Introducing Meridian Enterprise
Meridian Enterprise is a departmental to enterprise-wide engineering information management (EIM) and asset lifecycle information management (ALIM) system from Accruent.
Meridian Enterprise is the core of the Meridian Enterprise product suite—a family of solutions that extends Meridian Enterprise into the engineering-related business processes for specific industries:
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Chemical
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Pharmaceuticals
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Oil & Gas
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Metals & Mining
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Utilities
Meridian Enterprise is based on MS Windows Server, MS SQL Database, and MS Internet Information Server. More information on the architecture is available in Meridian Enterprise Server Architecture.
The Meridian Enterprise Term product suite is the most comprehensive product suite with all available Meridian Server modules. The Meridian Enterprise Term product suite has the following modules:
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EDM Server
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Enterprise Server
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Explorer Server
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Publisher Server
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Standard Rendering module
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Asset Management module
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Advanced Project Workflow module
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Regulatory Compliance (FDA) module
Meridian Enterprise Term uses Subscription Licenses, which can be deployed on the Meridian on-premise license server or on the Meridian license tenant.
Meridian Enterprise Server is the core product in the Meridian Enterprise product suite. It provides centralized,
scalable, web services and administration for use with Meridian Enterprise, Accruent Project
Portal, and other business systems. Besides the shared services, Meridian Enterprise Server includes the
latest generation of Publisher and Meridian Explorer technology.
Although the names Meridian Enterprise Server and Meridian Enterprise are very similar, Meridian Enterprise Server should not be confused with the application server of Meridian Enterprise. They are distinct systems that work together. Throughout this documentation, each name is used explicitly for its corresponding system.
Note:
Meridian Enterprise Server 2013 (and higher) is a replacement for prior versions of Publisher and Meridian Explorer that has been completely redesigned and reprogrammed. This allows Meridian Enterprise Server to provide additional functionality over prior versions. Although Meridian Enterprise Server has many of the same features as prior versions of Publisher and Meridian Explorer, the products are not compatible and Meridian Enterprise Server 2022 should not be considered as a direct upgrade from the older versions.
The Meridian Advanced Project Workflow Module establishes a project structure for managing engineering content work-in-progress. Master documents are available for maintenance and operations in an as-built area, while working copies are made in project areas. The Meridian Advanced Project Workflow Module also allows you to manage multiple concurrent projects that share documents. It provides a way to merge design changes into a new version of the master document in a controlled manner and lets you handle small changes as well as complex capital projects based on pre-configured projects and workflow templates. Its advanced tools let you control and monitor project progress.
The Meridian Asset Management Module enhances, automates, and streamlines asset operations throughout their lifecycle by linking them with engineering content such as drawings and technical specifications. The module allows you to integrate with maintenance management systems like Maximo, SAP PM, Datastream, and Ultimo, and with Facility Management Systems like Archibus and Famis. This ensures the performance of mission-critical assets and avoids costly operational disruptions. Maintaining control of and providing access to up-to-date documentation is crucial in all phases of the asset life cycle.
Meridian Explorer provides a repository separate from the engineering production vault and a web browser–based view of documents and related information in one or more Meridian Enterprise vaults. These two components make it possible to provide read-only access to technical documents on a large scale. Meridian Explorer provides an innovative interface for quickly and easily finding documents with minimal end-user training.
The main benefits of Meridian Explorer are its powerful search, ease of use, extensive configurability, and scalability. You can easily navigate your way to the document you need and view its information with just a few mouse clicks. Meridian Explorer provides you with text search capability on both custom metadata properties and document text content. You can also find documents by navigating a folder tree. Best of all, you can search a repository interactively by selecting from specific property values found in the current search results. With this method, you can quickly narrow your search from potentially hundreds of thousands of documents to just the documents you are interested in. Search results are presented in tabular format or as easily recognizable thumbnail images.
Meridian Explorer includes the following major features:
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Incremental synchronization of documents and related metadata from one or more Meridian Enterprise vaults to a Meridian Explorer consolidated repository.
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Zero install, web browser-based read-only client. Engineering change requests and electronic redlines can be sent to vaults configured with the Meridian Asset Management Module.
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Support for server-based viewing.
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Configurable property pages, search pages, and views.
Note:
Meridian Explorer manages documents and tags very similarly. Therefore, they are referred to collectively as items in the topics that refer to both documents and tags.
The Meridian FDA Module adds U.S. Food and Drug Administration 21 CFR Part 11 regulatory compliance features to Meridian. Its advanced document control tools are used by pharmaceutical companies throughout the processes of document creation, review, approval, revision, and archiving.
Publisher helps you publish engineering data managed by Meridian to alternative formats in other document management systems, file systems, or the Internet. It enables the reliable and timely availability of documents in other systems such as FileNet, Livelink, SharePoint, web portals, or email.
Publisher can optionally render documents in the source system to a different file format before publishing them to the destination system. Publisher combines these two actions—rendering and publishing—in a publishing job that it can run either on demand, as a scheduled task, or in a scheduled batch along with other jobs. Publisher provides links to the most common engineering document management systems. Publisher also includes rendering modules for the most popular engineering content authoring applications. Additional links and rendering modules are under development by Accruent.
Publisher includes application links that can be installed to simplify publishing documents from within source document management systems, such as:
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Meridian Enterprise
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Meridian Portal
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Accruent Project Portal
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Microsoft SharePoint
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Any Windows file system
The links add documents to the publishing queue, which can be managed through a website installed on the Meridian Enterprise Server computer or a separate web server. The queue can be viewed and controlled using any web browser from anywhere on the network.
Meridian Enterprise Term Product Suite