Category: Hints & Tips

Hints and Tips on using Cradle.

Improve understanding and productivity of the Cradle suite of software.

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History Filter in Views

New Cradle 7.2 Views Feature

If too much information is showing in the history cell of a View, it can now be filtered by the number of entries and/or by a date. This makes it easier to see what’s changed in, say, the last week.

In the “View Details” dialog select the “Item History” cell. Then in the Cell Properties select whether to limit the “Maximum number of changes”, entering a maximum number to show. Then select  “Changes within date range” in order to enter relative or absolute date values for the history filter.

The start options are:

  • Today
  • Start of this week
  • Start of last week
  • Start of this month
  • Start of last month
  • Start of 2 months ago
  • Start of 3 months ago
  • Specify

The end options are:

  • Today
  • End of last week
  • End of last month
  • End of 2 months ago
  • End of 3 months ago
  • Specify
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Query Delete State of Linked Items

New Cradle Query Feature

Selection of linked item's delete state
Query Details -Linked items delete state

In the query details dialog, users can now set the ‘Delete State’ of linked (or not linked items).

Those states are:

  • Normal an item considered live and accessible
  • Recoverable an item that has been deleted but could be brought back, hidden in most operations
  • All a combination of the two.

Why is Delete State Important?

It would be logical to run a query to check that all your Requirements are linked to System Requirements. Therefore, setting a query to return Requirements ‘Not Linked’ to System Requirements that are of a Normal Delete State would give you the required list.

On the other hand, before permanently deleting a batch of items, you may want to check that they are not linked to Recoverable items first. In that way you can ensure those items linked items are deleted too.

Since the state of both the primary item and the linked items can be set  this gives all query combinations for an item’s deleted status.

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Set Display Time Zone

Storing Dates and Times

Cradle stores all dates and times in UTC, which is most likely not your local time zone.

To ensure that Cradle displays all dates and times using your local time zone, you need to set the ‘Display time zone’ option in Preferences, as shown below. The offset from UTC option is for customers who have users in multiple time zones with a central server. It can be more convenient for everyone to have the same view of times, that of the central server, rather than their local time zone.

We hope that this is helpful!
Cradle Preferences UI Control

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Project Schema Report Options

New Cradle 7.2 Reports Feature

It just grew and grew and grew…..

As more functionality is constantly being added to Cradle, the number of elements in the project schema grow. If you want to study only part of the schema, the report could be quite long and unwieldy. Cradle 7.2 allows users to select the portions of the schema they want to show in a report.

Shows selection of part of the project schema and resultant report
Report parts of the project schema

New Cradle 7.3.1 Reports Feature

We’ve made coloursets report more clearly in the Schema Report.

option dialog and result for schema coloursets
Coloursets – Report

Coloursets are a means to easily and consistently apply foreground and background colours to diagram symbols, or item type definitions. you can see more information in the Cradle help.

Copying a Schema

Once you have set up a schema, you can always copy it to a new project.

 

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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
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‘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
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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
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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
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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