You may need to change attributes or a category of many items and there is an easy way to do this in one go.
Changing Attributes
The attributes of the same or different item types can be changed at the same time. In the image below, all the Group attributes are empty and I want to group this set of items. To change attributes, select them all, right click and select Properties.
Item Properties UI for Many Item Types
In here I can enter some text in the Group attribute and when I click OK all the items selected will be up dated. I could change any of the options shown in Item Properties and it would up date all the items with the same information.
Many items of different item types are updated
This will work on items in link views as well so you can change all of the linked items at one.
Changing Categories
This will only work for items of the same item type. Select all the items you wish to change, right click on them and select Properties. If all items are the same type with the same categories, Item Propertieswill show all of the categories for that type.
Item Properties for many selected items of the same item type
Selecting a new option will change all the items at the same time. Multiple Category types can also be changed here and will affect every item selected. All of the categories can be changed at the same time, if required, along with all the attributes shown above.
Related Articles:
For further information on attributes and altering data:
Hierarchies of items are common in requirements management and systems engineering. It is easy to create hierarchies in Cradle. It is also easy to move items within hierarchies. Cradle calls this reordering. You can control item reordering so that you can prevent users accidentally reordering items in ways that are incorrect.
How to Reorder Items
You reorder items by drag and drop:
An Item to be Reordered
First, select the item to be reordered
Keep the mouse button pressed and drag the cursor onto another item
Release the mouse button and choose from the reordering options
Choose the Reordering Operation
If you choose Reorder Before this Item, then:
The hierarchy Pwr.3 will become Pwr.1, including all descendents
The Pwr.1 hierarchy will become Pwr.2
The Pwr.2 hierarchy will become Pwr.3
The Pwr.4 and Pwr.5 hierarchies will not change
Result of Reorder Before Item Pwr.1
If you choose Reorder After this Item, then:
The hierarchy Pwr.3 will become Pwr.2, including all descendents
The Pwr.2 hierarchy will become Pwr.3
While if you choose Reorder as New Child of this Item, then:
The hierarchy Pwr.3 will become Pwr.1.N, where N is the number of the next child of Pwr.1
The Pwr.4 hierarchy will become Pwr.3, to close the gap in the numbering
The Pwr.5 hierarchy will become Pwr.4 to close the gap in the numbering
Control Item Reordering
Problems can occur if you drag-and-drop Pwr.3 either:
To create a new hierarchy with a new top-level item. For example, if you drag-and-drop onto item Onto a top-level item, such as Product Casing or Connectivity and choose Reorder Before this Item or Reorder After this Item.
Into a different hierarchy, such as the Case or Conn hierarchy
You can control item reordering by preventing either or both of these operations. You do this using checkboxes in the Numbering Properties:
Options to Control Item Reordering in a Schema
If you de-select the Allow items to become new top-level item checkbox, you will prevent problem 1.
You can prevent problem 2, accidentally moving an item outside its original hierarchy, by de-selecting the Allow reorder outside original hierarchy. checkbox.
Cradle provides a lot of flexibility for numbering item hierarchies. This is helpful if you need many hierarchies of the same type of items.
Hierarchies of Items
Hierarchies are very common in requirements management and systems engineering. Some common examples are:
User requirements are typically structured as a hierarchy
System requirements are typically a hierarchy
A System Breakdown Structure (SBS) will be a hierarchy
A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) will also be a hierarchy
It is also common to have several hierarchies of the same type of information. For example:
A hierarchy of subsystem requirements for each of a product’s subsystems
An as designed and an as built SBS
It is easy to join many hierarchies into one. You create a new, top-level item and then connect all of the hierarchies to it. This is usually a bad idea.
Why?
Because it helps if the numbers are different in each hierarchy. If each hierarchy is different to the others, it will be confusing if items in different hierarchies have the same number.
Hierarchical Number is Not the Identity
So what is a hierarchical number?
Every item in the database has an Identity. This is unique for the item type. Once the item has been created, its Identity does not change. Cross references use Identities to connect items to each other.
The hierarchical number of an item is NOT the Identity. Well, Cradle does allow identities to be the hierarchical attribute, but we DO NOT recommend it. We will ignore this from now on!
The hierarchical number describes an item’s position in the hierarchy. A simple hierarchical number is:
4.1.2
This tells us that the item is at the third level in the hierarchy. It is the 2nd item below item 4.1, and is part of the 1st group of items below item 4.
Hierarchical numbers are most common in the numbering of sections and sub-sections in documents.
Hierarchical numbers are not fixed. They can change. You can reorganise a hierarchy, moving an item and its children from one part of the hierarchy to another. Cradle calls this reordering a hierarchy. When you reorder items, their hierarchical numbers will change. Their Identities will not change.
By default, Cradle will store hierarchical numbers in the attribute called Key. You can store it in a category, if you wish.
Hierarchical Numbers
A hierarchical number has two parts:
A prefix
A hierarchy part, which is zero or more of:
A hierarchical separator
A number
The hierarchical separator can be:
A dot or period (this is the default); .
A hyphen: –
A slash: /
So these are all hierarchical numbers if the separator is a dot:
1
1.2.3
fred
fred.3.1
and these are also correct if the separator is a hyphen:
sid
sid-3
sid-3-4
and these are also valid hierarchical numbers if the separator is a slash:
bert
bert/1
bert/1/2
The prefix can be anything that does not contain a hierarchical separator. So if the separator is dot, then the prefix could be:
<nothing>
fred
fred-23/A-2.1
sid-2
Numbering Item Hierarchies
It is easy to have many hierarchies of items of the same type.
We recommend that you give each hierarchy a different prefix. For example here are some SBSs for the different subsystems in a product:
A Collection of SBS Hierarchies
Each hierarchy has a unique prefix, such as:
Pwr for the power subsystem
Conn for the connectivity subsystem
and so on. This approach will ensure that:
Each item in every hierarchy has a unique hierarchical number
Each hierarchical number shows which subsystem it belongs to
The prefix for each hierarchy can be used in a query to find all items in that hierarchy
The hierarchical number shows the position of the item in its hierarchy
The simple recommendations for numbering item hierarchies are:
Use descriptive prefix strings in the hierarchical numbers of all items
Since Cradle is not intelligent (unlike its users!), you have to tell it what you want to it operate on, before you tell Cradle to do anything. There are several select operations in Cradle, depending on what you are working with. Most of these select operations are common to other pieces of software, so what follows may not contain any surprises.
Select Operations in Cradle
In general, you will either select:
Items, to perform an operation on them
Text, to manipulate the text in some way
How to Select Items
When you see a collection of items, in a list, table, document or tree, you can select them and then apply an operation to them. So, starting with this table of items:
A List of Items
the select operations in Cradle are:
Select all items by pressing CTRL-A:
A List of Selected Items
Cancel all selections by pressing CTRL-D:
A List of Items With None Selected
Select an individual item by positioning the cursor over it and then click your LEFT mouse button:
A List of Items With One Selected
Select a range by positioning the cursor to the other end of the range and press SHIFT and the LEFT mouse button:
A List of Items With a Range Selected
To add items to the set of selected items, or to remove a selected item from the set of selected items, position your cursor and press CTRL and the LEFT mouse button:
A List of Items With Several Items Selected
You can combine these select operations in Cradle, as shown above.
If the results are not what you want, press CTRL-D and start again!
How to Select Text
The majority of items created in Cradle contain text, either plain text or rich text. You can store any amount of text (well, up to 1 TByte) inside each attribute (called a frame) in an item. You can have any number of attributes in each item.
So, items can store a little text, or an enormous amount of text.
When you edit text, you will see a cursor that is a vertical line. This shows you where text will be entered when you type on the keyboard, or paste text that you copied elsewhere.
The select operations in Cradle for text are:
Select all items by pressing CTRL-A
Cancel the selection by pressing CTRL-D
To select a position in the text, position your cursor and press the LEFT mouse button
Select a word by positioning your cursor anywhere inside the word and double-click, press the LEFT mouse button, quickly, twice,
Select a paragraph by positioning your cursor anywhere inside the paragraph and triple-click, press the LEFT mouse button, quickly, three times
You can select a range of text by positioning your cursor at the start, or end, of the range, and press the LEFT mouse button, drag the cursor, and release the mouse button
You can also select a range of text by positioning your cursor at the start or end of the range, then press SHIFT and then press Cursor Left, Right, Up or Down to extend the range in each direction.
If you ALSO hold the CTRL key, then Cursor Left and Right will extend the selection by one word
If you ALSO press the CTRL key, then Cursor Up and Down will extend the selection by one paragraph
You can change the end of a range of selected text to the start or end of a paragraph by pressing the SHIFT key and then pressing Home or End
You can change a range of selected in large amounts by pressing the SHIFT key and then pressing Page Up or Page Down
By combining these select operations in Cradle, you can easily work with even long blocks of text.
If you have not tried some of these technique, please try them!
How would we work without those ubiquitous columns and rows?
It may have started with Visicalc but these days it is hard to find an aspect of our organisational life that doesn’t have a spreadsheet in it. So during spreadsheet day 2017 try and think what it would be like adding up your budget by hand, working out hours worked per project, or even listing the office Christmas dinner totals.
Cradle supports a Microsoft Excel® capture utility directly bringing data in or CSV import from any spreadsheet’s saved output.
Capture
When the Office Toolsuite has been installed with Cradle you are able to capture information from Microsoft Excel® directly into Cradle. On the sheet of interest select the Cradle Toolbar and Login to Cradle. Then select Capture and in the resultant Data Capture dialog, assign the correct columns to the item attributes in the database. You can change the Options… to overwrite or merge the data and you can Validate the data before Capture. The resultant capture can be viewed in Cradle via Workbench or Web Access. You will of course need the privilege to ITEM_CREATE.
Excel® Capture Facility
Import CSV
To import items into Cradle you will additionally need the IMPORT privilege. This is similar to the Capture utility, but can be run with any CSV source. Selecting CSV as the import type and then assigning each of the columns to the attributes of the item, will allow the data to be imported into Cradle. More details about the CSV format can be found in the Cradle Help.
So why not celebrate everything columnar on spreadsheet day 2017 and capture some information into Cradle.
If you have a really old version of Cradle you may need to remove the old plug-ins
A Cradle database can store any number of items. Each item has an item type. Often it is easy to decide when to create a new item type, but sometimes it is not obvious.
When to Create a New Item Type
In general, there are 4 reasons to create a new item type:
You want the items to have a different set of attributes (and perhaps therefore a different set of views) to any other item type. Your schema may already have an item type that is similar to the item type that you are considering. You could add the new attributes to this item type and then simply ‘ignore’ the extra attributes when they are not needed. if this would be too confusing, you will definitely need a new item type.
You need to be able to enforce a different set of link rules for the items. For example, these ‘subsystem requirements’ may (and probably do) need different linking rules to the system requirements.
You need a different workflow (review process) for the items, for example a different way of reviewing them, or different approvers, or a different way of dealing with rework when reviewers reject items.
Using a different item type is the easiest way to distinguish the items from items of other item types, either to create queries, reports, documents, metrics or dashboards.
The last of these reasons is not as good a reason as the other three. Before creating an item type for this reason, it would be sensible to first consider whether these items (for the possible new item type) could be found with a category-based, or key-based, or even comment-based query. The comment attribute is used to store the names of source documents for items that are captured by Document Loader.
Limitations
You can create any number of item types that in the databases of CradleEnterprise systems. All of Cradle’ssingle-user products have a limit of 50 item types.
Creating an Item Type
Details of creating a new item type is covered in this post:
Creating New Item Types
Automatic Definitions
When you create an item type, Cradle will automatically:
Create a set of queries for the item type, accessible from the Quick Access Bar
Parametrics can be very useful in Document Publisher. It uses a question mark ? as a marker to Document Publisher that this is an option and needs to be filled/selected by the user.
It can allow users to set the Identity/key of a single item or more to be output. This can be used in a hierarchy or with a single item type. Parametrics can also be used to set different properties and options in filters.
Single Parametrics
Using a single Parametric (?) allows a user to publish a template many times but use a different item Identity or Key each time. Note: Using a single parametric in several places in the template will always use the same item identity or key each time.
A parametric can be used at the database/top level or at the field level to set the items to be published. At the top level the parametric is entered for the Identity or Key.
Single Parametric set at Database levelA popup for a user to set the Key(s) at a database level item.
They can also be used in a filter for field to set or restrict the items to be output.
Using a category to detemine if a field tag is output.
In this case the Requirement attribute of Identity will only be output if its Item Status is set to Accepted.
This allows the user to set the Item Status Option.
As you can see below, only items with a status of Accepted have both the Identity and Key output for the Requirements.
Small excerpt of the items output
Named Parametrics
Using a Named Parametric(?named) means a user can have several different parametrics throughout the template and each can be set at time of publishing. So for example the user can set one named parametric for output based on one option of category (e.g. Agreed) and then later in the template use a different named parametric to output based on a different category option (e.g. Rejected).
Named Parameters for 2 different Paragraph Group Tags
During publishing a popup will allow the user to select Agreed for the first Paragraph Group popup:
Named Parametric for Status 1
They then can select Rejected for the second Paragraph Group popup:
The second popup to select a different Status
The published output will then show the 2 different outputs in the same document.
Output using the above options
These named parameters can even be used in several places within the template. The user may want to show the AgreedRequirements and System Requirements in one document. As both item types use the same category (Item Status in our Demo) then the same named parametric can be used for both item types.
Using Named parametrics for both Requirements and System RequirementsOutput using the same Named Parameters twice
In the above screenshot, the 2 named Parametrics have been used for Requirements and System Requirements and the output shows all the Agreed items but that there are no RejectedSystem Requirements.
We are often asked “Do I need a new security code?”. Obviously, if you are wanting to upgrade from one major release to another e.g. 6.n to 7.n a new code will be needed. You would also need a code from one Cradle point version to another, for example Cradle-7.2 to 7.3.
Configuration File
The other case is when moving your Cradle Database Server (CDS). If you have changed, or are planning to change your server there are two main points to consider and these are discussed below.
Has Your Machine’s MAC Address Changed?
Yes
If the MAC address on your new machine is different from you old machine, then yes, you will need a new Cradle Security Code. Please see the section below on how to request a new code.
NO
If your machine’s MAC address has not changed then you do not need a new security code. Your existing code will continue to work on the new machine.
How to Request a New Cradle Security Code?
c_hostid.exe
If you require a new security code please send an email to support@threesl.com containing the MAC address of you new machine and the Cradle Version you require a code for. You can run the Cradle utility Host ID from the start menu or C:\Program Files\Cradle\bin\exe\windows\c_hostid.exe
Octo is 8 after all, from Latin octo, Greek okto. In Romulus’s calendar, when the year started in March, it was the 8th month. However, given they only had 10 months, they also had around 50 days of ‘winter’ that didn’t really have a name. For a time we then ended up with 13 months, but in the final Julian system, only January and February remained inserted at the beginning of the year. Roman emperors were honoured by renaming a couple of months and we are where we are today. “OK, what’s the point”, we hear you cry. It’s that nothing is really stable, something currently taken for granted (months of the year) has a long complex history. So do many projects. They start off in one direction with one set of assumptions, constraints and regulations and then……BANG! A change is dropped on your desk which changes the original assumptions, impacts the design, has repercussions for tests and so on. Taking a baseline when things are relatively stable is a good way to record the status-quo in your project at any one time. Lock down things as they stand so you have a stable footing against which to document and measure change. Check at what point Mercedonius (month of wages) was retired. Use formal Change Requests and Change Tasks to record why an alteration is needed. (Because Julius said reform, because Augustus needs to be honoured). Use the trace facilities of cross references and suspect integrityhighlighting, in Cradle, to see what impact a change in the chain will have.
New Customers
Welcome to all our new customer’s this quarter. Especially Public Health England who have recently selected Cradle for a major operational plan.
Cradle® has been selected by Public Health England (PHE) to manage the definition and fulfilment of requirements for its Science Hub programme. This £400 million project will design and build a world class national public health science hub and headquarters in Harlow that will bring together personnel from PHE’s Porton, Colindale and central London sites. The PHE Harlow site is scheduled to be fully operational in 2024.
Cradle is a requirements management, enterprise architecture and systems engineering tool that integrates the entire lifecycle of development, organisational and infrastructure projects that use agile or phase-based methods. Cradle is an ideal solution for procurement projects for ITT generation, bid assessment and contract management, by providing traceability between a managed, configuration-controlled multi-user database and all external source and published documents.
Mark Walker, Director of 3SL said:
“We are delighted that PHE has chosen Cradle for this important infrastructure and reorganisation programme. We welcome the opportunity for a long-term partnership with PHE and confident that Cradle will make a significant contribution to the successful realisation of the new PHE Harlow site.”
If you would like to feature your company in the 3SL newsletter, please drop us a line at social-customer@threesl.com
Cradle 7.3.1
If you want the extra facilities or small bug fixes in Cradle 7.3.1, you can download it from the website and install new clients and server across your organisation. There is no need to obtain an additional security code for this point release upgrade. Those on single user versions of Cradle 7.3 can also take advantage of the upgrade. If you have any problems please email or call the Support Department support@threesl.com +44 1229 838867 or contact your local distributor.
Banking Changes
Banking Changes
There are some changes afoot for those that deal with 3SL financially.
As we mentioned last month, if you do business with 3SL you may need to update some of the banking details. We’ll keep you posted here.
The second Tuesday of October (Ada Lovelace Day 2017) sees the celebration of women’s achievements in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths).
Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace is known for her work on Babbage’s Analytical Engine. By taking maths beyond calculations to create algorithms to run on general machines. To coin a phrase “One of the first computer programmers”
Ada is a structured high-level programming language designed in the late seventies and takes its name from the countess.
ASGs are used to provide a visual representation of the program units (packages, tasks and subprograms) in an Ada software system. You can draw these in Cradle, and of course link them to other Cradle components from requirements to tests.
