Users can be disconnected and their licences released by another user from Project Manager without the need of restarting the CDS.
This could be useful in the following circumstances:
A user has left a login dialog open locking a RW connection
A user has locked a licence and cannot manually release it
You have locked a project for maintenance and need to remove users while the maintenance is carried out
Disconnect Users and freeup their Licences.
Solution
Disconnect your users through Cradle’s Project Manager. To disconnect a user select User Management… from the System pulldown menu which produces a User Management dialog, from here you can see details of all connections to the CDS, select a user and then choose Log Off. This will kill the connection and free up any licences they had in use.
When running a basic item query all items of that type that the user is allowed to see are returned. As a project grows this number may become quite large, it therefore becomes necessary to add additional filtering criteria, such as the date. Querying on dates allows you to filter by the modification or creation date of an item.
Querying on Dates
Relative and Absolute Dates
You may have a good enough memory to remember it is the item you created on the 24th that you want to return. Choosing ‘Specify:‘ from the drop-down will enable a date picker. However, it is much more likely that you’ll want a range of dates, as you want to run a query each Thursday to find the new ‘issues’ raised in the last week. Relative dates allow you to do this, choosing ‘Start of last week’ and ‘Today‘ would give the data required. The benefit of the relative date specification is that the query can be saved. It can then be run next week to give a new set of values.
Specific Dates
An item’s creation or modification date may not be something that you can directly control. It certainly can not be set in the future. If a data entry clerk enters all emails as items on a Friday they’ll all have the same creation date. Equally updates will change the modification date making an old item appear more recent. Categories can be set to hold abstract data of type Date, this would allow a value such as “Review Date” to be set, and then queried upon. This data is based on a user input value and not the automatic dates recorded by Cradle.
Availability
This filtering functionality is available wherever queries can be run. This includes WorkBench, Web Access, C_IO command line tool and the Cradle API.
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.
Requirements Management Isn’t Just For The Big Players.
Your boss says “Don’t be ridiculous you don’t need, requirements management for windows and doors!”…
Your client has asked that the new Town-Lodge is fitted with UPVC doors, windows and fascias throughout. All fire regulations for a medium occupancy building must be adhered to. Locks must have master key and single key access. Glass must meet the company’s privacy specification. And so on….. Whether you are building a spacecraft with millions of parts with hundreds of engineers, or you’re a firm of three fitters running a building service, you have requirements to manage. The HID (Hierarchy Diagram below) shows that a large number of interdependencies, even for the supply of simple items, quickly builds. Consequently the complexity of managing those requirements becomes more of a task. The requirements for windows and doors to a 20 room Town-Lodge involves glass specifications and safety constraints. These may differ depending on the location and size of the window/door. Planning, using a tool can simplify the traceability of any job.
Even Windows and Doors Can Benefit from Requirements Management
Managing Change
The quotation has been accepted by the Town-Lodge. However, you were careful enough to note that the price was ‘subject to regulatory change’. When Ref 125-ere-2008 comes up for review and an amendment is raised, it is easy to trace what this impacts. Running a query on the Safety Regulations and showing the linked items, furthermore, it can be seen these refer to the Emergency Access Windows. The trace shows these are linked to Customer RequirementCR6 and CR8. Finally it is a simple case of writing the email to the Town-Lodge and explaining regulatory change requires thicker glass and this will change the price for these two windows. Then await their approval. Therefore, in answer to your boss, “I can see the future for a tool to give us requirements management for windows and doors – can we buy a copy of Cradle ?”
Finding the Impact of a Change
Validation and Acceptance
The Lodge has agreed that they will pay when the work has been completed satisfactorily. Prior to starting work you have agreed a set of acceptance criteria. There could be endless tweaks or subjective “I don’t think that’s finished” conversations unless clear acceptance criteria and associated validation techniques have been agreed. Imagine you have a noise reduction requirement, “The noise reduction between the window open and window closed shall be 6dB”. Record the pre-agreed acceptance method as a Cradle item, and link this to each of the requirements with noise acceptance criteria. (This requirement in turn is linked to the rooms that it affects)
Noise Reduction Measurement. A white noise generator shall be sited at 1m from the window. The position will be adjusted until a measurement of 80db or more is detected inside the room with the window open at a distance of 1m inside the room. A second reading shall be taken with the window shut and this shall be subtracted from the first reading.
Running a query against the noise test will find all the rooms that this applies to. Now you can make your measurements and record your findings. You now have full traceability for each aspect of the product being delivered to The Lodge. “Dear Boss, Submit the invoice, Cradle aided demonstration to The Lodge site manager that all our acceptance criteria had been met. I think we’ve proved a use for requirements management for windows and doors.”
Wishing all our customers, suppliers and followers a Happy Saint George’s Day 2017 from 3SL.
UML Activity Diagram
In a UML model, the static representation of the system is a set of Class Diagrams (CD). Each class may have an associated Activity Diagram (ACD) to show the internal behaviour and/or algorithm for the class.
ACDs can also be drawn at any level in the UML model, to represent time sequenced behaviour at any level. The activities in the ACDs are intrinsically shareable, such that any given activity can appear on more than one ACD.
St. George as a UML Activity Diagram (ACD)
OK, we accept there may be a bit of poetic licence going on in this diagram, but it still shows how activity within a class can be represented. If you ever want a reminder of the legend of St. George it may be handy. For more information see the Cradle help section for ACD
There are a number of ways you can get involved with National Tea Day www.nationalteaday.co.uk/ least of all you can ensure you get a good brew on for elevenses. Maybe nip out at lunch time and get a packet of scones and share afternoon tea with your work colleagues. Ask for donations in a Tea Cup and pick a local charity!
There’s an awful lot of Tea drunk by engineers at 3SL towers…….
3SL – Tea
Now the tricky bit, how on earth do we make this blog entry have something to do with Cradle? Ah! Multivalue Picklist Categories is how. If you have a set of premises that you manage, these can be set as items within Cradle. Each café could have a number of supplies that the café offers, and these could be recorded in a multiple value category.
If there was a shortage of Oolong, it would be simple to run a query to list each of the premises that need to be contacted. For further reading on categories, you could read ‘Multiple Value Categories’
Multi Value Categories Representing Product Supplies
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.
The UKCoffeeWeek website supports Project Waterfall which aims to bring clean water to coffee growing communities. Much of the coffee consumed round the world originates from some of the poorest communities. By drinking your coffee during UK Coffee week at one of the participating coffee shops you’ll be putting something back into the communities that helped create your drink.
Do Your Engineers Run on Tea of Coffee?
3SL, producers of the Cradle engineering tool, is based in the UK, traditionally a tea loving nation. However, there has been a marked shift to coffee drinking in all variants. Here at 3SL towers, we have a mix of Tea and Coffee drinkers. Both sides are adamant that their drink is the best….. Take a minute to answer our snap Twitter poll.
You can reach 3SL in a number of ways on social media. We want it to be as easy as possible to contact 3SL on social media, so we have a number of ways you can follow and stay up to date with what’s going on. These social media sites compliment the direct contact available through website blog and webinars, email and phone for direct communication.
LinkedIn
Our company page on Linked in is 3SL. To follow Requirements Mangement and Systems Engineering discussions along with more in depth 3SL or Cradle articles Join the “Cradle -RM/SE Tool from 3SL“ group.
www.linkedin.com/company/3sl
Twitter
Follow @threesl on Twitter for hints tips and daily news.
www.twitter.com/@threesl
Facebook
If you want to keep up to date via Facebook, we’re 3slcradle.
www.facebook.com/3slcradle/
YouTube
You can view our 3SL Cradle instructional videos on our YouTube Channel.
3SL Cradle YouTube
Google+
If you follow engineering topics in one of the Google+ communities, you can reach us via +3SLCradle.
plus.google.com/+3SLCradle
HashTags
Want to chat or mention us? Please use #3SL for the company and #Cradle for product references. Mentioning #MBSE, #Requirements, #SysML #SystemsEngineering will also help like-minded engineers find your articles. Search for more terms at hashtagify.me
