Did you know?
Vault Professional 2015 has an Item and Change Order (CO) Unlock command. It can be found in the Actions pulldown in Vault Explorer.
To make this feature function properly, the user whose Item or CO locks during their edit will be the one to select the locked item or CO, and go to Actions>Unlock Item and CO command.
Please note, this feature does not work in cases where a user gets locked out of their CO or Item, and someone else tries to unlock it.
Why do items and CO's get locked?
Well to be frank, we are still trying to uncover the full reason. However, we have found it is due to IIS or the IIS worker process either restarting or recycling while the item or change order is in the edit mode. You can replicate the behavior for yourself by editing an item, and while the item is in edit, restart IIS on your Vault server and you will get the item to lock. The same steps will force a CO to lock. Now logically, we are not here to advocate you doing this, but if you feel the need to test it out for yourself, this is one way to do it.
How can we try to stop the worker process from recycling on its own in 2015 or prior releases? **(UPDATED)**
Some ways you can try to reduce the worker process from restarting are:
Modify application pools to one service each
- Open IIS manager
- Go to the Application Pools
- Review the applications pools to see that they are only servicing one application.
- If you see AutodeskDM running Services and Filestores websites, you will want to fix the filestores site to use the AutodeskFS application pool.
- If you see that the WebClient service is being used by AutodeskDM, you can create a new Application Pool following the steps in the Advanced Configuration guide, or set it to use the DefaultAppPool.
- Note: We've also found that adjusting the Regular Time Intervals does help keep the worker process from crashing out, but the number to which you will set is dependent on your environment.
You will also set IIS_IUSRS to full control over your websites
- Go to Default Web Site and add the security permissions.
- Go to lower level folders and ensure the permission propagated
Although we cannot guarantee these settings will resolve the item/co locking issue, we have seen a reduction in the occurrences.
When will the unlock feature be backported to prior releases?
The necessary actions to backport this feature are not architecturally feasible in previous releases, due to the many changes added to the 2015 product that allow this feature to work in 2015. Therefore, the recommendation is if the steps noted above do not reduce the occurrences of item/co locking, upgrade to Vault Professional 2015.