Everyone likes tools to run quickly. Below is a list of notes, actions and checks to ensure that your Cradle system will run as quickly as possible:
1. Check the time between clients and the server. In the ‘Help’ tab, select ‘About WorkBench’ and ‘Resources’. Look for the ‘average roundtrip time’ line. If the CDS is in your local network, it should be <2 msec. If you connect over a VPN, it should be <25 msec. If longer, you may have a problem.
Preferences Dialog
2. Consider turning off user preference ‘Refresh items when modifying links’. In the ‘Home’ tab, click ‘Preferences’, then ‘UI Control’
3. Consider turning off ‘indicate linked items in trees’ in the same group of preferences
4. Consider enabling caching of top-level items in Project sidebar, reduces time to find top-level items, in UI Control -> Sidebar preferences
Sidebar preferences
5. Note that when links are created, modified or deleted, the change histories are updated for items at both ends of the link
6. Changes to links to/from items could raise alerts to be sent as and possibly sent to large numbers of users
7. Run the cross reference and item integrity checks in the ‘Project’ tab to find and fix any problems. Issues can arise from unvalidated imports of data or links.
8. Ensure that message compression and server-side processing are both active. Look in ‘CDS Settings’ in the preferences for any user. Checkboxes may be greyed out (can only be set on the server), but its set/not set value is accurate.
9. Large numbers of unread alerts will slow Cradle down at login and logout. Check options in the ‘Alerts’ section of the schema, from ‘Project Setup’ in the ‘Project’ tab. Use ‘Delete alerts’ in this tab to remove current user’s alerts.
Delete alerts
10. Read the performance section in the System Administration manual
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.
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.
Report parts of the project schema
New Cradle 7.3.1 Reports Feature
We’ve made coloursets report more clearly in the Schema Report.
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.
We are pleased to announce the release of Cradle-7.2:
Cradle-7.2 contains a range of new capabilities that are described in its Release Notes.
Customers with active maintenance have been sent an e-mail notification of this release, and details of which enhancement requests and bug reports are in it.
Some of the highlights are:
Full support for IPv6 networking
Availability of 64-bit Cradle for Linux, use of the latest Windows .NET and improved support of Office 2016
Locking projects and disconnecting users through Project Manager
Improvements in custom web UI components, and the as-supplied Basic web UI
Dashboards as dials in WorkBench and in web UIs
More flexibility with Change Tasks in the CM system
Extended quality checks in the Conformance Checker and for SysML in the Consistency Checker
Find and replace
Extensions to queries and views
New functional modelling options with PADs and IDEF0
You need a new Security Code for Cradle-7.2, other Security Codes cannot be used. If you have not received a new code and are under maintenance, please contact support@threesl.com. If you would like to discuss upgrading an out of date system, please contact salesdetails@threesl.com. If you have a single user version you can purchase the latest revision at the 3SL shop.
There is a database conversion from 7.1 to 7.2. The converter which will run automatically if you install Cradle-7.2, over the top of, in the same directory as, the earlier version of Cradle from which you are upgrading.
You must upgrade all of your Cradle installation to 7.2. (clients and server) as mixed versions, e.g. Cradle-7.1 clients / Cradle-7.2 server, and vice-versa are not supported.
I have a Cunning Plan…..
OK it does not have to be cunning, it just has to be clear. Cradle provides a bi-directional integration with Microsoft Project® that allows a Cradle project to be associated with multiple Project schedules and bidirectional updates with Project. By linking activities in each schedule to become a WBS hierarchy in Cradle the loop is closed and the plan and the Cradle requirements and models are all linked.
The main reasons to control things this way is to ensure there is no inconsistency between the management planning and the project engineering. To ensure that each engineering activity is planned for and each element of the plan has some actual work assigned to it, avoiding incompleteness. A plan linked to Cradle communicates the holistic view of progress and items all in one place.
Our Facebook account is connected to our Twitter feed, so if you can’t follow us on Twitter (@threesl), you can still get the hints and tips via your Facebook timeline, see the (3SLCradle) page.
YouTube Learning
Our popular YouTube channel has a number of ‘How to’ style videos to help you with particular aspects of Cradle, requirements management or systems engineering. We know that some of our customers may find a particular aspect complex, and although there is comprehensive online help documentation and articles provided, having a video take you through the steps can make a real difference. Of course 3SL can also offer full training, giving you broad coverage or highly tailored content as you require, contact us to discuss further.
Remembering the old adage “Tell me and I forget, Show me and I remember, Involve me and I understand” seems very appropriate. But what aspects are most appropriate to you our customer?
In this article 3SL’s managing director Mark Walker, asks for your feedback to guide 3SL’s video output.
“But the customer has sent it as an mp4!”
Your boss wants you to record the evidence of the test to provide full traceability
The testing house has sent a video of the compression strength test
You’re ‘stuck’ with all your requirements and tests in Cradle and now you have a video…
Don’t worry it’s not a problem. Although Cradle may not be able to play videos, it can store all sorts of information in its database, or by reference to external files. We provide a large list of files pre-defined, but Cradle can easily cope with new file types.
In this case you would add a binary frame to store video, you may have a directory alongside the Cradle database where these files reside, so an ‘As File’ frame would make sense, or if it is also to be controlled through the Cradle CMS (Configuration Management System) it could be “In PDB” (Project Database). You would choose our favourite app to view them in, then you would assign a frame of this type to your, say, TEST item type. Now you have the traceability you need with the test evidence referenced from the TEST item and links to the SYSTEM_REQUIREMENT through to the original customer Requirement.
In our LinkedIn discussion we describe adding a Document to an item.
Hints of the Month
Here are some links to helpful topics since our last newsletter, they should improve your Cradle experience:
A bright ‘Red’ box in the middle of the table screams Urgent/Highest/Action, when running a query you may wish to Highlight Important Values with Colour as described in this article.
No-one wants to lose their hard crafted work, our tips on Safeguarding Against Unintended Data Loss could ensure that if something does go wrong, you can limit its impact to your project and business.
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.
Whatever you are making, whatever service you are delivering, you need a tool that supports your process from end to end. You can’t expect a successful outcome without control of your project’s lifecycle.
Complete End to End Document Processing
Despite living in an electronic world, where the promise was a paperless office, we are often faced with needing to manage documents at a number of points over the duration of the project. This is not surprising, even if we don’t handle hard copy, a document is an tangible object.
Humans relate to the concept of a complete package of information being contained in the document. They generally make good reading if you start at the beginning and read through to the end. Non-fiction documents may be more likely to be read by accessing the index or contents and turning to a page number. Sometimes in an electronic copy there may be a hyper-link to another part of the document. On the whole, however, the format is fixed. You can’t easily re-arrange a document to see its contents from a different perspective, or organise it hierarchically based on a section of your choosing.
Managed and linked requirements, designs, constraints, tests, diagrams and definitions, need to be arranged, searched and traced, to reach our end goal effectively. The ability to see which customer requirements are ultimately verified by a test, or what system requirements are impacted by a customer change to a requirement are invaluable.
Cradle for Your Document Processing
From a document point of view, the triplet of Document Loader, WorkBench and Document Publisher covers the full lifecycle.
Customers often provide their initial requirements in the form of a MS Word document. Document Loader will parse, tag and link this information as it is drawn into Cradle’s database.
WorkBench is the ideal tool to develop and design, record and trace your project.
When the project is at a stage that needs a formatted output, Document Publisher is used.
This month’s newsletter contains the announcement of the Cradle-7.2 release, notes about 3SL’s scoial media accounts, the link from Cradle to Microsoft Project, and some thoughts on managing complex or unusual data types in Cradle.
We send thousands of e-mails through our newsletter distribution list. If you would like to receive our newsletter automatically, please send your e-mail address to me at: mark.walker@threesl.com and I will add you to the list.
We hope that you will find the newsletter to be interesting and helpful!
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.
Recently several customers who use Office 2016 / 365 / ClickToRun have reported an installation issue with the Cradle Toolsuite for Microsoft Office. Its installer did not detect that Office 2016 / 365 / ClickToRun is installed.
Registry Solution
The problem is due to a recent Windows/Office update (we are not certain which one) which damages the default key in one of both of the registry folders:
The solution to the problem is to fix the Default key value, as shown in the figure using regedit. After fixing this key, our installer will detect that Office 2016 / 365 / ClickToRun is installed, and it will correctly install the Toolsuite.
Please be careful when you edit the registry as damage to the registry can prevent Windows working. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue, which is outside our control
Further Help
Check the registery entries are set correctly as show. If you still have a problem, contact support@threesl.com
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
Recreate Word internal links as Cradle cross references
Twitter feed, so if you can’t follow us on Twitter (
