Being able to start a promotion from my workspace and everywhere else in Windchill

[MorganBelais]

If I want to trust my data that are released, I need to get an approbation before reaching the "release" state.

Today this is very painful because as a CAD designer when my job is finished I have everything that I want to promote in my workspace, but I cannot start a promotion from here, meaning that I have to do search or browse multiple folders.

Reference idea - CAD - Combine Checkin and Promote

Adding to a Promotion Request from the Workspace would be problematic as you might revise or change your work and then be forced to re-start the Promotion Request.  We do plan on looking at supporting Promotion Request as part of the check-in process.

We are also looking the concept of defining the change task on new, modified or revised data from a WS so that it gets added to the Change Task upon check in for the user.

[GregoryPERASSO]

And some other actions !

-like copy/paste  ... (in order to easily paste my modified CAD/Parts

in the resulting datas of a Change Order )

-create a baseline ... (only possible during a checkin checkin ...)

[JeffZemsky]

Gregory -

• Promotion - we support Copy/Paste and Search to add in the Promote table to make it easier to get your parts (as well as collect which was always supported)
• Change already supports Copy/Pase on a Change Activity
• In 10.1 we further enhanced the tables in Changes and Promotion Requests to allow you to quickly add items to the tables - there is a new Quick entry feature at the bottom that does a search based upon part of a name or number and you can quickly pick it and add it.
• The Promotion request does capture a baseline in the background

Morgan,

• In Windchill - you can create a Promotion request from Folders, Search, Info pages, structure pages (Part and CAD) - probably a few others that I missed

From workspace - you are thinking like the Intralink 3.x Promote on checkin behavior?

http://communities.ptc.com/ideas/2100

[MorganBelais]

Jeff,

Basically CAD users are working from the workspace, meaning that when the job is done, all the required objects to be promoted are located in the workspace.

Being able to start the promotion request with this objects and collecting the missing one will be a huge earn of time.

Today even if you have everything you need in the workspace it is not straight forward to start the promotion on these objects

[GregoryPERASSO]

Jeff,

I mean copy/paste FROM the workpsace TO the ChangeActivity.  The copy function is missing in the workspace. (can be usable also to paste in PromotionRequest to cover Morgan's need)

In most of case, Design Engineers will recieve tasks from the Change management process. All the resulting objects were not necessary allready collected and revised in the CActivity. They revise them in the workspace during the design change in creo (depending of paratmetric dependencies, mechanical integration or so on ...).

It will be nice if the user can easily work with 2 windows. One Creo window with the workspace (and modified / checkouted objects), and a web browser with the ChangeActivity. And be able to copy paste from one to the other the modified objects without searching them  ...

For the baseline, same need. I know that a promotion request has an embeded baseline. but a promotion mean a Maturity change.  If the CAD user want to create just a baseline of the "intermediate" Design state (without checkin in an astored, or without promoting) to be able to save different design alternatives and then compare  ... He has to manually create and populate the baseline by search (and the workspace is also a "baseline", it should be easy to copy or populate one.)

regards

Gregory

[awolfert]

Hi Jeffrey,

The promote from workspace would save a lot of work in collecting the objects. I noticed the possibility to copy an object from the workspace but this seems to be limited to one object at a time.

Many of our customers are indeed referring to Pro/INTRALINK 3.x functionality where it was possible to do the checkin and promote at the same time and based on the same objects. Doing this in two seperate steps would be fine, but again, selecting in the workspace and start the promotion request from there would definitely save a lot of time.

Regards,

Arjan.

[STEVEG]

Another feature that was removed when we "upgraded" from Intralink to PDMLink.

[LewisLawrence]

Unless there are controls around this action I am not convinced this is a good idea, need to avoid open promotion requests against objects that will not check-in (or upload in 10.1).

[JenniferPierron]

CAD Data Management: Starting a New Promotion Request During Checkin

Product:PTC Windchill PDMLink

Release: 11.0 F000

Benefit: checkbox for starting a new promotion request is available in the Check In window.

Additional Details

When enabled and upon successful checkin of the selected objects, the New Promotion Request window opens to help you complete a promotion request action as part of the checkin process. If the checkin succeeds, a new promotion request is created with all objects that were checked in treated as "initially selected" objects for the request.

[ChrisPLM]

HI JenniferPierron

great news thank you.

I trust there will still be a collector to add or remove objects before submitting the request.

Best regards

Christophe

[JenniferPierron]

Hi Chris.

Yes.  The new control launches the existing New Promotion Request UI which has collection and tools to add unrelated objects (copy/paste, Add using common picker, Quick Add by Number or Name). 

Thanks

Jennifer

[MtnDog]

Can you all help with a little advice or guidance.  When do you all use Promotion Request vs. Change Notice?  Do you exclusively use PR upon initial release, and Change Notice for revising items?  If so then what do you use to assign a new work packages?  The simplicity of a PR is nice, but then there isn't the ability to assign the work.  Can you clearly define when to use each, or does your company only use one or the other or is it left up to personal discretion?

Thanks in advance,

Billy

[STEVEG]

We use CR's/CN's for normal or official change tasks.

The only time we use promotion requests is when there is no real change to the object.  And by that I mean a documentable (if that is a word) change.

We occasionally run into an old model that was done slightly different than we do today.  Or even the way features work might change slightly over the versions of ProE/Creo.  One example is say we have a datum curve on a layer of a part where the layer is supposed to be off but now when we work with it for what ever reason the layer is on.  We would have the user fix the model.  Then when creating a promotion request to promote it back to a released state they would also add a note in the Comments box why it was checked in without a CN.

Another example is if we have some files that had never been released.  Maybe the engineer was tinkering with something and they didn't want to delete it for possible future use.  We use the Canceled state (PR's) for non-released drawings and the Obsolete state (CN's) for released drawings so we use a PR to set the state to Canceled.  Remember that you can set different rights for different users at different state.  We need to make sure users see or not see the correct files.

A third example is when we update our drawing formats.  We don't use CN's to release them.  Instead we use PR's.  We add in a note on what changed to them also.

There are a few other reasons too but you should get the idea.

Could I, being the admin, just use the Set State to get them to the state we want?  Absolutely.  But the PR allows us to add notes describing what we are doing.  Can't do that with setting the state manually.

[TomU]

@JeffZemsky and @JenniferPierron,

Has this behavior changed with 11.1?  If not, then I think this idea status is wrong.  To the best of my knowledge it is not possible to create a new promotion request from a workspace.  (Notice I did not say during check in.)  Has this changed in 11.1?

[JeffZemsky]

@TomU as was noted in the edits to the idea itself, creating a Promotion request from data in a Workspace can present several issues.  First is the data must be checked into to add the Promotion request - you cannot use new, non-checked in data.  Next, even if it is checked in, assuming there will be further work that will iterate the CAD Doc or Part you can create issues as the Promotion Request is iteration specific.  This would get you into a situation where either your data is out of data or you will end up with multiple copies in the Promotion Request or you will forget.

Being able to create or add during check-in mitigates (not completely removes) these challenges.

[TomU]

@JeffZemsky,

Thanks for the reply.  Let me go line by line from your response and try to clarify a few things.

First is the data must be checked into to add the Promotion request - you cannot use new, non-checked in data.

Yes, this makes total sense.  Is there some reason these couldn't simply be excluded from the promotion request (or the action not allowed for new objects)?  This happens all the time already for other workspace actions.

Next, even if it is checked in, assuming there will be further work that will iterate the CAD Doc or Part you can create issues as the Promotion Request is iteration specific.  This would get you into a situation where either your data is out of data or you will end up with multiple copies in the Promotion Request or you will forget.

I don't understand this statement at all.  Once an object is added to a promotion request it is automatically put in an "under review" state.  In this state it cannot be checked out or further iterated unless the promotion request goes into a rework loop.  In that situation the promotion request will automatically update to the newest version after the rework is complete. (11.0 M030 OOTB)  Whether or not the promotion request was started from the workspace or from commonspace should have no bearing on this.

In CS223184 - Why is it possible to create a promotion request from checked out objects it states "we want to be able to consider an automatic check in of objects that are owned by the author of a promotion request. For example, launch a promotion request from checked out objects in the Workspace."  This is exactly what we are asking for, and in this case it seems like it's even designed to handle the situation where something is checked out when starting the promotion request.  Unfortunately this behavior apparently only applies to WT Parts, it does not include CAD documents.  (We do not use WT Parts.)

My designers live and breath Creo.  As much as possible they operate from the Creo embedded browser workspace.  Everything they are interacting with is in their workspace, but may be in dozens of different locations in commonspace.  We are starting to use promotion requests instead of manual 'set state' but it is very difficult to collect all of the unrelated objects on a single promotion request.  Why are we forced to hunt them all down in commonspace when they are right there in the workspace?  It makes no sense.

Again, the tile of this idea is "being able to start a promotion request from my workspace" and from what I can tell this is not possible for CAD documents.  I don't think it's accurate to call this current functionality until that capability exists.