Indexing Services for 2014 EPDM Content Search No Longer Available on Windows Server 2012

If you are planning to upgrade your SolidWorks Enterprise PDM server operating system in the near future, you may want to reconsider if you use Content Searching in EPDM.

Content Searching will search the text contents and properties of a document. Enterprise PDM content search uses the Microsoft Indexing Service to create a catalog for each indexed vault. The catalog contains index information and stored properties for all versions of all documents in the vault archive folders.

In Windows Server 2012, Microsoft discontinued the Indexing Service and replaced it with Microsoft Search Server Express for the server search side.

Even though EPDM 2014 is supported on Windows Server 2012, the Content search functionality will no longer be available. If you require this functionality and plan to upgrade to EPDM 2014, keep your EPDM vault on Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 until SolidWorks replaces this funtionality.