This newsletter contains a mixture of news and technical information about us, and our requirements management and systems engineering tool “Cradle”. We would especially like to welcome everyone who has purchased Cradle in the past month and those who are currently evaluating Cradle for their projects and processes.
We hope that 3SL and Cradle can deliver real and measurable benefits that help you to improve the information flow within, the quality and timeliness of, and the traceability, compliance and governance for, all of your current and future projects.
If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Supporthere.
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2023吉祥如意！
The Chinese New Year holiday reached its climax with the Lantern Festival, celebrated on February 5th, 2023.
We want to share the love of engineering through Requirements Management and integrated MBSE. Rather than roses, we will use Cradle!
So if you need more Cradle licences for a bigger project or you want to upgrade your single user product to Cradle 7.7, then contact 3SL for further information.
Happy Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day)
We hope you have a great pancake day (February 21st) whatever your process flow may be!
Pancake Flow Diagram (PFD) !
A PFD (Process Flow Diagram), rather than Pancake Flow Diagram shows a particular task or process that the system can perform. This is termed a flow. Systems may have many flows, each of which may have concurrent or optional elements.
Modelling the flow before you take action can ensure you have thought about, and documented, the expected behaviour(s). It can be clear which parts of the system are operating in parallel and which could be bottlenecks awaiting the outcome of previous operations. However, modelling Shrove Tuesday’s pancakes may be a bit excessive ….
In a project, you may wish to enter a supporting reference number for an item of data. For example, an Equipment Number. This number might require a given format.
You can achieve this by creating a user-defined category with no category values defined and include a Category Verification Test using a Regular Expression.
Example Category Verification Test
In this example, the regular expression ^[A-Z]{4}(?:-[0-9]{5})?$ can be broken down into:
Regular Expression
Description
^
The beginning of the string
[A-Z]{4}
The project code must be 4 alpha characters long in uppercase
If you now create or modify an item of data, Cradle will present you with an error message on saving if the category value does not match what you have specified in the Category Verification Test.
Reference Number in CategoriesInvalid Category Value dialog
Here the validation test would fail because you have not included a hyphen separator.
Validation Test result
You will also receive an error if the incorrect case is used. E.g. demo-12345.
Invalid Validation Test
However, if you enter a value such as DEMO-12345, this would save without any warning or error message.
Example saved category
Summary
Regular expressions can be used in many areas of the tool. Using this functionality to enforce an input in free text categories can be a very useful feature.
All Cradle users have a read-write access mode by default, and as such can create and modify information in their project databases, subject only to Cradle’s security and access control mechanisms such as privileges, classifications, skills, user types and so on.
There are no dedicated read-only user accounts in Cradle. However, there is a mechanism to specify which user accounts should be read-only and which should be read-write for a specified project.
This mechanism might be useful in protecting the consumption of your read-write connections.
Cradle User Control File (UCF)
Cradle contains a cradle_users file that is stored in the admin directory of your Cradle installation. This file allows your System Administrator to control the access mode that a user has for specified projects.
The file allows you to specify the Cradle username, the project code and the access mode separated by a space or tab characters:
Cradle-Username Project-Code Access-Mode
where:
Cradle-Username – is the Cradle username to be controlled, in uppercase or lowercase, and at most 40 characters
Project-Code – the project in which the username is defined, specified in uppercase or lowercase, and at most 4 characters
Access-Mode – the access mode to be assigned whenever anyone logs in to the specified project with the specified username, as:
R – the username is always to be read-only
W – the username is always to be read-write
Example cds_users file
The entries in this file override any -ro or -rw command line options to Cradle tools.
This file is empty by default, so all users would have the ability to connect to databases read-write unless specified otherwise.
Cradle items can contain many frames, categories and other attributes that might not necessarily be relevant or required to be shown at different stages of your workflow. An example of which is shown below:
Item showing stage frames
The example provides frames that should only be shown at the relevant stage in the workflow and the Acceptance Criteria, we decided that we wish to show this information at all stages but displayed read-only at stages 2 and 3.
Defining a Stage Category
To start with, create a category to base the workflow on. This must be set as mandatory and have a default value set.
Setup category values
You can then assign this category to the item type. In this example we have used Requirements:
Assign category to item type
Defining the Workflow
In the WorkflowSettings, create a workflow that uses the Stage category to advance to the next stage of the process. In this example, we demonstrate a very simple workflow that advances from Stage 1 to Stage 2 and then Stage 2 to Stage 3. The 3rd level shown here is to then advance to formal review:
Show workflow stages
You can then set this as the default workflow for the item type:
Set default workflow
Note that the Stage Category Form… button becomes active. We will come back to this later as firstly you need to create a form for each stage.
Creating Forms
Using the Form Details dialog, create a form for each stage of the workflow.
Stage 1 Form
The Stage 1 form in this example should show the frame STAGE 1 NOTES but not STAGE 2 NOTES or STAGE 3 NOTES.
Stage 1 form
Stage 2 Form
The Stage 2 form in this example should show the frame STAGE 2 NOTES but not STAGE 1 NOTES or STAGE 3 NOTES. You can also set the Acceptance Criteria frame to only be shown read-only as in the example below:
Stage 2 form
Stage 3 Form
The Stage 3 form in this example should show the frame STAGE 3 NOTES but not STAGE 1 NOTES or STAGE 2 NOTES. You can also set the Acceptance Criteria frame to only be shown read-only as in the example below.
Stage 3 form
Setting the Stage Forms
You can now return to Project Setup and press the Stage Category Form… button:
Stage Category Form button in Project Setup
This will allow you to specify the form to be used at each stage of the workflow.
Stage Category Form dialog
Advancing the Item
When you first create the item, the Stage category is set to Stage 1 as this is the default value for the item. You can see here that the STAGE 1 NOTES frame is shown and the Acceptance Criteria is read-write:
Advance option in ribbon
Pressing the Advance… button closes the item and changes the Stage value to Stage 2 once confirmed in the Advance Operation dialog:
Advance Operation dialog
When you open the item again, you will see that the Stage category is set to Stage 2 and will use the Stage 2 form that shows the STAGE 2 NOTES frame and the Acceptance Criteria is read-only:
Item in form showing stage 2
Advancing the item again uses the form that has been created for Stage 3 and so on.
Summary
WorkBench allows you to create a specific form for each stage of your workflow. This can be particularly useful if the frames, categories or attributes only need to be shown at certain stages of your process. It would simplify the user interface for the users that are modifying the items as they would not be presented with information that might be irrelevant to their task.
This newsletter contains a mixture of news and technical information about us, and our requirements management and systems engineering tool “Cradle”. We would especially like to welcome everyone who has purchased Cradle in the past month and those who are currently evaluating Cradle for their projects and processes.
We hope that 3SL and Cradle can deliver real and measurable benefits that help you to improve the information flow within, the quality and timeliness of, and the traceability, compliance and governance for, all of your current and future projects.
If you have any problems in your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Supporthere.
Happy New Year
We hope all those celebrating over Christmas had a safe and happy time.
Into a new year and a time to reflect on both your company’s achievements and problems. Whilst the turn of a date is nothing magical, the psychological effect of a new term can really help enthuse and help us focus.
If a project wasn’t quite on track, a root cause analysis can help identify where things went astray. Use this as a positive for new projects and look out for the ‘gotcha’ next time round. It is also important to identify the successes, the team and company can lever the feel-good factor on jobs well done.
3SL US Training Courses
Our US colleagues have scheduled the following public courses:
3-Day User Course February 6-8 (3 days), $1395/attendee
Combined Administration Course February 9 (1 day), $465/attendee
3-Day User Course April 17-19 (3 days), $1395/attendee
Combined Administration Course April 20 (1 day), $465/attendee
These courses are open to anyone from any organisation. If you register for one of these courses, it may mean that you will be joined by people from other organisations.
All of these public courses are limited to 8 attendees. For further information or to book your place on one of these courses please contact 3SL US.
Combined Administration Course
The Combined Administration Course course is designed for project team leaders or managers who administer and manage Cradle projects. It covers both user and project administration. It also includes setting up project schemas helping your users to hit the ground running.
3-Day User Course
The 3-Day User Course is designed to help new users become acquainted with Cradle. This course includes hands on demonstrations for both administration and requirements management tasks.
3SL Listed in ESMCP ESN Supplier Directory
The Home Office is leading a cross-government programme to deliver the new Emergency Services Network (ESN) critical communications system. ESN is being delivered through the Emergency Services Mobile Communication Programme (ESMCP) in the Home Office where 3SL and Cradle have provided requirements and test/evidence management and contract governance support since 2013.
Emergency Services Network
ESN is being delivered through the Emergency Services Mobile Communication Programme (ESMCP) in the Home Office. ESMCP has many component projects, including the acquisition of MCX end user communication services.
3SL is pleased to announce that we have been listed as a supplier in this programme. Interest in 3SL and Cradle can be registered through the portal or directly to 3SL.
Interest in Cradle from HMG or 3ES can be sent directly to 3SL or through G-Cloud 13 in the Digital Marketplace here.
Still to come this month
Project Administration online course – January 17th to 18th
User online course – January 24th to 25th
To book your place on either of the Project Administration or User courses please see here.
WorkBench is an extremely flexible and customisable tool which can then result in user complexity as it provides such a wide range of displays and outputs for your project data:
MANYdefinition files to show queries and views of how you want to see your data
MANY types of reports and documents tailored for your required outputs
Different outputs/views of the project required at particular stages
With so many features available to users, it is important to understand how we can manage to reduce the complexity of the tool for them by using the Phase Hierarchy and/or Start Pages:
Simplifying your WorkBench environment
We can reduce tool complexity by the use of the Phase Hierarchy and/or Start Pages.
Phase Hierarchy
The phase hierarchy is an order of elements that can be grouped together under different folders to describe the process or project lifecycle of your project. You can think of these as phases, activities or tasks.
Creating a phase hierarchy is the task of a Project Administrator who needs PROJECT privilege and is created in Project Setup.
Each element of a phase can run an operation in an organised structure which is shown by expanding folders such as:
These phase operations are for all users of the project. However, you can restrict operations to a particular team or a particular skill:
Phase hierarchy showing skill
The phase hierarchy is also used in the Web Access tool.
Please note that the phase hierarchy feature is not available in single-user products.
Start Pages
Whereas a phase hierarchy defines the whole process and the activities to be performed, start pages could help to automate the steps to perform each activity for a particular user or set of users.
Start pages also allow you to open a specific WorkBench dialog or run a tool such as Document Loader that will simplify usage considerably as your users would have all relevant operations in an organised page without having to navigate through all of the menus, ribbons and dialogs.
These are organised in:
Labels
Headings
Actions / multiple actions
You can also add images to your start page which can be very useful in customising the interface for your project:
Example Start Page
Start pages can also allow you to run multiple operations with a single click.
You can define multiple start pages for a specific set of tasks and for multiple sets of users.
Start Page Details option
Summary
The phase hierarchy and start pages allow you to simplify the user experience of WorkBench.
The phase hierarchy defines a set of operations in folders which can be filtered for specific sets of users. This feature is not available in single-user products.
Start pages can be more personal and will quickly allow you to complete a task or create an output without having to navigate the WorkBench menu, ribbons and dialogs and saved definition files.
This newsletter contains a mixture of news and technical information about us, and our requirements management and systems engineering tool “Cradle”. We would especially like to welcome everyone who has purchased Cradle in the past month and those who are currently evaluating Cradle for their projects and processes.
We hope that 3SL and Cradle can deliver real and measurable benefits that help you to improve the information flow within, the quality and timeliness of, and the traceability, compliance and governance for, all of your current and future projects.
If you have any problems in your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Supporthere.
32-Bit vs 64-Bit
For our next major release – Cradle-8.0 – we are proposing to remove support for:
32-bit Windows
32-bit Microsoft Office
32-bit Linux
We would like to know if this would have adverse effects for any of our current customers and any potential customers. If you believe that removing 32-bit support from Cradle would affect you or your company, then please send your views and opinions to 3SL Supporthere.
Cradle-8.0 will not be released until mid 2023 at the earliest.
Configuration Management in Cradle, including baselines, workflows, simple reviews, team reviews, formal change, audit trail and how to advance information to the next stage within their lifecycle
This course has been included in our 2023 training course calendar as discussed below.
Public Training Course Calendar 2023
The courses available in 2023 are listed below. You can now see a list of the public courses available here within the Public Training Courses panel.
You can also book your place on one of the courses here.
For details of the modules in each course, please see here:
Project Administration Course
Learn how to configure Cradle to best support your project’s processes and to deliver that process support to your users. This is a great opportunity for project managers to understand their schemas and Cradle UI customisations.
The 2023 dates for this course are:
January 17th to 18th
July 18th to 19th
User Course
This course provides an overview of Cradle’s capabilities including best practices and includes demonstrations of the major Cradle features. This course is excellent for new users to familiarise themselves with Cradle.
The 2023 dates for this course are:
January 24th to 25th
July 25th to 26th
Requirements Management
This is a great opportunity for small teams, or just new team members to get started with requirements management in Cradle, including loading information from external sources, organising it, evolving it through your process, and then publishing the integrated information set that this creates.
The 2023 dates for this course are:
February 20th to 23rd
August 21st to 24th
Document Publisher
Make your output shine with this course that explains how to create and publish document templates using Cradle’s Document Publisher tool. Once you have managed your requirements, models, risks and tests through your process, it is essential that you can deliver essential, accurate and consistent project documentation directly from this integrated set of information.
The 2023 dates for this course are:
March 20th to 23rd
September 18th to 21st
Risk Management
Learn how to identify, analyse, treat and monitor your project’s risks, link them to your requirements, SBS and other information and manage these risks and their mitigations. This course ensures you can implement your risk management plan, manage your risk registers and publish your risk profiles.
The 2023 dates for this course are:
April 18th to 19th
October 24th to 25th
Test Management and Execution
Learn how to integrate a complete suite of test plans and test cases into your project data, and how to execute test runs of these test plans and cases so as to collect test results and associated data for each step in the test cases. Apply this mechanism at all module/unit, subsystem, system and higher levels to deliver the V&V, acceptance and governance of your project.
The 2023 dates for this course are:
May 23rd to 24th
November 21st to 22nd
Configuration Management
Learn how to use Cradle’s workflow and CM system to manage the creation and evolution of items of information, how to formally review these items into project baselines, and how to make formally controlled changes to new instances of these items.
The 2023 dates for this course are:
June 20th to 21st
December 12th to 13th
G-Cloud 13
The UK government provides the G-Cloud procurement framework for its departments and agencies. G-Cloud 13 is the latest instance of that framework, agreement number RM1557.13, and is available between 9th November 2022 and 8th November 2023.
3SL is pleased to announce that we have been accepted into G-Cloud 13, and that Cradle is available as a variety of SaaS services through Lot 2 in this framework, and a range of training and consultancy services are available through Lot 3.
Cradle SaaS Services
A wide range of SaaS services are available through G-Cloud 13 Lot 2. For a summary of this Lot, please see here.
Each service includes Cradle licences, a user-configurable schema, and a comprehensive support package. The SaaS can be delivered for both UNCLASSIFIED (IL0) and OFFICIAL (certified IL3) deployments. The services are:
Thank you to all our loyal customers and friends past and present. We’re proud to have been of assistance in your projects.
Thank you to all the staff who over the years have changed Cradle into the multi module full lifecycle suite it is today.
Structured Software Systems Limited’s official start date was 1st December 1987 and trades under the catchier moniker 3SL.
Happy Christmas
May we take this opportunity to wish you, our wonderful customers, suppliers and distributors, season’s greetings and a peaceful and Happy Christmas. We wish you all the best in 2023.
Season’s Greetings
Lookback
Well 2022 seems to have gone so quickly, in writing our December 2022 Newsletter, we take a look back at what happened:
All 3SL staff returned to the office
Cradle-7.7 released
Snapshots – a read-only copy of information in a Cradle database at a specific point in time
New dashboard dial types
Ability to test sending Cradle email alerts
Cradle-7.7.0.1 released
ISO-9001 recertification
G-Cloud 13
And Finally
That’s all for the December 2022 Newsletter, and indeed this year. If you would like to suggest a topic for next time, drop us a line social-customer@threesl.com.
The first scheduled publishing course of 2023. Cradle report creation training – Document Publisher March 2023 course.
“Once you have managed your requirements and development, producing a comprehensive report, automatically based directly on the project data, provides an essential deliverable”
Online Course
Businesses that have Cradle for their Requirements Management or Systems Engineering process can benefit from additional Cradle tools.
Document Publisher is a Windows® based publishing tool that allows professional documentation to be produced directly from the data within your project’s database. Fully understanding how to configure templates and data manipulation will offer the best output for you to provide to your stakeholders and customers, regulators and other interested parties.
Public Document Publisher Course March 20th to 23rd 2023
Often the document production task is run by an individual or a very small team. Therefore, this public online course will offer a cost effective way of providing training. You’ll benefit from all the normal learning, but will have the chance to network and share with other virtual attendees from other industries. However, if you have a larger team courses can be tailored and held at your premises / virtually depending on restrictions and requirements at a date and time to suit see here. This will be conducted over four ½ days.
PC/Laptop – internet browser & Cradle installed **
Soft copy course materials, and printed certificate
If you would like to be kept in touch with the details for this Training Course – Document Publisher March 2023 please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com.
Requirements Management February 20th to 23rd 2023
The first RM training this year is – Requirements Management February 2023 course.
“A great opportunity for small teams, or a couple of new team members to get started with RM and Cradle”
Online Course
Businesses that are introducing Cradle and full Requirements Management processes into their operations, can book training for all aspects of the roll-out, from the basics through to specialist administration courses – See here. These courses are tailored and held at your premises / virtually depending on restrictions and requirements and are ideal for getting a team up and running.
Public Requirements Management February 20th to 23rd 2023
If, however, you have one or two people new to a project or only have a very small team, this may not be a viable solution. With 3SL’s public online courses, you’ll benefit from all the normal learning, but will have the chance to network and share with other virtual attendees from other industries. This can be a cost effective solution to get you up to speed with Cradle and Requirements Management.
PC/Laptop – internet browser & Cradle installed **
Soft copy course materials, and printed certificate
If you would like to be kept in touch with the details for this Training Course – Requirements Management February 2023 please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com.
