Printing Change Management Documents

[GregOlson]

Add the ability (without Cognos) for a user to print Change Documents.  We have a need to print these documents and it blows my mind that I will need to have a custom code written to PRINT.  We will not use Cognos until a later version is supported that also supports SQL 2008 R2.  Why is it that the simplest of things (printing) becomes a complete nightmare and cost companies SO much money.  I have a meeting tomorrow to present the numbers for a custom printing solution....I can't wait to see the look on the executives faces when I tell them this is needed to print.

Note: adding another server and SQL license to run Cognos is not desired by IT here.

[MikeLockwood]

Completely agree.  The fundamental use case we have is that we need to have a printed representation fo a change for auditors, to allow us to refuse to let them see / access the electronic system.

We created (at great cost) custom .jsp's for these reports.  Still in use now but hoping to convert to Cognos.

But - You can't use Cognos very well as supplied; need to buy the report editor and learn quite a lot to use.

note: We went a bit further with our custom .jsp's.  For example, the approvals are shown with only a few columns: User Full Name, Role, Approval Date.  If you just pull in the whole Routing/Process table, it has a lot of stuff you don't want on an auditible printout.

[GregOlson]

Mike, please vote this idea up!

[GregOlson]

Just adding a comment to get this visible to the community again....for voting.

[GregOlson]

16 month and this is still open for voting....come on PTC.  Exactly why I created this:  http://communities.ptc.com/ideas/4541#comment-14294

[mdebower]

Greg,

I get an unexpected error when I click on your link above.

-marc

[doehr]

Oh yes. Problem Reports, Change Requests, Change Notices, Change Tasks, Variances, Promotion Requests...the list goes on. I just started digging into Cognos for this and it is sooooo painfully picky. As I type this Voting is disabled above but I hope this idea didn't die, we need it!

[STEVEG]

It's marked as Under Consideration so it doesn't sound like it died.

[doehr]

Sweet, Voting turned back on for me! So just voted it up.

[JeffZemsky]

I changed it to Under Consideration.  It was for Future Consideration which blocks voting annoyingly

[cleber]

I would propose a kind of Report of Chang Notice where all change notice and change implementation can be converted to a PDF, (which can be stored then at the CN as well. Would ease the collaboration with non PDMLink users and integration to other systems.

Currently there is still the need to manage a separate document, even most information is already available in Change Notice.

[JeffZemsky]

Christoph - this is already supported.  The Cognos change notice reports - for example - the change notice summary which gives information on the change notice and resulting data summary (changed attributes, related information, BOM, dispositions, etc.) can be generated as a PDF via the workflow process and attached back to the change notice.  There is a workflow helper that is supported for this:

ReportHandlerFactory.getInstance().handleReport( contextObject, reportName, ContentRoleType.SECONDARY, filename);

[STEVEG]

Only for those that have the Cognos module?

[JeffZemsky]

Steve - yes this is supported only for Cognos box which are provided for all the OOTB reports (this is part of everyone's OOTB license) and any custom Cognos reports (created with the Report Studio add-on)

[cleber]

Ok, currently we don't use Cognos, so make sense to have a deeper look there. And Cognos really is included in OOTB License?

As we start with PDMLink some years ago  I think that was not the case.

[JeffZemsky]

Yes - since 8.0 (I was a customer in those days) the core Cognos reporting is bundled with PDMLink Heavy or Light.  You have access to the OOTB provided reports with some light tailoring capability (eg put in your company name). 

[nsamardzija]

Thank you for the idea. This idea is being considered by Product Management for a future release of Windchill. 

[BjoernRueegg]

@nsamardzija and @JeffZemsky isn't that already implemented with the switch to jasper reports?

[JeffZemsky]

@BjoernRueegg JasperReports delivers the Change Summary reports for PR, Variance (Deviation/Waiver), CR, CN and Design Review.  Jasper Reports starting with 12.0.0 is part of the stack and works without additional configuration (yay).  Given the idea we can close this out as Existing Functionality.  I had it stuck in my head that this idea incorporated additionally printing related content to the change.

@nsamardzija - -would you please close out this idea.