Cradle Modules – PDM

The Cradle PDM module provides the infrastructure for all other Cradle modules. Its scalability and flexibility create an industrial strength, proven, shared data environment for even the largest projects:

Cradle PDM Module
Cradle PDM Module

Databases

Cradle supports any number of databases, each with its own schema, CM system and users. Each database supports many projects. Use the Project Manager tool to organise this environment by user-defined criteria, for example as hierarchies.

Each database stores any number of items, of any number of types (requirements, risks, classes, user stories, functions) defined by a UI. Items have any number of attributes, each of a user-defined type, that manage up to 1 TByte of any type of data, held in Cradle, or referenced in external files, URLs or another tool or environment.

Calculations

User-defined calculations are supported in all parts of Cradle and can be displayed as graphs, in views and user-defined reports. User-defined rules can be applied to automatically set attribute values or perform calculations, to maintain the integrity within and between items.

Cross References

Items can be cross referenced, with optional user-defined link types and groups. Links have user-defined attributes to justify, parametrise, explain or characterise them. You control which links are used to navigate or report traceability, based on link type or group, direction and link attribute values. Links are both direct and indirect, for full lifecycle traceability, impact and coverage analyses.

Process Tailored Environment

You use start pages and a phase hierarchy to build an environment tailored to your process. End users only need to be trained in your interface, reducing training time and costs:

  • Start pages are text and graphics controls that perform your choice of operations simply and easily
  • The phase hierarchy shows the process as a hierarchy in which an agile or phase activity, task, sprint, report or document is run by a mouse click. Different parts of the phase hierarchy can be shown to each user or stakeholder group.

Traceability and coverage views are available as trees, nested and pivot tables, matrices and Hierarchy Diagrams. Unique transitive links give traceability across the full system lifecycle.

Configuration Management

Items evolve through versions that are managed in baselines and controlled by a built-in CM system, with mechanisms for review, baseline and version control, full change control, and audit trails.

Cradle can track all changes. Edits can be reversed selectively or by group. Items can be compared across edits and in baselines. Edits can raise alerts to users, and mark related items as suspect. All edits are permanently available, for change logs.

Adaptations

Cradle provides adaptations to allow variants of items. This mechanism is ideal for databases that contain a library of standard items and projects that use the library, and contribute to it.

Access Controls

Access controls apply to all items based on user roles, privileges, security clearances and skills. Users can be grouped in a hierarchy of teams, to create any access control scheme, such as for customers, subcontractors and IV&V. The creation and manipulation of links can be controlled, by item or user.

Cradle is multi-user. It locks information at item level, with automatic database commit after an edit. This maximises users’ interaction with the database and guarantees all data s up-to-date.

Alerts

Cradle’s alert mechanism sends messages by email (SMTP or IMAP), Cradle or both. Alerts can be selectively enabled and disabled. Alerts track events on items, including edit, review and formal change.

Discussions

The Cradle discussion mechanism allows even read-only users to add comments to items. Four other commenting mechanisms are provided.

Project Planning

Cradle can manage project plans and WBS. User task lists are maintained. WBS structures and progress data can be exchanged bidirectionally with external PM tools. Cradle can generate burn-down and earned-value graphs on any user-defined criterion to monitor progress.

API

Cradle is open and extensible. It provides multiple import/export formats, an API, a user-definable event-driven command interface, interfaces with other tools and bidirectional interfaces to Microsoft Office.

Query and Report Data

Cradle provides uniquely powerful data query and visualisation facilities. Each user’s environment can be tailored by defining custom queries, views, forms, navigations, matrices, reports and other facilities. All customisations have a scope, to be specific to the end user, or shared with other users of the same type (such as all customers or all managers), the user’s team, the entire project, or all projects.

Any desired compliance, coverage or traceability report can be created quickly/easily using Cradle’s queries, multi-row views/nested table view, and saved for later use.

Licensing

Cradle has floating, dynamic licensing and low cost read-only users. Open and named user licences are available. Everything described here is free of charge.

Licences, databases and schemas are interchangeable across Linux and Windows 8.1, 10, 11, Server 2012 R2, 2016 and 2019.

Optional support for Oracle and MySQL.

Feature Summary

Feature Summary - PDM
Feature Summary – PDM

Please contact 3SL for further information about Cradle PDM licences.

Skills Based Access of Items

When not everything can be shared

Imagine you have a project and teams of people working on it. You can control who sees what by placing staff in different teams (for information watch this video about collaborative teams). You can provide skills based access to individual frames within the item. However, there maybe one type of item which only certain team members can see, maybe a Finance item. The solution is to set a skill for the item type. Ensure those who are allowed to view the item type have the skill.  For those assigned the required skill, all the other access controls still get applied, (CM status, security clearance and ownership).  For those without the skill, the item type disappears from existence, it is as if the project schema had not defined the item.

Project setup setting skills based item access
Skills Based Item Access
  1. Login to WorkBench as a user who can modify the schema
  2. Start Project Setup from the Project tab, set Options to User Settings and select the Skills tab
  3. Select New and define a new skill
  4. Set Options to Item Definitions and select the Item Types tab
  5. Select the item type to be controlled and choose the new skill from the Required skill: drop-down list
  6. Save the schema and close Project Setup
  7. From the Project tab, select User Setup and for each user who is to be able to see the item type, select that user, select Skills, add the new skill to the user’s user profile and save the profile

RO Skill Based Access Feature

New Cradle-7.2

Now imagine the scenario that you want team members to see an item type but you don’t want them to be able to change any aspect of it. The latest version of Cradle allows you to set Read-only access for these item types.

Skill based access levels for items
Skill Based Access Levels for Items
Related Items

To restrict access to categories alone, this article will help.

https://www.threesl.com/blog/skill-based-access-category-users/

Release of Cradle-7.1.2

We are pleased to announce that we released Cradle-7.1.2 last month, with some useful new features and some fixes. We have sent announcement e-mails to all customers with active maintenance, and sent e-mails to the customers whose enhancements that have been added, and whose reported bugs have been fixed.

Some of the new features in this release are:

– Equipments in Physical Architecture Diagrams can be expanded to IDEF0 diagrams, as well as the other diagram types
– Faster processing of baseline operations to retire and reinstate items
– You can specify a date range for the change history entries to be shown in views
– A skill linked to an item type can provide RO access to all items of the type
– The External Command Interface includes new events for schema changes and operations on user profiles

If you upgrade to Cradle-7.1.2 anywhere, you must upgrade everywhere, the server and all clients.

Customers who purchased a single-user Cradle-7.1 product can also apply this new release.

See here https://youtu.be/bgiQQ0N8bV4 for a short summary of Cradle!