WorkBench is suitable for a wide variety of types of user, and can be used for a wide variety of tasks within Requirements Management and Systems Engineering processes giving convenient access to all the information you need in one tool - in one interface - in one location. Be assured that this gives you maximum control over your project.

WorkBench is a customisable tool which can be used for both browsing and manipulating Cradle databases. WorkBench is fully integrated with desktop tools, including Word, Excel, Visio and Project, to view any type of data in database items’ frames. Audio, video, figures, documents and tables embedded in database items can be accessed from WorkBench forms or table cells, launching applications as necessary.

Requirements

Once your project's requirements have been captured you can develop further layers of granularity, create system requirements, link references, project standards to suit your needs.

WorkBench allows tailored views of the Cradle database to be created for different groups of project engineers and external stakeholders. It is for groups who benefit from a tailored environment. It can provide a view of just what they want to see and how they want to see it.

Systems Engineering

Models are abstractions of some part of the reality of a system. They are developed to assist analysis and design, to aid communication and understanding and as an improvement over linear sets of textual statements. In the context of Systems Engineering, we construct system models. Such models are abstractions of the final system that are developed from a particular perspective (such as a user or implementor) and at a particular level of detail.

There are typically three contexts for models:

• To study what the system must do - analysis models
• To describe how the system will be constructed - architecture models
• To define how the system will be built - design models

Cradle supports many different modelling notations.

Data Management

• WorkBench interfaces with the main input and output of data through various file formats, e.g. CSV and output to HTML and RTF
• Provides configuration management for full traceability for your project's history
• Management data through status dashboards, metrics and graphs

For a more detailed explanation of WorkBench please click here!

Whether you are a small company running a single project on a single server, or a medium sized company running tens of projects on a single server, or an enterprise level operation managing hundreds of projects on many servers, Project Manager is your single point of control.

Functions

• General users can use Project Manager as the entry point to Cradle tools and projects.
• Projects can be organised in any number of multiple directories in any logical hierarchy beneficial to your business. These can be tagged with user-defined attributes.
• Privileged users can:
  • Control Cradle servers
  • Create and delete projects
  • Copy schema (template setup) between projects

For a more detailed explanation of Project Manager please click here!

Document Loader offers a complete solution for capturing information held in Microsoft Word documents into your Cradle Project Database (PDB).

Many requirements are presented to a tendering company as Word documents, Document loader allows you to easily import your source document requirements into Cradle.

Each original document statement can be automatically categorised as an individual requirement or a user-defined item type. These are systematically numbered and captured into your Cradle project , cross references are created between levels in this structure, body text, figures and tables are captured into frames of these items giving full traceability.

For a more detailed explanation of Document Loader please click here!

Cradle Document Publisher offers a simple approach to automated report writing and document generation.

Data from the Cradle database is used to create a professional document without the need for design and layout of cumbersome publication templates, graphical editors or complex scripts.

Arbitrarily large Word documents are user-defined and are constructed with tags/bookmarks. Data is output into the defined template and can contain:

• Embedded text
• Tables
• Diagrams

The content of the document can be controlled by defining a set of data-set criteria to filter and control the level of cross referenced items being generated.

For a more detailed explanation of Document Publisher please click here!

Access to Cradle databases is available by directing your web browser to a Cradle Web Server. Users can gain access from anywhere on the LAN, WAN or across the internet. No Cradle client software is required and there is no installation of a Cradle-specific web browser plug-in.

The web pages displaying the Cradle information are created by the CWS from:

• A set of HTML templates supplied with the CWS
• User-defined templates matching your company's design style

Users can interact with this database information:

• To query
• To view/edit
• To follow the item's cross references

For a more detailed explanation of Web Access please click here!

Spellchecker

Professional appearance in your data and the documents produced there from, unspoield [sic] by spelling errors.

The items to be checked are those found by running a query, either the current query (when it is started from WorkBench) or a query chosen by the user (when started standalone).

For a more detailed explanation of the Spellchecker please click here!

Capture Utilities

Cradle provides plug-in modules for Microsoft Word and Excel. These are loaded when Cradle is installed on PCs that have Microsoft Office installed on them:

The plug-ins provide facilities to capture data from documents and spreadsheets into items in the database. You can capture:

• All selected paragraphs into a single item
• Each selected paragraph into a separate item
• Each table row into a separate item
• Each spreadsheet row into a separate item

There is also a plug-in available that allows you to transfer project plan information between Microsoft Project and Cradle. This allows users to link requirements, SBS, PBS, verifications, architecture models etc. to a project plan. A plan is the means by which Cradle records the interaction between it and an external Microsoft Project schedule. A task is an activity that has been allocated to one or more Cradle users. When data is first transferred from Microsoft Project to Cradle, the resulting Cradle plan will have an associated WBS that is a collection of activities. If any of these activities are then allocated to Cradle user(s) they each become a task.

The Visio capture utility allows a Cradle database to be populated with placeholder items for some or all of the symbols or groups on a Visio drawing. Each of these placeholder items contain the external reference data to be able to reference that symbol or group from within Cradle using the Visio capture utility. When the utility is run it scans every page of the specified Visio drawing and produces a list of names of the top-level groups and un-grouped symbols in a list of checkboxes (a group or top-level ungrouped symbol that does not have a name will not appear in the list). You can select which of the entries in this list are to be captured into the Cradle database. If the Visio drawing is read-only, then this list is filtered to only contain those symbols or groups that have a unique ID.

For a more detailed explanation of the plug-ins please click here!

Gateway

Cradle Gateway allows you to configure which specification and working documents to process, the type of traceability information to obtain from each type of document, and the traceability relationship between these documents. Cradle Gateway performs the coverage and impact analysis, graphically displays relationships between documents and generates reports. Cradle Gateway improves the impact analysis throughout a project lifecycle and the quality by managing requirements traceability.

Cradle Gateway includes the following features:

• Manage project documents and graphically create traceability relationships between documents
• Customise types for importing various types of data from third party products
• Use graphical, coverage analysis, and impact analysis views to visualise and analyse traceability relationships between documents
• Create filters to customise analysis and displays
• Capture and compare project snapshots to determine changes in requirements and coverage
• Generate reports using default and custom templates

For a more detailed explanation of the Gateway please click here!