As part of the new 7.6.1.2 feature pack, IBM Maximo has included a new option for Location and Asset Hierarchy. For many years, the hierarchy was kept simple to keep a uniform look and feel throughout Maximo.
With this latest feature pack of Maximo, the design team dared to step outside of the usual comfort zone and built a new hierarchy viewer, hence my article here to show you how it works. I think you will like it!
The old
The traditional Location and Asset Hierarchy dialog had two distinct tabs, one for Locations and one for Assets. When viewing a location you could see which asset was in that location or it would tell you more than one asset existed on that location. By switching to the Asset tab, you were able to see the asset(s). Straightforward and easy to use, but many people have asked for a more immersive navigation; And IBM's development delivered! This also proves, if you register enhancement requests, they are reviewed for future releases.
The new
Once you update your Maximo to 7.6.1.2 you will still be seeing the traditional drilldown by default,the company can decide when to switch to the new extended drilldown for their users. To be able to use the new drilldown dialog box you will need to change a property in your Maximo Properties settings. The property to change is [mxe.webclient.extendedDrilldown] (search for 'drill' and you will see it in the short list), Change this value to 'true'. You can do a live refresh, so the change can be done on the fly. Be aware, this is a system wide change, so all users in all sites will get the new drilldown at the same time. So perhaps a briefing may be useful to your users before rolling it out.
New Features
In this extended drilldown you will be able to navigate between applications depending on what data you are looking at. The main three categories are color coded: Red for Location codes, Blue for Assets and Black for PM's and Items.
BOM view
If you are looking at an Item, you will be able to view its Item Availability and/or navigate to Item master. You navigate by using the 'OK' dropdown menu button, while the 'View Item Availability' button will give you the familiar availability view:
PM, Asset and Location view
When viewing from PM, Asset or Location view, you will be able to view your work, PMs, Routing, Collections and Inspections for this Asset/Location:
While the PM tab shows all existing PM Schedules:
The option to navigate to another application is only available if you started from the 'open drilldown' action menu in any of the applications. If you opened the drilldown from a field in e.g. PM you would only be able to take your result-record (Asset or Location) back to the record you navigated from.
What do you think? Do you like these new features? Give a like by clicking the heart, if you found this article useful.
Louis Stoop
