About application links

Meridian includes application links for the most popular applications used for engineering. The links provide specific Meridian functionality within each application for working with that application’s data. This functionality is in addition to the functionality provided by Meridian Application Integration described in the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise User’s Guide. Application Integration is application-independent and configurable by each user so that they can conveniently work with vault documents. Because the links work with application data, the application links can be configured by a system administrator so that the data is managed in the same way for all Meridian users in the organization.

Meridian integrates extensively with popular CAD applications. The CAD application links support powerful features such as automatic bidirectional title block data exchange, sheet sets, external reference management, solid modeling assembly file structures, advanced viewing capabilities, and more.

Meridian also integrates well with the Microsoft Office family of products. Users can store files created in any of the Office applications in a Meridian vault, even Outlook email messages and attachments, and view most of them without the need for the Office applications themselves or special viewers. The Microsoft Office link adds commands to the Office applications for viewing and synchronizing document properties such as Author, Title, Subject, and Keywords with the Meridian vault. Hyperlinks between Office documents are maintained throughout the document life cycle.

Warning    After files have been imported into a vault, document properties that were not explicitly set during the import (from title blocks, default property assignments, and so on) contain no values. Those properties will not be synchronized to the imported content files by the Meridian application links. This is done on purpose to prevent overwriting existing values. The properties can be synchronized from the imported content files. Such properties must be set in the vault to an explicit value at least once before the properties will be synchronized to the content files.

Notes

• The application links synchronize vault properties to and from documents whenever they are opened and again when they are saved. This can add to the time that it takes to perform these actions. The amount of time is determined by many factors but primarily by the number of vault properties to be synchronized. To minimize this time, carefully consider modifying the RedrawFieldsOnUpdate setting described in Configuring the Office link and the DisablePropertiesUpdate and DisableTitleBlocksUpdate settings described in the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Administrator's Guide.

• Depending on your overall computing environment, using many custom properties can cause poor system performance, particularly when application links are enabled. For information about optimizing performance of application links with empty properties, see Configuring empty property synchronization.

• BlueCielo technical support for specific versions of linked applications is limited. Review the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Supported Software document for this version of Meridian to determine if the application links that your organization uses are fully supported. The document is available from your BlueCielo ECM Solutions Partner or the BlueCielo ECM Solutions extranet.