Improvement to Native Task Form Templates

BenPerry · ‎Sep 12, 2016

As we continue to expand the usage of the awesome "Native Task Form Template" function in Windchill, I have come across some additional tables that I would like to see eligible. This product idea might serve as a "collector" if the community has other ideas to add to NTFT.

For now, I am just looking to include the "Affected Objects" and "Resulting Objects" tables on the Change Notice PBO. This is useful when the preference for an embedded change task is set to YES. That way the user can edit this directly from the workflow page. I understand we can access the objects from the Change Summary table. But we cannot edit those tables without navigating to the Implementation Plan in today's environment.

BenPerry · ‎Sep 12, 2016

Jeffrey Zemsky‌, any future planned improvement to native TFT that you can disclose?

JeffZemsky · ‎Sep 14, 2016

Ben,

In Windchill 11.0 we added support for the Tasks for Change process table on the Change objects.

The idea above would be better to address as a business need rather then a solution. NTFT would just expose capabilities that are enabled in the change solution. If I understand - you are saying that when you use the embedded Change Task preference you want the user to work on the Affected/Resulting in their workflow process. However you can already drive that with what exists today. Ideally in the future we would further simplify the edit clients so that editing the CN in this case would directly expose the Affected/Resulting from the CT in the Edit Wizard. With NTFT and workflow you can give the user the task to do this and it will be against the CT and they won't have to worry about navigation or concern about which object they are on.

BenPerry · ‎Sep 16, 2016

Jeff,

I remember TFCP table is included in NTFT in 11.0. Thanks for adding. But here is my situation...

All of our workflow tasks are generated from a monolithic workflow against the CN pbo. There are no workflow tasks in the CT. That is why I was hoping the user can see the Affected and Resulting tables rather than something like the Change Summary table.

Right now I have the Implementation Plan table on the CN NTFT. The user must click on the Edit button, then on the Next button to get to the area where they edit it. But if Affected/Resulting are exposed in NTFT instead, they could just click on the Edit button on the respective table. It is only saving 1 click. But for the end user it is a little easier conceptually.

In addition, having separate Affected/Resulting tables is a benefit over the Change Summary table because it means 2 different table views ... which is a good thing. There are columns of data that we want to see on the Affected table, but they don't apply for the Resulting table ... and vice versa. If I only have the Change Summary table to work with, then I need all of the columns in that table.

Finally, if we're performing mass changes, that button is there on the same webpage as workflow task too, if the Resulting table is exposed. So the user doesn't need to navigate to the CT to perform the mass change (from their Change Notice workflow task).

In summary, it just all comes back to the fact that we're using monolithic CN workflow instead of separate CR/CN/CT workflows. The only objects in the CT workflow are sync & set state robots.

JeffZemsky · ‎Sep 16, 2016

Ben,

The solution is then available to you. It will require some re-configuring of your workflow processes to have both CN and CT workflows, but this would deliver the solution you seek.

As for your ideas above - they are good, but again - I would redo the idea as a business process need rather then a solution description as the solution is likely very different.

BenPerry · ‎Sep 19, 2016

Jeff,

Do you have good ideas on how to pass workflow variables back & forth from the CN workflow to the CT workflow ... without going through the hassle of persisting them to hidden attributes on the types and reading from there?

JeffZemsky · ‎Sep 19, 2016

Several - depends upon your use case. Shoot me an email so we can dig into the details.

spitchan · ‎May 10, 2018

Thanks for the good information on the TFT. I have added a new tab and I would like to add a new action/custom action under that tab for a task of WTObject type. How can I achieve that? any idea please

aacciano3 · ‎Sep 08, 2020

@BenPerry

How did you end up doing this to Show Affected and Resulting Objects in a CN pbo?

olivierlp · ‎Jan 05, 2022

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