ProjectWise is a scalable collaboration system used by architecture, engineering, and construction teams to manage, find, and share CAD and geospatial content, project data, and Office documents.

At the heart of the ProjectWise system of servers sits the “Integration Server” – designed to connect distributed enterprises and related systems through a single federated interface.

Federating Engineering Content across the Enterprise

Globalization has changed the way we work by introducing opportunities to collaborate on projects on the other side of the world. One of the greatest challenges therefore facing infrastructure teams is the management of content so necessarily distributed across the enterprise.

ProjectWise Integration Server enables teams to distribute the files and content they work on and federate that data using a single tool—ProjectWise Explorer—making all files appear to be both central to the team and local to the user.

Accelerating Access using Caching Servers

Engineering models and documents typically consist of a number of referenced files used to improve coordination and reduce duplication. These referenced files are frequently generated by other project participants distributed around the enterprise. They need to be easily shared and moved around the project.

Hence, in normal workflows across Wide Area Network (WAN) connections, these files can be slow to load due to their size and number. With ProjectWise Caching Servers deployed locally, all files from any location can be pre-cached to provide LAN-like access speeds for all users of all files, no matter where in the enterprise each user sits.

Connecting to Enterprise Systems like SharePoint

Research shows that there are between 10 and 20 consumers for every author of engineering content. However, few of these consumers are users of engineering-design and CAD-drafting tools. Many spend much of their working day using other tools to access other files in a different information management environment.

This is why ProjectWise has been designed to compliment, rather than compete with, other information and document management systems not designed specifically for engineering content management; the primary one is Microsoft Office SharePoint due to its ubiquity across all enterprises.

With over 80 million users worldwide, Microsoft’s SharePoint is already a global success, and ProjectWise integrates elegantly with the SharePoint environment using ProjectWise Web Parts by enabling ProjectWise users to access content using only a Web browser. Of course all of the SharePoint functionality is made available to the ProjectWise team too, including online calendars, threaded discussions, lists, surveys, workflow and alerts, etc.

Is your enterprise distributed across more than one location? No? Then try ProjectWise StartPoint for an entry-level collaboration tool designed specifically for smaller teams working on smaller projects.

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