Latest Enhancements

(September 2021)

• You can now create and modify document sets (requires ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG CONNECT Edition Update 3.4 R2 - 10.00.03.456)

(April / May 2021)

• ProjectWise Drive (version 2021.3.x) enhancements:
  • When you have this version (or later) of ProjectWise Drive installed and running, selecting an Office document and selecting Start co-authoring session or Join co-authoring session will open the Office document for co-authoring in your Office desktop app instead of in a new browser tab. (Note that ProjectWise Drive only needs to be installed and running for this feature to work - the work area connection does NOT need to be synchronized with ProjectWise Drive for this feature to work).
  • If a document is currently checked out to you in ProjectWise Web, the document will now automatically become checked out to you in ProjectWise Drive:
    • either as soon as you synchronize the work area connection with ProjectWise Drive
    • or as soon as you sign in to ProjectWise Drive, if the work area connection was already synchronized but ProjectWise Drive was not running when you checked out the document in ProjectWise Web

    (In earlier versions, the document that was checked out to you in ProjectWise Web would be locked to you in ProjectWise Drive in the above situations.)

    To indicate that the document is now checked out to you in ProjectWise Drive, the checked out icon for this document in ProjectWise Web will change from this to this .

  • When a document is checked out to you in ProjectWise Drive, you can sign in to ProjectWise Drive on any computer and that document will be checked out to you there.

    Note that the local changes you make to a document on one computer are not automatically available on other computers where ProjectWise Drive is installed, so you should try to only work on a document from one location.

• You can now look up information about the current work area connection by selected Settings > About current connection. The dialog that opens shows the following details:
  • Name of connection
  • Description of connection
  • Name of work area
  • Bentley Web Services Gateway (WSG) URL
  • ProjectWise datasource that contains the work area
  • ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG version
  • Bentley Web Services Gateway version
  • Browser version
• Menu items related to working on folders have been added to the action menu when a folder is selected.
• A menu item has been added to the action menu when a PDF is selected - Open in PDF Markup Service (you can also still just click the PDF to open it).
• The Advanced Search dialog has been improved, and now shows the environment that the selected property or attribute belongs to.

Previous Enhancements

(Mid December 2020)

• New Document Creation Wizard (requires ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG CONNECT Edition Update 3.4 - 10.00.03.436)

  When you are uploading files, whether by dragging files in to a folder or by selecting New > Upload files, the Document Creation Wizard now opens so you can fill out document attributes and document code (if document code rules are in place) for each document as it is being added to the folder.

• Enhanced workflow for working with Office documents

  The way that you access and work with Office documents in ProjectWise Web has been enhanced, and depends on whether or not you have a Microsoft 365 subscription.

  1. Clicking an Office document no longer downloads or opens the document.
  2. When you do not have a Microsoft 365 subscription, ProjectWise Web treats Office documents like any other file in the work area, which means you can just download or check out and open the document in your desktop Office application as usual.
  3. When you do have a Microsoft 365 subscription:
     • If you want to exclusively edit an Office document, you can just check out and open the document in your desktop Office application as usual.
     • If you want to open an Office document for co-authoring (so that you and other people can edit the document at the same time), click the check box next to the document and then select Open > Start Office 365 co-authoring. You can select Open in Desktop App once the document opens if you need to use the advanced features of the Office app.
     • If you want to join a co-authoring session that is already in progress, click the check box next to the document and then select Open > Join Office 365 co-authoring.
     • When everyone is finished editing the document, the user who initiated the co-authoring session must check in the document by clicking the check box next to the document and selecting Check In > End Office 365 co-authoring.
     Note for admins: From a technical perspective, ProjectWise Web no longer uses the Web Application Open Platform Interface (WOPI) protocol as part of the workflow to open Office documents in a web browser. Because WOPI is no longer used, the user can now be logged in with any type of ProjectWise account (they no longer need to be logged in with a Bentley IMS account to open the Office document in a web browser), and adding the WOPI URL to the CORS list in Bentley Web Services Gateway (WSG) is no longer a configuration requirement of ProjectWise Web. Also, this enhancement currently only applies to ProjectWise Web and does not currently apply to ProjectWise Web View. This means that currently, ProjectWise Web View still needs the WOPI URL added to the CORS list in WSG, and ProjectWise Web View users still need to be logged in with a Bentley IMS account in order to open Office documents in a web browser.
• Quick search now supports full text search (requires ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG CONNECT Edition Update 3.4 - 10.00.03.436)

  When running quick searches, you can set the default search to be either a basic quick search or a full text search. Basic quick searches look for the specified text in certain document properties (Name, Description, File Name, Version) and folder/work area properties (Folder Name, Description). Full text searches look for the specified text inside the file itself, in the file's properties, in custom work area properties, as well as in the document and folder properties searched by a basic quick search).

• You can now save advanced searches

  Saved advanced searches are only available to you, for use in ProjectWise Web. When saving the advanced search, you can specify whether the search is only usable in the work area connection it was created in, or in all work area connections in this project.

• View enhancements (under Column views > Folder views)
  • The Global view option (formerly Display global view) - dynamically changes the view as you change folders, based on whichever global saved view is assigned to the folder you are in (global saved views are created and assigned to folders in ProjectWise Explorer).
  • The Default view option - either applies a pre-set global saved view to the document list for the entire work area connection (if the ProjectWise Web administrator has set a default view in the display options), or displays the default columns of ProjectWise Web (if no default view is set).
  

• You can now navigate the folder structure of a work area in the Connections pane

  Once you log in to a work area in the Connections pane, the work area expands to show the folders and sub-work areas it contains. Selecting a folder in the Connections pane displays the contents of that folder in the document list on the right.

  Each work area has a Saved Searches folder, which can be found in the Connections pane after the last folder in the work area.

  
• The way that you access the Manage ProjectWise Connections page has changed

  There is a new Manage Connections icon (to the left of the Connections pane) which opens the Manage ProjectWise Connections page. (It used to be a link at the bottom of the Connections pane.)

  
• You can now share a work area connection with users from an external organization

  When you share a connection, an invitation is sent to the selected person (point of contact) from the external organization. When the point of contact accepts the invitation, a new ProjectWise project is automatically created for that organization, with the same name as the original project, and with the shared work area connection already added to it. The point of contact can then begin adding other users from their organization to their project. This allows both organizations to work on the same work area, but from their own ProjectWise project.

  
• You can now sync work area participants with the project

  When creating or editing a work area connection, you now have the option to sync work area participants with the ProjectWise project, so that the participants of the selected work area will be automatically added as members of the ProjectWise project the first time they log in to the work area connection from ProjectWise Web. If you do not sync the work area participants, you can still manually add your work area participants to the ProjectWise project by going to the Project Team Management portal (https://connect-rbacportal.bentley.com/) of your project.

  

(July 2020)

• The ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG is now a separate download

  Starting with ProjectWise CONNECT Edition Update 3.3, the ProjectWise Plug-in is now a separate download (https://softwaredownloads.bentley.com/en/ProductDetails/2693). Future releases of ProjectWise Server Setups will no longer delivered the plug-in. Also, Bentley Web Services Gateway remains a separate download.

• The URL for ProjectWise Web is now https://connect-projectwisewac.bentley.com and must be added to the CORS list of your Bentley Web Services Gateway deployment

  The administrator must redeploy Bentley Web Services Gateway and the ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG (or manually edit the web.config file of the existing deployment) in order to add this new ProjectWise Web URL to the CORS (cross-origin resource sharing) list (the list of Bentley cloud service URLs that are allowed to communicate with Bentley Web Services Gateway).

  If you still have older work area connections (those created in older versions of ProjectWise Share or ProjectWise Web), you can still access them by opening the Connections pane and clicking the Open older PW Web Connections link at the bottom of the pane. This takes you to https://projectshareportal.bentley.com. If you still need to access these older work area connections, then do NOT remove this older URL when adding the new ProjectWise Web URL to the CORS list, as this older URL is still required in order to access these older work area connections.

• View enhancements (requires ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG CONNECT Edition Update 3.3):
  • You can now create and manage personal views in ProjectWise Web (see Changing View Details (property columns))
  • You can now apply global saved views that were created in ProjectWise Explorer
  • All settings related to configuring the view are now on a separate menu called Column views (formerly called Column Manager).
  • Added filters to State, Status, and Workflow columns in the view
  • Support for work area properties in saved views (if a work area document is selected and the applied saved view contains a work area property, the view column now displays the value of that work area property)
• Ability to display an item's description (if one exists) instead of an item's name, if the user's user setting User Interface > Show descriptions instead of names is on (requires ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG CONNECT Edition Update 3.3)

  When this user setting is on (set from ProjectWise Explorer or ProjectWise Administrator), the following view property columns will display an item's description (if one exists) instead of the items's name:

  Document properties affected:

  • Created By ('Creator name' in ProjectWise Web)
  • File Updated By ('File Updater Name' in ProjectWise Web)
  • Updated By ('Updater Name' in ProjectWise Web)
  • Out To ('Out To User Name' in ProjectWise Web)
  • Owner ('Owner Name' in ProjectWise Web)
  • Workflow
  • State
  • Department ('Department name' in ProjectWise Web)

  Work area / folder properties affected:

  • Created By ('Creator name' in ProjectWise Web)
  • Updated By ('Updater Name' in ProjectWise Web)
  • Owner ('Owner Name' in ProjectWise Web)
  • Workflow
  • State
  • Environment
• Other enhancements
  • Added a check to prevent users from deleting documents that are mapped to an iModel
  • Improved the error messages that appear when there are issues with upload/download

(Prior to July 2020)

• You can now check out documents so you can work on them locally or send to other users; once a document is checked out, you can check it in, update the server copy (and leave it checked out), or free the document (undo the check out)
• Advanced searches now support searching by environment attributes
• The displaying or hiding of versions in the document list is now treated as user preference instead of a global setting
• When getting a shareable link for a document or folder, you can now specify whether the link is a ProjectWise Web link or a ProjectWise Explorer link (previously you could only get a ProjectWise Web link)
• View column filters - The document list now contains a filter above each view column where you can enter text in order to filter the list of items that are displayed in the current folder
• You can now provide suggestions or comments about ProjectWise Web by clicking the User Feedback button (upper right corner of the ProjectWise Web window) which takes you to an "Ideas" portal just for ProjectWise Web where you can leave your feedback.
• Users who have a Microsoft 365 subscription can now open Office documents from ProjectWise Web into a new browser tab.

These features were introduced with the ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG CONNECT Edition Update 3.2:

• Support for Workflow Rules Engine (WRE) commands (see Using Workflow Rules)
• Ability to view a document's environment attributes (see Viewing and Editing Document and Folder Properties)
• For datasources, environments, and environment attributes, external names are now displayed for these items instead of their internal names, if an external name is available (these items are configured in ProjectWise Administrator)
• Ability to enter audit trail comments after creating a new version (see Create a Version)

These features were introduced with the ProjectWise Plug-in for WSG CONNECT Edition Update 3.1:

• Workflow > Previous and Workflow > Next commands, and also the ability to enter audit trail comments when using these commands (see Working with Workflows and States)
• Searches (including saved searches) now include work areas in the search results
• Advanced search criteria now includes work area properties