Category ' Newsletters ' - Page 8 of 8

19th June 201716th February 2023

June 2017 Newsletter

Summer Arrives in June

Looking out of the windows here in Cumbria, summer has well and truly arrived. However, 21^st June marks the summer solstice.

It also marks the start of the holiday season. This can be both a trying time for projects and a quieter time in the office. With fewer people and distractions over the coming months, now could be your ideal time to set up trial Cradle projects. Take some time to run a few operations in parallel. Compare how pushing a requirement/design/test through Cradle compares with the manual or tool based version you use now. Even seasoned Cradle users will find there is some project or operation not yet in Cradle, yet ripe to be imported. It could be your ongoing Process Improvement Plan. Whether formally following CMMI or just ensuring you raise, resolve and measure issues in your company’s working processes, then controlling, recording and measuring formally in Cradle makes it easier to manage. Use a summer vacation student or intern to set up a schema and enter data as a pilot project.

3SL Blog

Thanks to new bloggers Mikki, Jan, Phil, Stuart, Cameron, Ciaran for their input to the Blog. Don’t forget to drop us a line to social-customer@threesl.com with any topic requests.

G-Cloud 9

We are pleased to announce that our Cradle software is now available through the Government’s Digital Marketplace – G-Cloud 9. For details, please see government site and search for any of: 3SL, Cradle, requirements management, agile, business analysis, systems engineering, or application lifecycle management.

White Papers

Cradle’s combination of requirements management, process and architecture modelling make it an ideal choice for business analysts. Download our new presentation that outlines some of Cradle’s significant capabilities for business analysts from the Presentations area.

Twitter

May Day 2017 Madness Giveaway. We reported last month that @baguettio had won, however, they did not respond to the direct messages we sent asking them to contact us and claim their security code. They have since deleted/hidden their account. We have, therefore, awarded the prize to the second person drawn @FPreobrazhensky

Reviews

We have been contacted by Capterra an independent review company. They would like to update the reviews they hold on Cradle.

We would like your permission to pass your email address to them. They will then choose from all respondents who to contact, to request you write a review about Cradle. Their scheme offers a reward for the first respondents. It would be really great if you could consider doing this, please reply using Yes I’m happy to consider writing a review

Hints of the Month

Here are some links to helpful topics since our last newsletter, they should improve your Cradle experience:

As a project progresses a requirement can grow from being atomic to containing multiple phrases and components. See how to split items in this article.

Now that you have torn the items apart, see how to merge items together!

Authenticating through LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)? Do you want to use LDAP with Cradle, and need some help getting up and running, we’ll show you some trouble shooting tips.

Use document tags to enable publication of any data from within the Cradle database into a document via Document Publisher.

You can read Hints & Tips in the 3SL Blog.

16th May 201717th May 2021

May 2017 Newsletter

May Already

Since our last newsletter: We sincerely hope that those of you who celebrate Easter had a nice break and are not too full of Easter Eggs! We’ve also had an Activity Diagram to celebrate St. George’s day and tried to conquer the Universe on Star Wars Day with some Functional Modelling. That aside development continues on Cradle 7.3.

New Voices

We’ve expanded the writing team to include authors from elsewhere in the 3SL team. Because this is a blog, there is more emphasis on people’s personal insights into the Cradle product. This should make the style and tone more varied and hopefully more interesting to read.

As you may have already seen the 3SL-Blog is groaning full of new articles. These are mainly “Hints and Tips” and longer RM/SE articles. Increasingly we’ve found that some of the support questions that arrive here in 3SL towers are very similar. To that end we’re publishing them under the FAQ section.

If you have a burning question and would like to see an article covering a particular topic, drop us a line at social-customer@threesl.com and we’ll see what we can do. On the other hand, if you have a novel use of Cradle that you’re happy to share with us, drop us a line with the article, screen shots and accreditation details and we may feature it.

Non Graphic Interfaces

There is widespread understanding of the WorkBench and even Web Access interaction with Cradle. It is, after all the main way we interact with the data. However, there are many occasions when we want some of the data from Cradle but don’t want to or can’t use a screen to interact. This month we’re highlighting c_table.

c_table

This command line utility can be used to produce Reports, Matrices, Metrics, Graphs or Queries in a tabular form. This can be an HTML, RTF, CSV or SVG output. If every morning you need to go into a meeting, or stand at your ‘toolbox talk’ with a printed report detailing the number of ‘Issues’ with a category of ‘Raised’ you can do this by running one command. Creating a desktop short cut to run the command / batch file you need not start WorkBench just to run the query and publish the result. Even more cunningly a script could be triggered at 8:00am every morning to create the document for you. Our blog article “Batch File Reporting in Cradle” adds more detail.

CompeteFor

If you are working or bidding on large infrastructure projects, Cradle is now available through the CompeteFor procurement portal. Whatever the size of your Requirements Management or Systems Engineering task, Cradle is there from Concept to Creation.

Social Media

Twitter

May Day 2017 Madness Giveaway. Thanks to all those who re-Tweeted and followed @threesl, during our Twitter #FreebieFriday giveaway and congratulations to @baguettio, who won a copy of Cradle RM Desktop. It was really great to see re-Tweets from around the globe.

Hints of the Month

Here are some links to helpful topics since our last newsletter, they should improve your Cradle experience:

When working in large teams or over a long period an item’s edit history is very useful. See the LinkedIn discussion Who Changed That? When? Why?

When you have many items to submit all in one go, selecting them on the screen and submitting them is not practical. This article Configuration Management – Submit by Query discusses the alternative.

You can read Hints & Tips in the 3SL Blog.

10th April 201723rd January 2023

April 2017 Newsletter

Spring is Here

Since our last update spring has sprung. Once you have got used to losing that valuable extra hour sleep, as day light saving kicked in, it’s traditionally time to think out with the old and in with the new.

Consider a spring clean, remove all those stacks of dusty files full of project requirements version 1 to version 9.

Why Are You Keeping Them?

Will you really be able to find what you are looking for without a way of searching? Consider whether you can sensibly access the details of those designs sitting rolled up in mailing tubes. Do you have the means to edit them electronically any more. Does anyone know where the file is kept?

A New Way Forward

Convert projects you want to keep by inputting them into Cradle. Either by loading the documents through Document Loader or scanning old paper copies. Once scanned they could be stored as an image in an appropriate item type, or stored as a file reference within the Cradle item or an external URL within a form. Now you have a way of searching through your project data, following the links between items and possibly retiring items / standards / tests that are not longer applicable.

Create A Published Copy

For those poor souls with no copy of Cradle that they may need access to, you can publish a copy to your Intranet, or print a full report through Document Publisher (Just don’t be tempted to print it out hard copy as that’ll defeat the object of the spring clean!).

PS: We’re quite happy for those of you in the Southern hemisphere to have an Autumn Tidy instead !

Cradle Around the Globe

Great to see out Brazilian Partner OPENCADD hosting a MBSE event for the Automotive sector. Well done all.

Social Media

Twitter

Anyone looked into the mystery of a @verified Twitter account, we’d be interested to hear? We note that there are a mixture of verified and non-verified users amongst our customers. We can assure you that @threesl , is our genuine account, even if Twitter will take a bit more convincing. If you’re not a Tweeter, on LinkedIn or Facebook, you can reach us on Google if you sign in with Google+

YouTube Learning

Thanks for those who responded last month to requests for new ‘How Tos’ for our YouTube channel. If you didn’t get a chance to reply, here’s the link again ’How To’ ideas.

“Faster and Better Performance”

No, it’s not an advert for a new sports car or for the latest 2017 regulation changes that may ‘increase performance’ in F1 races. You can even put your screwdriver and spanners away. These tweaks to Cradle will help ensure it is in tip top condition and you won’t need an oily rag to do them.

1. Check the time between clients and the server. In the ‘Help’ tab, select ‘About WorkBench’ and ‘Resources’. Look for the ‘average roundtrip time’ line. If the CDS is in your local network, it should be <2 msec. If you connect over a VPN, it should be <25 msec. If longer, you may have a network problem.

2. Consider turning off the user preference ‘Refresh items when modifying links’. In the ‘Home’ tab, click ‘Preferences’, then ‘UI Control’.

3. Consider turning off ‘indicate linked items in trees’ in the same group of preferences.

4. Consider enabling caching of top-level items in Project sidebar, reduces time to find top-level items, in UI Control -> Sidebar preferences.

5. Note that when links are created, modified or deleted, the change histories are updated for items at both ends of the link.

6. Changes to links to/from items could raise alerts to be sent as and possibly sent to large numbers of users.

7. Run the cross reference and item integrity checks in the ‘Project’ tab to find and fix any problems. Issues can arise from ‘unvalidated’ imports of data or links.

8. Ensure that message compression and server-side processing are both active. Look in ‘CDS Settings’ in the preferences for any user. Checkboxes may be greyed out (can only be set on the server), but its set/not set value is accurate.

9. Large numbers of unread alerts will slow Cradle down at login and logout. Check options in the ‘Alerts’ section of the schema, from ‘Project Setup’ in the ‘Project’ tab. Use ‘Delete alerts’ in this tab to remove current user’s alerts.

10. Read the performance section in the System Administration manual

Hints of the Month

Here are some links to helpful topics since our last newsletter, they should improve your Cradle experience:

Whether it’s Daylight Saving or Cross border timezones, you can set your preferences within Cradle described in this Set Display Time Zone.

IT department worried about a downloaded copy of Cradle? Worry no more and check out Digital Certificates in Cradle.

If you import data from other sources in CSV or TSV or from Excel, you may have wondered what the difference is between the different import options. What will get overwritten, what will remain? You can read an overview and example in this blog article.

You can read Hints & Tips on New Cradle-7.2 Features in the 3SL Blog.

9th March 201713th August 2019

March 2017 Newsletter

New Release – Cradle 7.2

We are pleased to announce the release of Cradle-7.2:

Cradle-7.2 contains a range of new capabilities that are described in its Release Notes.

Customers with active maintenance have been sent an e-mail notification of this release, and details of which enhancement requests and bug reports are in it.

Some of the highlights are:

Full support for IPv6 networking
Availability of 64-bit Cradle for Linux, use of the latest Windows .NET and improved support of Office 2016
Locking projects and disconnecting users through Project Manager
Improvements in custom web UI components, and the as-supplied Basic web UI
Dashboards as dials in WorkBench and in web UIs
More flexibility with Change Tasks in the CM system
Extended quality checks in the Conformance Checker and for SysML in the Consistency Checker
Find and replace
Extensions to queries and views
New functional modelling options with PADs and IDEF0

Download and Installation

You need a new Security Code for Cradle-7.2, other Security Codes cannot be used. If you have not received a new code and are under maintenance, please contact support@threesl.com. If you would like to discuss upgrading an out of date system, please contact salesdetails@threesl.com. If you have a single user version you can purchase the latest revision at the 3SL shop.

There is a database conversion from 7.1 to 7.2. The converter which will run automatically if you install Cradle-7.2, over the top of, in the same directory as, the earlier version of Cradle from which you are upgrading.

You must upgrade all of your Cradle installation to 7.2. (clients and server) as mixed versions, e.g. Cradle-7.1 clients / Cradle-7.2 server, and vice-versa are not supported.

I have a Cunning Plan…..

OK it does not have to be cunning, it just has to be clear. Cradle provides a bi-directional integration with Microsoft Project® that allows a Cradle project to be associated with multiple Project schedules and bidirectional updates with Project. By linking activities in each schedule to become a WBS hierarchy in Cradle the loop is closed and the plan and the Cradle requirements and models are all linked.

The main reasons to control things this way is to ensure there is no inconsistency between the management planning and the project engineering. To ensure that each engineering activity is planned for and each element of the plan has some actual work assigned to it, avoiding incompleteness. A plan linked to Cradle communicates the holistic view of progress and items all in one place.

To read more on this topic, our whitepaper “Integrated Project Management from Cradle” can be read here.

Social Media

Facebook Twitter Link

Our Facebook account is connected to our Twitter feed, so if you can’t follow us on Twitter (@threesl), you can still get the hints and tips via your Facebook timeline, see the (3SLCradle) page.

YouTube Learning

Our popular YouTube channel has a number of ‘How to’ style videos to help you with particular aspects of Cradle, requirements management or systems engineering. We know that some of our customers may find a particular aspect complex, and although there is comprehensive online help documentation and articles provided, having a video take you through the steps can make a real difference. Of course 3SL can also offer full training, giving you broad coverage or highly tailored content as you require, contact us to discuss further.

Remembering the old adage “Tell me and I forget, Show me and I remember, Involve me and I understand” seems very appropriate. But what aspects are most appropriate to you our customer?

In this article 3SL’s managing director Mark Walker, asks for your feedback to guide 3SL’s video output.

“But the customer has sent it as an mp4!”

Your boss wants you to record the evidence of the test to provide full traceability
The testing house has sent a video of the compression strength test
You’re ‘stuck’ with all your requirements and tests in Cradle and now you have a video…

Don’t worry it’s not a problem. Although Cradle may not be able to play videos, it can store all sorts of information in its database, or by reference to external files. We provide a large list of files pre-defined, but Cradle can easily cope with new file types.

In this case you would add a binary frame to store video, you may have a directory alongside the Cradle database where these files reside, so an ‘As File’ frame would make sense, or if it is also to be controlled through the Cradle CMS (Configuration Management System) it could be “In PDB” (Project Database). You would choose our favourite app to view them in, then you would assign a frame of this type to your, say, TEST item type. Now you have the traceability you need with the test evidence referenced from the TEST item and links to the SYSTEM_REQUIREMENT through to the original customer Requirement.

In our LinkedIn discussion we describe adding a Document to an item.

Hints of the Month

Here are some links to helpful topics since our last newsletter, they should improve your Cradle experience:

A bright ‘Red’ box in the middle of the table screams Urgent/Highest/Action, when running a query you may wish to Highlight Important Values with Colour as described in this article.

Have you ever wondered what makes up the Content of a Cradle Database? Read the link for a simple overview.

No-one wants to lose their hard crafted work, our tips on Safeguarding Against Unintended Data Loss could ensure that if something does go wrong, you can limit its impact to your project and business.

7th February 20179th February 2023

February 2017 Newsletter

Happy Chinese New Year

新年快乐！
3SL 祝愿我们的所有客户，合作伙伴和供应商2017吉祥如意！

Regulation, Compliance and Traceability from Cradle

Discovery, Implementation, Demonstration, is this really what making a product is all about?

From a product development point of view, Elicitation, Analysis, Specification and Validation may be terms an engineer is more familiar with. However, we work in a world where regulation and compliance are hugely important factors in a product’s lifecycle.

As developers and producers we must discover the sets of codes, regulations and standards that form the non functional requirements of our product. We must the implement the changes to our product design to ensure the end product is compliant. Before delivery we must be able to trace our designs and decisions to demonstrate how we comply.

For further discussion on the parallel paths that a product lifecyle must comply, please read one of the 3SL’s whitepapers here.

Twitter Tips

Thanks to those extra follows from January, don’t forget to retweet whenever you find a tip helpful and keep using those #3SL and #Cradle tags.

Baseline Past and Present

Whenever a project reaches a defining moment it is advisable for the project to be baselined. A line in the sand to say ‘we are at this point’, a point from which further development and changes can stem.

However, sometimes we want to return to and extract a particular baseline, say to use as the starting point for a new project variant. See how to export this information in our linked in article

Cradle is Citrix Ready

Large or complex deployment, centrally managed? A number of our customers use Cradle deployed in a Citrix environment.

Cradle 7.1 has been certified for Citrix XenApp 7.6 and can be accessed through the Citrix Ready Marketplace

False Positives

Any software developers out there? We’re gathering experiences, encountered while developing and distributing software, of the eternal battle between virus protection, legitimate development and malware hackers. Please join the discussion here on LinkedIn or see it in the ‘Cradle – RM/SE Tool from 3SL’ group.

Many Roles

Do you sit as a person with many hats? Today you are Engineer, tomorrow you are QA Manager? In smaller organisations many people find they wear a number of hats, but like to keep their operations separate. Whether this is from an administration and traceability point of view, or just to prevent a change being made to data accidentally by a role with an elevated privilege (think sudo in Linux). It may also be the case that you want all these roles to exist in the future, but while the embryonic project is being set up and developed there is only a small team working on it. These roles are later handed over to new colleagues.

Cradle allows you to set up all the users individually and then provide a common alias or in Cradle terms a ‘Switch Identity’. The user can then switch between the various roles without the more time consuming logout – remember different password – login loop.

This is further illustrated in our LinkedIn discussion.

MBSE Buzz!

Model Based System Engineering is all the rage at the likes of the NASA / JPL symposium 25th – 27th Jan. Why not have a look at Cradle’s New MBSE Reference in our improved 3SL website.

Hints of the Month

Here are some links to helpful topics since our last newsletter, they should improve your Cradle experience:

Need to estimate your hardware requirements over the life of a project see the Database Size Calculator.

Want to show every user a special message before they start? Use the Login Messages and User Acknowledgement facility.

Happy about installing, IT want to know everything is OK, drop in at VirusTotal – see Check Cradle Files are Free From Viruses.

New to managing documents and statements you can Avoid Problems Opening Source Documents and Statements here.

Seeing an odd Word error ? Read all about it Word Error – Ambiguous name detected: TmpDDE.

Don’t worry if you computer raises a False Positive from Symantec and Trend Micro Office Scan. AV Products will explain why.

The world still revolves round documents (paper or electronic) it’s an easy way for humans to deal with data, from Cradle you can Publish a Formal Document.

Installation issues? A few of articles that may help Installation Issues With .NET Framework, Installation Issue With Windows C Runtime, Installation Issue With Office 2016 / 365 / ClickToRun

6th January 20178th December 2022

January 2017 Newsletter

Happy New Year

3SL would like to wish all our customers, partners and suppliers a happy and fruitful 2017.

We hope you are all back to work and busy using Cradle-7.1.2 for your design, requirements management. If you’ve not got the latest version for the start of the year head over to www.threesl.com, login to your account and download it from the Software part of the Resources area in our website here.

If you install Cradle-7.1.2 clients don’t forget to update the server too and visa versa!

Role for RM and SE Tools

We obviously love the fact that Cradle is used on such a diverse set of projects within a huge range of companies. Some customers have fully embraced integrated thinking and manage every aspect of their project with appropriate tools. However, we also know there are pockets of Cradle being used in isolation in engineering departments and disparate projects dotted around our customers’ sites, where unfortunately the wider organisation, their suppliers and customers are just not as tuned into well balanced control and design.

If you find yourself in that situation you may like to use the details in our set of white papers dealing with the uses of information systems in engineering. A paper dealing with the role of RM and SE tool scan be seen here.

Agile Controls

3SL in Australia is distributed by our new partners at Agile Controls.

We are thrilled to announce they have recently signed up their first major customer, we wish them continued success in 2017 and look forward to supporting Cradle’s ‘down under’.

They can be contacted at:

Agile Controls,
108A Tregarthen Road,
Ashton
australia@threesl.com
+61 427 975 674

Twitter Tips

Sometimes you don’t have time to digest all the information in a newsletter. 3SL often tweet simple usage tips that can make a difference when learning all the capabilities of Cradle.

For example:

Confused about which symbol is which? Hover to see a tool tip or select Draw button from Tools ribbon.

Click to view this post or follow @threesl if you want to chat about #Cradle or #3SL don’t forget to use an appropriate #tag

Sharing With Others – Web Publisher

When you need a static intranet version of your project, a version you can place on a CD or pen-drive and ship then consider Cradle’s Web Publisher. This allows you to publish your project to a linked set of html pages that can be packaged up and sent to anyone with a browser. You could of course publish parts as a paper report, or as a more complete document with Document Publisher. However, the simplicity of being click a symbol on a diagram and be taken to the specification behind it provides a simple way to share your data with other parties. Of course if you are able to enlighten your customer or supplier, then 3SL will happily demonstrate the full benefits of Cradle and then you can share exports or a common project database.