared, all related parts and subassemblies will also be shared, by default. However, you can share individual sub-assemblies to distribute the work load of the assembly over multiple shares. Following is an example of how the GCF can be used to share documents.

Assume that a company has two Meridian Enterprise sites. The company's headquarters are located in Detroit where master (as-built) documents are kept. The company has an engineering group located in Liverpool. When the company needs to make engineering changes to documents that reside in Detroit, they share the documents with Liverpool.

Following are the steps that need to be performed to share the documents with the GCF:

1. In Detroit, a manager enlists the Liverpool share for the documents that need to change.
2. Copies of the documents are sent to the Liverpool site automatically by the GCF (including document ownership) at the next scheduled transfer. The original copies are now locked in Detroit and only the Liverpool copies can be changed. In Detroit, work on documents that have not been shared with Liverpool can continue.
3. When the document copies are received in Liverpool, Meridian Enterprise workflows can be started for the documents to manage the engineering change process. The Liverpool users see the changes that they make to the copies now residing in Liverpool as usual. The Detroit users will see the changes whenever the Detroit copies are updated by the GCF.
4. When the documents are released from the workflows in Liverpool, the latest copies (which can include new documents that are referenced by the shared copies) are sent back to Detroit (including document ownership) automatically by the GCF at the next scheduled transfer. The copies are now locked in Liverpool. When the updated copies are received in Detroit, they become new revisions of the copies there and are unlocked. At this point, both sites have copies of the same revisions of the shared documents.

These steps can be repeated as many times as necessary. This is a basic example of what can be done with the GCF. Variations, including updating Detroit with copies for review only, can be used. In the rest of this guide, all of the GCF commands and how to use them are described, including some real-life scenarios.