topic Re: Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects. in Windchill

Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects.

Theodore_7 — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 07:51:57 GMT

One of our clients is planning an upgrade to Windchill 13. They need to make sure that all legacy change objects are converted to flexible change objects. They have run the conversion tool, which converted about 2000 change objects. However, there are 400 legacy change objects that are not eligible for conversion. These change objects are change requests and change notices that are still running without having a resolution date set yet. According to the documentation (article CS425124) they need to "complete all tasks associated to each change object so that Resolution Date is set automatically". The problem is that our client is just not possible to complete all tasks on those 400 change objects. What is the best approach or workaround to resolve this issue and proceed with the upgrade?

Re: Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects.

Jimwang — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 08:21:45 GMT

Open a technical support case via PTC eSupport to get support for it

Re: Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects.

avillanueva — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 11:27:04 GMT

So these are active change objects still in process? Is there a possibility that you can keep track of them, close the workflow and resume a new workflow once the conversion is complete? Is there anything common about them that is causing an issue?

Re: Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects.

mmeadows-3 — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 13:08:08 GMT

Change processes must be closed or meet other specific criteria for the flexible change conversion to work.

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS302277

Most customers close the existing change and open a new one that is flexible. Then they can convert the closed ones without issue.

The system should have been set to mixed mode back when Windchill was upgraded to 11.x. If it was and these are really long running changes, then your best option it to meet one of the acceptance criteria in that article. Given the number of them, maybe someone out there has written a customization to 'duplicate' open change objects?

If these are faster turnaround changes, then maybe set to flexible in production and give it a month for the majority of the 400 open changes to cycle through.

Re: Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects.

Theodore_7 — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 07:58:47 GMT

Thank you for your reply,

Yes it was in mixed mode and yes those were really long running changes created with custom workflows, something that i understand is pretty common for big companies.

That's why I thought that PTC would have a better solution in place than asking the client to complete all tasks..

Anyway the client decided to follow this path as the solution to write a custom readiness delegate is not guaranteed to work.

Re: Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects.

BenLoosli — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 14:12:31 GMT

Late to the thread as I have been on vacation.

What version of Windchill were they converting from? When I did our upgrade from 12.0.2 to 13.0.2, I had to do a 12.1.2 intermediate step to get the links converted because we had old change objects from 11.0 or 11.1 hanging around. Had to go to 12.1.2 to get the required states added to the right files. They had to be added in the Type Manager UI and not from the RB files in order for the convert tool to read the information properly. They could only be added after 12.1.2 as that is where the ability to add them in the UI was added.

Hope you got everything converted okay.

Re: Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects.

OB_8544705 — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:31:09 GMT

Hello @Theodore_7 , I have the same issue. Can you share with us the solution, if any?

Re: Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects.

ML_10694804 — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:01:13 GMT

See attached document that I created on this

Re: Windchill upgrade to 13 - conversion to flexible objects.

Theodore_7 — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 08:46:30 GMT

Hello @OB_8544705 ,

We have just finished the client's upgrade from 12.1. to 13.0.

Regarding the flexible objects, we just made sure everything was converted to flexible before starting the upgrade process. The solution the client followed was simply assigning an employee to manually close each one of the legacy objects so that it gets a resolution date, and then reopening the change objects. Obviously it took him a long time (a couple of months for about 500 objects).