Item’s Associated Change Tasks

New 7.2 Configuration Management Feature

An item often has a number of Change Requests raised against it. These may result in new Change Tasks being raised. Multiple Change Requests may be covered by one Change Task. Since there are many influences on a project the timing of these requests can not be predicted. For either timing or operational reasons it may be better to keep the changes in separate tasks, baselining the reviewed alteration between each.  This can result in a number of Change Tasks being associated with an item. Selecting the item and using the “Show Associated Change Tasks” option will produce a report detailing the CHTs linked to it.

Depiction of the associated Change Task report
Show Associated Change Tasks

Full End to End Document Processing

Concept to Creation

Whatever you are making, whatever service you are delivering, you need a tool that supports your process from end to end. You can’t expect a successful outcome without control of your project’s lifecycle.

Complete End to End Document Processing

Despite living in an electronic world, where the promise was a paperless office, we are often faced with needing to manage documents at a number of points over the duration of the project. This is not surprising, even if we don’t handle hard copy,  a document is an tangible object.

Humans relate to the concept of a complete package of information being contained in the document. They generally make good reading if you start at the beginning and read through to the end. Non-fiction documents may be more likely to be read by accessing the index or contents and turning to a page number. Sometimes in an electronic copy there may be a hyper-link to another part of the document. On the whole, however, the format is fixed. You can’t easily re-arrange a document to see its contents from a different perspective, or organise it hierarchically based on a section of your choosing.

Managed and linked requirements, designs, constraints, tests, diagrams and definitions, need to be arranged, searched and traced, to reach our end goal effectively. The ability to see which customer requirements are ultimately verified by a test, or what system requirements are impacted by a customer change to a requirement are invaluable.

Cradle for Your Document Processing

From a document point of view, the triplet of Document Loader, WorkBench and Document Publisher covers the full lifecycle.

  • Customers often provide their initial requirements in the form of a MS Word document. Document Loader will parse, tag and link this information as it is drawn into Cradle’s database.
  • WorkBench is the ideal tool to develop and design, record and trace your project.
  • When the project is at a stage that needs a formatted output, Document Publisher is used.

Continue reading “Full End to End Document Processing”

March 2017 Newsletter is Available!

We are pleased to announce that our March 2017 newsletter is available here:

https://www.threesl.com/pages/news/webletter-March17/index.php

This month’s newsletter contains the announcement of the Cradle-7.2 release, notes about 3SL’s scoial media accounts, the link from Cradle to Microsoft Project, and some thoughts on managing complex or unusual data types in Cradle.

We send thousands of e-mails through our newsletter distribution list. If you would like to receive our newsletter automatically, please send your e-mail address to me at: mark.walker@threesl.com and I will add you to the list.

We hope that you will find the newsletter to be interesting and helpful!

‘Basic’ Web Access UI

New Cradle 7.2 Web Access Feature

We now ship a ‘Basic’ Web Access user interface is  now shipped (in the Program Files\Cradle\www\pdb\demo folder). The simple uncluttered format helps by guiding users to operations akin to the WorkBench start page.

Sometimes new  or infrequent users are outfaced by a complex UI, especially when they don’t need all the features presented. The new ‘basic UI’  is designed to highlight common tasks making it easier for new users to get straight to their area of work.

The provided demo UI will give basic functionality. Also in the folder are a few examples of customised forms and views, which can be used as a starting point for your own projects.

Showing selection of the 'Basic' Web Access UI
‘Basic’ Web UI for Web Access

Installation Issue With Office 2016 / 365 / ClickToRun

Recently several customers who use Office 2016 / 365 / ClickToRun have reported an installation issue with the Cradle Toolsuite for Microsoft Office. Its installer did not detect that Office 2016 / 365 / ClickToRun is installed.

Registry Solution

The problem is due to a recent Windows/Office update (we are not certain which one) which damages the default key in one of both of the registry folders:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\ClickToRunStore\Applications
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\ClickToRunStore\Applications

The solution to the problem is to fix the Default key value, as shown in the figure using regedit. After fixing this key, our installer will detect that Office 2016 / 365 / ClickToRun is installed, and it will correctly install the Toolsuite.

Please be careful when you edit the registry as damage to the registry can prevent Windows working. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue, which is outside our control

Further Help

Check the registery entries are set correctly as show. If you  still have a problem, contact support@threesl.com

Office Registery settings
Office Registery settings

Reproduce a document’s internal links as Cradle xrefs

New Cradle-7.2 Document Loader Feature

If your Word document contains cross-reference hyperlinks  to other document sections then Document Loader can capture this link as a cross reference in your project database. Typically, a hyperlink might be a reference to a heading, figure or table, implying a loose association between two items. If any hyperlinks are found in your document then this option is enabled by default. Untick this checkbox if you do not want to create such cross references. Use the Link Type dropdown to select a specific link type. It makes sense not to use the same links as you are using for the document hierarchy

Word document with internal cross-reference and Document Loader with Link Type to represent
Recreate Word internal links as Cradle cross references

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See More of Your Items’ Details

Items with large amounts of data in might be useful for current projects but if you can’t see all the information inside that item then this can be quite frustrating. Cradle allows you to customise views, drag out items and reshape queries to best suit you and your projects. Very useful when dealing with large amounts of data.

 

Needing all the details for your item to be on display?.

Once you have run a query, you may find the WorkBench ‘View’ you have chosen isn’t quite big enough to see some of the cells. This can be frustrating as there is a balance between the number of items shown and the detail shown for each item. You may need to see more information for one or for all the items shown.

Solution

You could, of course, edit the ‘View’ (provided you have the CREATE_DEFS privilege). However,  you don’t need to change it just to see more of your items’ details on the screen.

Cells in a ‘View’ can be dragged Selecting of Document View from toolbarwider or deeper. You can switch to ‘Document View’ mode to increase the cells height to match their content.

Alternatively, clicking the icon is a quick way to open in a ‘Form’.

Article Updated 30/01/2019 – Added intro

Check You Have IPv6 Running

New Cradle-7.2 Feature

If you need to check your new installation is running IPv6, then you can use Project Manager, or the Help->About screen in WorkBench, Document Publisher etc.

There’s a whole host of other information on these screens which will tell you; how your client found the CDS (Cradle Database Server), which language variant is active and which licences you are currently using.

Showing WorkBench and Project Manager IPv6 connection status
IPv6 Connection Display

Locking Projects

New Cradle-7.2 Feature

Why would you want to lock a project?

If you need to ensure no-one  can log into your project,  in order that you can:

  • Back-up the hard disk while no data can change
  • Perform maintenance on Cradle items assured that none can be locked by others
  • Prevent users you are adding to a project can’t start until an official go-live point

Then locking the project to a selected user can ensure a data manager has the appropriate control.

Solution

Lock your projects to a selected user through Cradle’s Project Manager. Only MANAGER and the optional named user can login to the project. They are also the only users who can unlock the project once again.

Shows a project being locked
Lock a project to a selected user.

 

Article updated 05/12/2018 – Fixed typo

Cradle User Interface Languages

What ever your language…..

Cradle is currently available in available in eight  English/ English US, Chinese(zh), Dutch(nl),  German(de), French(fr), Korean(ko), Russian(ru) and Welsh(cy), languages.

WorkBench yn Gymraeg
Welsh UI for Cradle WorkBench

If there is a UI (User Interface) language you would like, please speak to us and we will quote for other translations.  Alternatively you can add your own Language, Country or Regional variant. Use the supplied Message Catalogue Manager software tool in Cradle.