Eng. Change Orders

The Eng. Change Order is used to combine several changes. If an Eng. Change Notice is created, it can have several effects. Several departments can be affected. This means that production triggers an Eng. Change Notice and transmits it to the product data manager, who in turn creates a change order and then anchors all further necessary steps.

Tasks can be assigned to responsible users, activated automatically based on predecessor relationships, and trigger external business events for workflow automation.

General FastTab

The fields on the General FastTab are described in the following table.

Field	Description
Change Reason Code	Specifies the reason for the change order.
Change Reason Description	Basic description that defaults from the Change Reason Code, for example a drawing change.
Item No.	Number of the item in a BOM that is affected by the change.
Item Description	Description of the relevant item in the BOM.
Drawing Release Blocked	Indicates whether the changed drawings can be released before all tasks of the change order have been completed.
Drawing No. / Drawing Type Code	Used together to specify the drawing for the Drawing Search and Drawing Where-Used actions.
Eng. Change Notice No.	Indicates the number of the related Eng. Change Notice, which can be opened via the drop-down arrow. To open the source document that was used to create the Eng. Change Notice and subsequent Eng. Change Order, choose the Open ECN Source Document action.
No. of Documents to Change	Number of documents that need to be changed. The documents to be changed are defined by choosing the Documents action on the Process menu.
All Tasks Completed	Indicates whether the change orders to be completed have been processed. The options are: - Yes: The status in all change order lines on the Tasks FastTab is Finished. - No: Not all change order lines have the status Finished.
Status	Status of Eng. Change Orders. The options are Open, Released, and Finished.
Creation Date	Date on which the Eng. Change Order was created.
Created By	User who has created the change order.
Change Description Format	Determines if the change description uses plain text or rich text (HTML) formatting. Defaults from the Eng. Change Text Format setting in PDM Setup. For more information, see Rich Text Editing.
Change Description	User-defined field where a summary of the necessary changes can be entered if the Change Description Format field is set to Plain Text. For more information, see Rich Text Editing.

Change Description FastTab

The Change Description FastTab is displayed when the Change Description Format field is set to Rich text (HTML). It provides a rich text editor for entering a formatted summary of the necessary changes.

For more information, see Rich Text Editing.

Tasks FastTab

The tasks that are carried out at the end of the change are stored in the Tasks FastTab. Tasks can be created manually or by applying a task template using the Apply Task Template action.

Tasks are activated automatically based on their predecessor relationships:

When the Eng. Change Order status changes to Released, tasks with no open predecessors are activated.
When a task is completed, its successor tasks are activated once all their predecessors are finished.

The fields on this FastTab are described in the following table.

Field	Description
Task No.	Optional task number for this line, to be referenced by the Previous Task No. field.
Previous Task No.	Optional task number or a pipe-separated list of task numbers that need to be completed before the current task can be started or completed. Used with the Task No. field.
Work Center Group Code	Code of work center group from production.
Work Center Group Name	Name of the work center group from production.
Task Description	Description of the tasks to be performed.
Due Date	Date on which the task should be completed.
Status	Current status of the task line processing. The options are Not Started, In Progress, and Completed.
Assigned to	Responsible person for the task. Pre-filled from the Eng. Task Template when applied, but can be edited manually.
Processed By	User who processed the task. This field is automatically set to the current user when the status changes to In Progress. When the status changes to Completed , it is set to the current user only if it is currently empty. You can also edit it manually to document substitutions. For more information, see Update Processed By Field.
Completed on	Date when the task was completed. This field is automatically set to the working date when the status changes to Completed.

Notification and Automation

An external business event is triggered when tasks are activated (on Eng. Change Order release or when predecessors are completed). You can use this event to build workflows and notifications using Power Automate or other automation tools.

The notification email is derived in the following order:

User Setup email
User Contact email
Work Center Group email

For more information, see the API documentation.

Actions

The actions on the Eng. Change Order page are described in the following table.

Menu	Action	Description
Home	Drawings	Opens a list of the drawings related to the item in the engineering change order.
	Documents	Opens a list of the unfinished/outstanding quantities in production order or purchase lines to which the resulting new drawing revision should be manually assigned. To indicate which documents should be changed, select the To Change checkbox. These documents will be reflected in the No. of Documents to Change field in the General FastTab.
	Apply Task Template	Applies a task template to the engineering change order.
	Open ECN Source Document	Opens the source document (e.g., item, production order line) that was used to create the engineering change notice and subsequent engineering change order.
Item	Open Item	Opens the Item Card for the item in the engineering change order.
	Production BOM	Opens the production BOM attached to the item in the engineering change order.
Drawing	Drawing Search	Finds drawings attached to records and can be used to replace them. The Drawing Search page will be pre-populated with the last valid drawing revision. For more information, see Drawing Search.
	Drawing Where-Used	Displays where the drawing defined in the Drawing No. and Drawing Type Code fields is used in production BOMs.
Report	Eng. Change Order	Generates a printable Engineering Change Order report summarizing the ECO header, tasks, affected documents, and (optionally) image attachments (see Eng. Change Order Report).

Item Drawing Set FactBox

The Item Drawing Set FactBox displays the drawing set for the item in the engineering change order.

Update Processed By Field

The Processed By field in Eng. Change Order Tasks tracks which user processed the task. This field supports both automatic and manual entry.

Automatic Assignment

When the task Status changes, the following automatic behavior occurs:

In Progress: The Processed By field is automatically set to the current user.
Completed: The Completed on field is automatically set to the current working date. The Processed By field is set to the current user only if it is currently empty.

Manual Assignment

You can manually edit the Processed By field to document substitutions or corrections. For example, if a task was completed by a different user than the one who triggered the status change, you can update the field to reflect the actual person who performed the work.

To manually set the Processed By field:

Open the Eng. Change Order and navigate to the Tasks FastTab.
Select the task line you want to update.
In the Processed By field, use the lookup to select a valid user or type the username directly.

Note

Manual changes to the Processed By field do not affect the task Status or Completed on fields.
Only users with editing permissions on the task can modify the Processed By field.
If an invalid username is entered, an error message is displayed.
The Completed on field stores the working date (no time component).

Rich Text Editing

The Change Description field supports HTML-formatting when the Change Description Format field is set to Rich text (HTML). In this mode, the page uses a rich content field to preserve formatting and line breaks.

The text format is controlled by the setting in the Eng. Change Text Format field in the PDM Setup page. The options are:

Plain Text: Enter a simple multi-line description.
Rich text (HTML): Enter rich text with preserved line breaks and HTML encoding.

New Eng. Change Orders default to the format specified in PDM Setup. You can convert an existing Plain Text description to HTML; converting from HTML to Plain Text is not supported and, after confirmation, may clear the content.

The Change Description is displayed differently depending on the page and format setting:

Eng. Change Order Card: Uses the Plain Text area (field on General FastTab) when format = Plain Text, and an HTML area (FastTab) when format = Rich text (HTML).
Eng. Change Order Tasks: Shows the description as part of the Eng. Change Order Details FactBox when format = Plain Text, shows an HTML Change Description FactBox when format = Rich text (HTML).
Eng. Change Orders List: Includes a Documents FactBox (attachments); no HTML Change Description FactBox is added.

Note

Images embedded in rich text are not supported for printing. To include images in reports, upload them as attachments in the Documents FactBox.

Eng. Change Order Report

The Eng. Change Order report provides a printable summary of the Eng. Change Order header, tasks, affected documents, and image attachments. You can access this report from the Report menu on the Eng. Change Order Card and Eng. Change Orders list page.

Open an Engineering Change Order or select one in the list.
On the Report menu, choose Eng. Change Order.
In the request window, optionally:
- Enable Suppress Tasks to hide the tasks section.
- Enable Include Image Documents to include available image attachments (png, jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp, tif, tiff).
Preview, print, or export to PDF.

Note

To include images in reports, which were uploaded to the Documents FactBox, turn on the Include Image Documents toggle in the report request page.

For more information about document attachments, see Drawing Management: Documents.

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