WorkBench is Cradle’s primary systems engineering tool interface that allows users to customise exactly what he needs to view and manipulate in the database in the format he wishes to output it.
You can expand and collapse items shown in a table in Table view or Document view displaying linked items in views. This is similar to expanding nodes in a tree using the current navigation. When an item is expanded (double click the number in the first column) in a table, a dot(.) is displayed in the first column representing the level:
When you have items to review in Cradle you are presented with a list. Your review process is meant to be more than just a tick box exercise. You’ll want to see the item to review. Selecting an item from the list will give a summary of the current review status in the bottom of the dialog. Clicking the ‘View’ button will open the item in a form so its full details can be seen.
Open a Review Item
Approve or Reject
The next stage is to Approve or Reject the item. When the ‘Approve’ or ‘Reject’ buttons are pressed users are given an option to add a review comment. Your project can also be set to enforce comments, see Mandatory Comments in the project Miscellaneous section. If there are a number of reviewers, and possibly a review acceptance meeting, it is possible to change this decision up to the point that the item is Registered. That means there is no problem if you initially reject something, but after clarification need to alter your decision to approve, or visa-versa.
More Detailed Comments
Whilst each Cradle item is ideally fairly atomic, a requirement that says ‘shall do this and this and this’, is much harder to verify or alter, some can be quite complex. A single comment as a reason to reject an item may not be enough, it may also be that you would welcome further debate from the other reviewers. Discussions can be used to add annotations to an item and can build a conversation trail.
At some points in a project’s lifecycle, a large number of items need to be submitted. These may be too numerous to ‘select‘ and ‘Submit‘, Cradle offers ‘Submit by Query‘ option. This allows submission of all the items (subject to access rights) that match a query to be moved to the review stage in the configuration management system.
Submit Items
Check Before Submission
Using the ‘Show Items’ button allows the user to run a report that will detail which items the current settings will submit. In this way users can ensure that the correct items are going to be processed before creating all the approval records and changing the status of the items being submitted to that of ‘Under Review‘. For further information see the article How to Submit Items for Review Based on a Query. Also see further information on Cradle’s Configuration Management System in this article.. Configuration Management features are also available in Web Access.
Sometimes when you have been working away running queries, opening items, you just want to close everything. Start with a blank screen, clear mind, and start again.
So first go and have a cup of tea! Then either, open the Window menu, or use the arrow on the frame border menu. From there you have a couple of options, one to ‘Close All Tabs‘ The other to ‘Close Everything‘.
The first will close the tabs within the current pane, the second will return you to a clear WorkBench.
When working in large teams or over a long period an item’s edit history is very useful.
Each item type can have history turned on in the Project Schema via the Project Setup dialog. Users can choose what stage to enable history, Never, Always, Changing draft items that have a baselined instance, Named category matches specified value.
Right clicking on the item and selecting the History -> View Item History. The resulting dialog shows who changed the item on what date and what time. It also displays a comment (This can be made mandatory) entered at the time of editing. If an entry is selected in this list, full details are shown in the lower half of the dialog. If there are a large number of changes, the filter at the top of the dialog can aid finding a relevant change.
Item’s Edit History
Item History in a Web Browser
Web Access allows you to see an item’s history too. This functionality is in our shipped web UIs. It can be added to your own custom UIs, see the ‘history’ template information.
If you need to provide information about your Cradle Database Server CDS status to 3SL support you can generate a report from within WorkBench.
If asked to provide information about your current client or server installation, this can be obtained through the ‘About’ button. The resulting screen gives a lot of information about the running system. Additional information for the current ‘Resources’ being consumed by the client or ‘CDS status’ are produced with the buttons at the bottom of the dialog.
CDS status report
Cradle the Requirements Management and Systems Engineering tool of choice provides full support* to all our Enterprise customers under their maintenance agreement.
Produce documents from your Cradle data, launched straight from WorkBench.
Document Publisher is an automated document output tool that interacts with Microsoft® Word. It is used to produce professional high-quality reports from the information held in a Cradle project database (PDB).
Document Publisher works by combining a user-defined template with information held in your project to generate dynamic content including, hierarchical headings, paragraphs of body text, tables, diagrams, figures and embedded data.
Full control is provided for paragraph styles, section numbering and captions.
Powerful data filters and parametrics can be defined to supplement database querying. Conditions under which particular attributes are to appear in the output can also be specified.
Document Publisher can be launched directly from start menu, or from within Cradle WorkBench.
The CradleWorkBench UI screen is divided into panes, tabs. Tabs can hold a variety of data, items in forms, queries as views, diagrams and so on. When you subsequently create more data (say opening an item from the project sidebar) WorkBench will heuristically attempt to find the most appropriate pane to place the item in. For example if there is a query in one pane and an item in another, opening another item should place it with the other item.
Panes
The main sub division of the screen is a pane. Each pane is a region that can contain one or more tabs.
Tabs
Each pane is a region that can contain one or more tabs. A tab is a container with a selectable name and a rectangular area that contains the results of running a query, report, metric or graph, or a single item that is being edited.
Tabs behind Tabs?
If you’ve run a couple of queries and opened a couple of items they will each be in a separate tab. Arranging the screenpanes and tabs is the answer. If you want to see those tabs side by side you can split the screen horizontally or vertically to arrange the screen panes. You can then drag and drop the tabs into these new panes.
Split Pane Top / Bottom
There are other UI (User Interface ) commands that allow you to Maximize and Restore the tab from the same menu.
Sessions
Sessions option in Login dialog
You can design your Cradle UI with a set of panes grouped in nested rows and columns in your preferred layout. This layout is called asession. Using sessions is the easiest way to maximise your productivity with Cradle.
Article Updated 17-23/07/2018 – Working with panes, Working With Tabs, Using Sessions
Yes you can customise the front end UI shown to users. The simplest way to customise most used commands, is add them to a Start Page. The example below places a company logo, and the three most used queries on the start page. These are considered the most used actions by the company and therefore, they want them easily accessible when the tool starts. The links are customised to run the specific queries needed most.
Additionally an “Admin” section has been added to get at the User Preferences and Project Schema Setup. This could normally be shown collapsed or ‘rolled up’ as this is less frequently used.
Customised Start Page
This is the most basic of examples, set so everyone in the project sees the same page when they start up. However, in large teams, start pages can be customised to the Cradle user, personal, team or user type. The selection of page is set in the User Preferences.
Project Phases
In an enterprise environment the company process may be more tightly defined. Customisation of the flow through the project lifecycle would be better represented as groups of actions in the Phase sidebar.
Cradle 7.4 Start Page Enhancement
It is now possible to copy panels and entries and to refresh your list of queries.
When you insert an entry into a start page, the newly created entry is created beneath the selected one, rather than at the bottom of the list. You also have the option to copy start page panels and start page entries.
When creating start pages, it is possible to add queries. If you found there was a query missing that you needed, and you or a colleague created it, it is not automatically added to the cached list in the start page setup. Clicking the Refresh icon will now relist all the available queries.
If you need to create a text ‘link’ or ‘URL’ to enable directly starting Cradle WorkBench or WebAccess and opening a particular item you can. The link shared, say by being pasted into an email or a Microsoft® Word document.
Creating the Uniform Resource Locator
This can be done from the item itself within WorkBench. Use the ‘Cradle URL’ button on the Tools menu on the ribbon, or on the command line with the c_url utility.
Cradle URL
You have an option to create a URL to open in WorkBench or Web Access. You can optionally include the username that you want to use to connect.
A URI scheme defines the structure of your Uniform Resource Locator.
This gives a few more options on how the link will behave. For an item you can specify the ‘Form’ for a Query you can specify the ‘View’
Open your URL
Copying and pasting the created link into a browser, will launch the appropriate application. If opening a WorkBench URL you may need to ‘Allow’ your browser to open it. If given the option you may need to select the file ? rather than the search ? option. Then enter your login details.
Et Voilà!
Cradle WorkBench or WebAccess will be displaying your query or item.
