Blog
Differentiate Maximo production, test, development environments
A common need is to differentiate Maximo production, test, development environments. The easiest technique I know is to customize the login and header messages. Open Database Administration application and select the Messages action. Search for ‘welcome’ and change the messages in the ’login’ group as you wish. The welcome message is displayed on the login page, the welcomeusername message is displayed in the upper left corner of the start center main page, the welcomemaximomessage … I don’t know :-)
May 20, 2015
Extract attachments (DOCLINKS)
This post explains how to extract a set of attachments from the server. First of all you have to find the root folder where the attachments are stored. This can be found in mxe.doclink.doctypes.defpath system property (System Configuration - Platform Configuration - System Properties). Unfortunately, from the file names you cannot understand to which records each file is linked to. In order to do this you have to run an SQL query. In this example I’m showing how to extract all the file names of work orders attachments.
February 17, 2015
Evolutionary Design explained
As I have already discussed in a previous post I always tend to adopt an Agile Development approach in my projects. My own motto is: Start Small, Grow Fast. I always use this as a very simple guiding principle when working on customer projects. Some months ago I came across this nice picture that perfectly explains the Evolutionary Design principle. We have to admit that the evolutionary approach can introduce some form of waste because sometimes we cannot reuse the components built in the previous iterations (you can’t use bicycle wheels on a car). However, it definitely allows to minimize a large upfront design investment and allows to deeply understand the real customer needs and expectations during the project. A better understanding of customer needs is most valuable return of the iterative approach.
January 27, 2015
Maximo 7.6 installation
Maximo 7.6 has a lot of interesting features. One of these is the new installation technology. Richard Lesses has published a useful set of articles with a step-by-step guide of how to install Maximo 7.6. Installing Maximo 7.6: A first look, part 1 Installing Maximo 7.6: A first look, part 2 Installing Maximo 7.6: A first look, part 3 Installing Maximo 7.6: A first look, part 4
January 7, 2015
Learn how to query data with SQL
Many times Maximo users and administrator lacks database skills. These are important in several situations: Write ‘where clause’ statements to filter data in Maximo UI. Develop complex SELECT statements to extract data from multiple tables when developing report. Optimize existing queries to solve performance issues. If you need to improve your SQL skills I suggest you to read few chapters of the SQL Getting Started guide of IBM DB2. This is not just for DB2, SQL syntax is quite similar across different database types.
November 27, 2014
Maximo Tranining presentations
Here are some nice presentations that I use during basic education sessions for new Maximo users. Introduction - PowerPoint - SlideShare Getting Started - PowerPoint - SlideShare Asset Management - PowerPoint - SlideShare Work Management - PowerPoint - SlideShare Inventory Management - PowerPoint - SlideShare I tried to use a pretty template and a common style across all of them. Feedback is welcome!
November 12, 2014
Maximo is the leader Enterprise Asset Management Software
Gartner has recently published its Magic Quadrant for Energy and Utilities Enterprise Asset Management Software and guess what? IBM Maximo Asset Management is positioned it the ‘Magic’ corner! Read the full report here.
November 6, 2014
Preventive Maintenance (PM) automatic work order generation
You probably know that Preventive Maintenance module in Maximo allows to schedule periodical maintenance activities in order to keep your assets running efficiently. In other words you can use the Preventive Maintenance to schedule the automatic generation of work orders. Work orders can be generated manually using the ‘Generate Work Orders’ action in the Preventive Maintenance application. A dialog will be displayed allowing to set the number of days in the future for which the work orders must be created.
October 30, 2014
How to display a domain description in an application
Some fields in Maximo are linked to a domain that allows to set its value from a predefined set of values. In some cases however, when the value does not provide enough information, you may wish to also display the description of the domain value that you have chosen. For example lets consider the STATUS field of the WORKORDER object. By default Maximo will not show the description associated to the work order status.
October 29, 2014
Use Long Description in a Communication Template
To add the long description to the message of an email sent through a communication template you have to perform a few configuration steps. The example below is related to WORKORDER object but can be applied to any main object. First of all you have to create a relationship in Database Configuration between the WORKORDER object and the LONGDESCRIPTION object. Launch Database Configuration and select the WORKORDER object. Open the Relationship tab and create a relationship with the following properties.
October 24, 2014