The choice of a reliable, powerful and secure PLM system is fundamental for a company’s evolution and for those companies who decide to use these strong innovative technologies. 

Engineering is the main product of Collaboration Desktop’s suite. It is a reliable instrument able to guarantee high performances, powerful and is easy- to-use.

Information is memorized in virtual safes (called Vaults) to which only authorized persons and work groups can enter.

Engineering supplies specific tools for the Change Management for product administration, workflow management, a search engine function for the right project data for professional figures at the right moment, with personalized views for the different work groups, and, in absolutely secure.

Inside this module there is a digital signature function, guaranteeing greater safety of information and for "digital signature" authentication, necessary for common approval activities. These approval processes are necessary during the various business passages.
 Below, there is a list of the main functionalities and characteristics offered by CollaborationDesktopEngineering.

Task definition, workflow management processes and documental flows: the system offers task creation and management functionalities, workflow processes and documental flows. It is possible to define the component phases inside a workflow. Through promote/demote operations, it is possible to keep trace of the various passages, from one phase to another, as foreseen by the flow. Moreover, the necessary authorization management for the promote/demote operations is foreseen. This operation uses an integrated system for automatic e-mail posting of approval requests and copies for cognizance. It is possible to customize the contents according to the addressee.

Web-based collaborative environment for project data management: there is a collaborative environmentfor the organization of a large company. This is accessible through Intranet/Internet by means of any web-browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Searching of updated information and automatic reporting in real time: the Engineering product allows simple retrievably of information regarding the production and design processes for company management and to the different work groups. Moreover, it is possible to produce, with a few simple operations, automatic personalized reports in common formats such as doc, xls, txt, pdf, etc.

Lifecycle document management: the system allows the user to associate documents to several project designs in a rapid and effective manner.

Simple and effective EBOM, PBOM and FBOM management: there is an easy-to-use, flexible and powerful environment where it is possible to define bills of materials, to modify pre-existing ones and to create new versions in an extremely secure and fast manner.

Perfectly integrable architecture with other data processing tools used by the company: Engineering can be integrated with the most common data computer processing tools such us Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Outlook. Moreover, it is easily integrable with other business systems such as SAP, ERP and CAD systems such as Autocad 2004 and SolidWorks.

Secure and reliable sharing of project data: the availability of information in real time for several workgroup members also involves problems of access security to reserved data. Through the authentication process to the system (login/password) and to the subdivision of authorized roles, groups and users, it is possible to guarantee a high security level for access.

Check-in and check-out functionalities and automatic versioning: thanks to these functionalities, it is possible a document/design does not have simultaneous changes by more designers.  When a designer carries out a check-in after having reserved a special drawing from the check-out, the system automatically creates a new version immediately available to the work group.

Risk of accidental loss of data: The possibility of accidental cancellation of project documents and designs is eliminated with the use of Collaboration Desktop Engineering module. Furthermore, through the check-in and check-out functions, a designer cannot modify a "reserved" document/drawing from a colleague through the check-in function.

Fast search of product data: inside the system there is a search engine that allows the designers to reduce, to few seconds, search operations for product data. Moreover, it offers Full-text Retrieval functionality.

Import/export of the data in XML files: It is possible to increase the operability between data in order to convert information in XML format through the import/export functionalities. In this way, it is possible to share and send information to other data processing systems.

Simplicity of the Change Management administration: thanks to its specifically designed setting, it is possible to manage, quickly and easily, the change process of a product. So, it is possible to create and modify new Engineering Change Requests (ECR) and Engineering Change Objects (ECO).

Memorization of information exchanges within workgroups: it is possible to memorize and exchange all the e-mails, communication and documents exchanged during the normal work process of the design and production stages of a product.

Safe access by using Access Control List (ACL): to obtain a high level of security to access sensitive information areas, it is possible to define and manage groups, roles and authorized access. This can be obtained by using the intuitive graphic interface.

Digital Signature and coding of sensitive data: In order to maintain an absolute high security level, Collaboration Desktop Engineering is supplied with digital signature functionality and critical data coding. These are fundamental characteristics in an activity where the security is a particularly important factor.

Simple and intuitive administration interface: a simple, powerful and intuitive interface allows the user to performadministration operations.

Modularization of the platform: the Collaboration Desktop suite has been programmed as modular. This choice was based on the philosophy “think big but take small steps” which reduces the possibility of failures to a minimum. Moreover, it furnishes an immediate operative system with which it is possible, with little effort, to add further modules. It is this policy that Collaboration Desktop Engineering is able to guaranty a rapid and significant ROI to companies.

 
Low-cost solutions: the entire Collaboration Desktop suite was designed to have a high quality/price ratio. In this way, the suite can be adopted to a number of PMI environments. The cost in adopting Collaboration Desktop is limited compared to other instruments used in companies. This is due to the use of Microsoft .Net technology and to the product’s easy integration

Rapid customization of the report environment: it is possible to quickly personalize the environment thanks to Microsoft’s Dot-Net technology. This technology is implemented, together with other integrated functionalities, allowing the user to customize the environment in very little time, at low cost and in an efficient manner, so facilitating work.