Enabling external parties into your Vault

Our team has now been involved in a few Vault implementations where our customer has wanted a way that external parties can access files that are stored in their Autodesk Vault system.  With the latest 2014 version of Vault Professional, customers are now given an equivalent number of complimentary seats to the Autodesk Buzzsaw service, meaning if you have 50 seats of Vault, then you’re entitled to 50 seats of Buzzsaw.  To make it all transparent, Autodesk provides a synchronization tool called ‘Vault Project Sync’ that essentially synchronises a folder that you have in Vault, with a folder that is set up in Buzzsaw.

 Here’s an example of a typical setup in Buzzsaw where the folder ‘Share’ is synchronized with the folder ‘Buzzsaw Sync’ in Vault…

And the corresponding folders in Vault…

To minimize the number of Buzzsaw seats being consumed, what we recommend is that each external company supplies a generic email address for logging into Buzzsaw and receiving notifications.  (i.e. One Buzzsaw account per company, rather than per person).  The Buzzsaw Administrator can then create the appropriate account and permissions allowing access to the relevant folders for that company.  This is especially beneficial where you might not want one external party seeing another external parties files.  We also recommend that the external party logs into Buzzsaw and sets up a notification on the ‘From …’ folder so that they are aware of any files sent to them. 

A simple right-click on the folder in Buzzsaw sets up the notification...

An email will be sent to the nominated email address advising of any changes to the folder.  We also recommend that the external party only has 'Read' access to the 'From ...' folder to allow them to recieve and view files, but not send any back from that folder.  Full Read/Write permissions is granted on the 'To ...' folder to allow sending of files from the external party to the customer.  The Buzzsaw Administrator can set up similar notifications on the 'To ...' folder so they are notified of files being sent.

So with pretty easy implementation and some very basic training, you have a standard formal way for your Vault customer to send and recieve files from their external parties.