Arena

Arena PLM Integration

Establish Arena as the source of truth for product/component metadata, and bill of materials (BOM), while ION parts remain up to date with changes made in Arena with no manual intervention. This integration eliminates the extra effort it typically takes to manually import part details and BOM information into ION, which will help you create procedures and get to building faster.

Skip to the Integration Set up below for instructions on how to deploy or reconfigure this integration.

Arena Change Order Submission

Upon submitting a change within Arena, an event will be created to be processed by the integration. On the interval you set, the integration uploads the parts and associated attributes into ION. If applicable, for each top-level part the integration automatically generates a new draft mBOM version for that part, adds all of the components, and then releases that mBOM version in ION.

Integration Set up

1. Navigate to the Integrations page designated by the two arrows in the bottom left corner of your screen.

   

   Select Integrations in the Bottom Left Hand Corner
2. Select the Arena integration instance from the marketplace, and hit Configure.

3. Hit Next and add your API credentials. You can find documentation on API credentials here API Keys

   • IMPORTANT: Each API Key is associated with a specific environment, be sure to generate the API keys from the correct environment and configure the automation to the designated environment.

     

     Set your Environment According to Where the API Keys were Generated
4. Configure the Arena PLM Connection using your Arena login credentials as seen below:

   
5. A note on revision schemes: If you have parts in arena with complex revisions (AA1, A1-N, etc...) you MUST ensure that a revision scheme matching that revision is present in your ION environment. For example, revision A01 has the format seen below. We named ours as shown but you can name yours whatever you like. All that matters is that the format matches the revision. The integration will break if it cannot find a revision scheme that matches the revision attempting to be pushed.'

   
6. You have the option to drive the Sourcing Strategy in ION in two different ways.

   1. The first is via a simple single-select custom attribute in Arena, as shown below. Make sure this attribute is added to the part category in Arena.

      

      To configure your integration to utilize this attribute, toggle the below configuration on and add this information to the Native attributes.

      

      
   2. Alternatively, you can use the sourcing relationships shown here Sourcing Information:.

Do not include tracking type information in the above native attributes data map. That is covered more in Traceability Attribute:

1. To finish the configuration, you can map the data between the two platforms by adding key-value pairs for ION native attributes and custom attributes. The keys are ION fields and the values are Arena fields. Here is an example of what your custom attributes could look like.

Arena Specific Setup:

Sourcing Information:

When setting up your items in Arena you will have the option to set up sourcing relationships under the "Sourcing" tab. In the picture below I set up a sourcing relationship and a corresponding vendor part number. If you set this up, ION will be able to mark the part as MAKE/BUY/DUAL_SOURCE, will set the supplier part number, and will be able to pull over vendor into a custom attribute if you so wish.

Thumbnails:

You can bring over one image from Arena to set as the thumbnail for your ION part. In the files section of your item, you can add one file of the Image/Picture type. Here is an example:

Traceability Attribute:

To get the traceability information (LOT/SERIAL/NONE) to come over you will need to set up a custom attribute on the Arena side as shown in your workspace settings:

Populate the the attribute name in this section of the Integration setup

Non-planned items:

It is common in manufacturing to design assemblies that will be sourced completely from a supplier. The supplier will source all of the sub-components of that assembly and deliver a completed assembly to your door. A common example of this type of sourcing is PCBAs. In these cases, it is common to only migrate the top-level assembly to ION instead of all the subcomponents (board-level components: capacitors, transistors, etc...). If migrated, the subcomponents can add unnecessary demand to ION's Autoplan MRP engine and cause as-built records for the assemblies to show incomplete. For these reasons, we built an additional (optional) feature in the integration that will only migrate the top-level assembly if it is marked on the item level in Arena. Here is the logic and setup:

Below is a screenshot of an item-level attribute called "planned-item" (although you can call it anything you want). The mandatory part of this setup is the list values section. Make sure to have only two options "TRUE" & "FALSE" (case sensitive). If the attribute is set to FALSE on the item record then the integration will not migrate the BOM for that item.

Integration Configuration:

To configure the integration's arena side, you need to create a trigger and an integration. To do this, you must have admin privileges

Creating the trigger

Navigate to workspace settings

Under the integrations tab, click the plus sign next to "Triggers" to add a new trigger

Press create new trigger and then add the following attributes:

Creating the integration:

You will need to contact Arena support to create the integration. To request the integration from Arena support please do the following:

1. Under the ? icon at upper right, select “Contact Support”

2. Subject = “Request Outbound-Event Integration”

3. Message = “Please create Outbount-Event Integration named “<insert name here>” in workspace “<insert workspace name here>”

We recommend you acquire a machine integration user (cost ~$3k) and set up the integration with those user credentials. Talk to your Arena rep or use the "Contact Support" button above to acquire a machine account.

Finalizing the integration setup:

After configuring the integration in Arena, you will need to get the integration GUID and paste that into the integration configuration in ION. Here is how you locate the integration GUID in Arena:

1. once you log in, you should see the integration in your main dashboard view

   
2. Click the view (or reconcile) button on the right-hand side of the integration.

3. Once there, you should see this screen. The integration GUID is the capitalized string of characters after the colon.

   
4. With that string in hand, you can navigate back over to the integration config in ION and enter that in the box at the bottom that says "integration GUID"

Configuration Help:

If you would like assistance setting up this integration or any other integration please reach out through Intercom.