How to Store and Manage Work Order Attachments in Oracle eAM

Since 2008, we have seen many different approaches to managing document attachments in Oracle eAM. Based on these experiences, we’ve documented some of the best techniques and Oracle features for effectively organizing and storing attachments to help build a better experience for planners, schedulers, and technicians.

This information helps organizations launch maintenance improvement projects, create standards, distribute better safety information, and build a process that helps to quickly distribute the best information possible to technicians.

Introduction

Our experience has shown that commonly used documents should be stored in the Oracle Document Catalog via the Web Page attachment type, linking to a web-based document library such as SharePoint on-prem or SharePoint Online, which is quickly becoming the new standard.

This technique combines native Oracle EBS functionality and a commonly used enterprise application (i.e., SharePoint). This approach allows users to quickly select standard documents, and at the same time allows administrators and managers to implement good document version control.

While potentially time consuming to set up, this approach creates an environment that is very easy to maintain. It allows planners and schedulers the ability to attach important documents to any level of the work order in Oracle eAM—including at the asset, work order, operation levels, as well as other locations. This process ensures consistency, and makes maintaining attachments easier over the long haul, which is incredibly important for safety documentation.

The first step is to build a good document library in something like SharePoint.

Setting Up Your SharePoint Folder Hierarchy

The first step in setting up your SharePoint structure for attachments will likely involve the IT department. It is recommended that a document library be explicitly created for the Maintenance team, where the document library name is something like “Maintenance_Attachments” or “Attachments.”

Based on your organization’s makeup, this “Attachments” folder could be preceded by additional levels of hierarchy, such as Org ID and/or Maintenance Location. The following is an example of how the folder hierarchy can be created.

/ Attachments / Work_Orders / Assets / Asset Number or Asset Group / Activity or Operation / Document

The following screenshot provides a visual example.

This technique allows the most flexibility to administrators to update the document to the latest version without having to upload the document back into Oracle EBS.  

Naming the Files in the Document Library and Adding Document Metadata

It is good to have a strategy for naming the actual files in this directory. Here are a few approaches that seem to work well for many organizations.

1. Do not use spaces, use underscores. If a space is used, SharePoint adds a “%20” in the file name, which makes it difficult to link to as well as to migrate to other document libraries in the future if SharePoint isn’t part of the long-term attachment storage strategy.
2. Consider putting a “prefix” as the first part of the file name. For example, put a “INSP” for an inspection document or “SAFE” for a safety document.  This way the document stands out to the user.
3. Create a “column” in SharePoint called “Document Type” to profile the type of document to improve searching for the document in SharePoint.

Publishing Attachments to the Oracle Document Catalog

It is time to feed Oracle with a few documents now that they are in SharePoint. AventX should be installed at this point to test a small sample and get user feedback. Getting user feedback is essential before going crazy uploading all of the documents into SharePoint.  You do not want to publish to the catalog, load all of the URLs, then all of a sudden, you need to change the folder structure, which will break your links in Oracle.

Using Oracle Asset Documents with the Paperclip

Here is an example of uploading a URL attachment to a 15,000 Mile Maintenance Activity for the DTF35000 asset — Assets > Asset Numbers > Documents.

Find the asset and click on the paperclip icon.

Using Miscellaneous Document Category

Here is an example of using the same approach but using the Miscellaneous document category approach, a more generic way of storing attachments.

Using Maintenance Job Attachments

Another approach is to save the document against the Maintenance Job Attachments so they can be quickly selected when adding it to the work order.

Web Page Attachment Type

With all three options, Oracle eAM gives you the choice to save the document as a File or a Web Page attachment.  Select Web Page as the preferred method for creating a link to the file.

Copy and paste the URL to the SharePoint file. In SharePoint use the technique of right-clicking on the hyperlink, then selecting Copy Shortcut. 

Using the Attachments to Build a Work Packet

Once the attachments are organized in Oracle eAM, then users can pick from the document from the catalog to quickly add attachments to the work order or have them appear so they can be distributed with the work packet from the Print Work Order screen.

Distributing the Work Packet with AventX

When the work packet needs to be distributed to mobile, email, printer, archive, SharePoint, or other methods, AventX extends Oracle eAM by allowing the user to pick the attachment categories that need to be distributed with one or more work orders. 

The whitepaper titled “Improving Asset Maintenance, Safety, and Reliability for Oracle eAM” discusses more of the challenges with creating work packets that AventX aims to solve.

For those of you that are looking to reorganize or rethink how you are storing attachments and creating work order packets, feel free to connect with us any time! If you have other thoughts on how to organize your libraries, let us know using the form below.