ProjectWise Explorer Help

Working with Versions

A version is a read-only snapshot of a document. You create a version when you want to capture the state of a document at a certain point in time.

When you take a document and create a version for it, the original document remains unchanged (except for the Version and Sequence properties, see below), and the new version is created with the same name, description, and file name, and in the same folder as the original document. Also, the original document is now considered the active version of the document. You can create as many versions for a document as you need.

When you look at the properties of any document or version, you will see two properties related to versions: Version and Sequence.

  • Version — Displays the version’s label, which helps distinguish one version from another within a particular version set in the document list. When a new document is created, the Version field is empty, and you can either enter a label or leave it blank. When creating a new version, you actually set two labels - one for the new version snapshot and one for the active version. By default, the new version is assigned the label of the current active version, which you can either keep or edit as needed. Since the new version may be using the active version's label, it is necessary to reset the active version's label. For the active version's label, you can either let ProjectWise assign a version identifier, or you can enter your own custom label. Each Version label must be unique within a version set; you cannot reuse the same label for multiple versions in a version set (this also means you cannot have more than one version with a blank label).
  • SequenceDisplays the version's sequence number, which indicates the version's order in the version set to which it belongs. Sequence numbers are automatically assigned and cannot be changed by the user. Every new document in ProjectWise is assigned the sequence number 0. When you create a version, the sequence number of the original document / active version is incremented by 1, and then the new version takes the original document's / active version's former sequence number (before it was incremented). The highest number in a version set is always the active version.

A document and its versions are part of a set relationship, therefore whatever you do to the active version is generally done to its versions as well. For example:

  • copy — If you select to copy the active version to another folder, by default the document and all its versions are copied (although, you do have the option to not copy the versions along with the active version).
  • move — If you select to move the active version to another folder, and the datasource is configured to allow documents that have versions to be moved, then the document and all its versions will be moved (you cannot move a document without also moving all its versions, and you cannot move individual versions)
  • delete — If you select to delete the active version, the document and all its versions are deleted.
Note: ProjectWise retains all versions of a document until you delete any or all of them. Versions can be deleted like any other document in ProjectWise. If you are concerned about this, you can hide their display in the document list, or you can apply security to versions to prevent them from being deleted. Because you can delete individual versions, it is possible to have gaps in version sequence numbers.
Note: Changing the document name of the active version does not rename any of its versions. Thus if you create some versions, change the name of the active version, then create more versions, you will have versions with different document names in the same version set.
Note: You cannot edit the properties of a version.