Provide Cascading attribute behavior for Documents, Parts and Change Objects

[jreding]

Provide the ability to configure Cascading attributes behavior on Documents, Parts, Change Objects, Non-Conformances, CAPAs and Complaints.

1) Ability to set a list of values available within a "Target" attribute based on the value selected within a "Driver" attribute.

2) Ability to make a "Target" attribute required based on the value selected within a "Driver" attribute.

3) Ability to make a "Target" attribute visible in the UI based on the value selected within a "Driver" attribute.

4) Cascading behaviour shall be enforced any place where objects are created or updated (Create, edit, create multiple, edit mutliple, insert new from structure,  create from importable spreadsheet...)

[PreetiGupta]

This is very helpful feature. We have several use cases for this.

[AL_ANDERSON]

Don't forget about PartsLink, too.  This is a great feature, but it it available for IBAs on business objects through the type and attribute manager, as I hope it will be, then it should be possible to also allow similar behavior for IBAs created and edited through PartsLink functionality on classified WTParts.

[Sudeep_Bhattara]

- What types of cascading behaviors does your company need?

I am a consultant but I have encountered and addressed this requirement for change objects as well and part and doc.

- How would your company benefits from cascading attribute capabilities?

This requirement is a little more complex that it seems. Most of the resulting cascading drop-downs are dynamically generated from DB or XML or  some form of data store. So the functionality has to be robust enough to accommodate that. Static values created using type manager is not going to be sufficient for most.

Companies need this but half baked solution won't be good enough.

- Have you implemented a customization for this?

Yes. Just use Data Utility with some magic or LOP (Lipstick on a Pig)  approach. Nowadays JavaScript are pretty powerful, just manipulate the DOM. For a developer, this is not a tough requirement to implement at one specific client. However it is going to be a little more work for PTC because they have to take into account numerous use cases for all their clients.

- What object types would benefit from cascading attribute capabilities?

Change, Doc, Part, CAD and others.

[skonduri]

My business is asking this feature for almost 3 years. This will benefit the user community.

Yes for this functionlaity

[GregoryPERASSO]

- What types of cascading behaviors does your company need?

all your 4 requirements.    

may be also on link attributes, or Alias attributes  (for example list of values available within a "Target" attribute on BOM usage link, based on the value selected within a "Driver" attribute of the parent or child WTPart)

May be also some logic (AND OR NOT IF ELSE ...) to allow more than one Driver attribute

- How would your company benefits from cascading attribute capabilities?

We manage diffrent Brands in a single Windchill instance.   ability to simplify UI for End Users

Ability also to simplify Worklfows or Business Rules by helping the user to correctly fill attributes directly, instead of let him setting values and post process the controls

ability to implement some "business knowledge" for helping user in choice:  example:

Choice of a "material" as driver attribute,  target attribute can be "surface coating" to allow only authorized coating for this material

Can be great if "Driving Rules" can be business object , to be able to review and release them like for Option Rules in "option and variant - platform design" Winchill module

- Have you implemented a customization for this?

Yes .   for having a list of values on Part usage link, based on Parent and Child attributes

- What object types would benefit from cascading attribute capabilities?

Change, Doc, Part, CAD and others.     Model based attributes, IBA and Classification.  All kind of list (Enumerated list , legal value list , RBinfos ....)

All MPMLink objects ...

globally any kind of Persistable or Soft typable business objects

[jreding]

As a part of the PTC/USER Technical Committees (TC's), we have started a process of championing Product Ideas to build out use cases to be provided to PTC Product Management for future development. We have PTC's full support of this process and will have a PTC Product Management liaison for each Product Idea we build out.

I am championing the 'Provide Cascading attribute behavior for Documents, Parts and Change Objects' Product Idea (#5861). Please add a comment that includes your business use cases for your company. Describe the following:

- What types of cascading behaviors does your company need?

- How would your company benefits from cascading attribute capabilities?

- Have you implemented a customization for this?

- What object types would benefit from cascading attribute capabilities?

Contributing to this Product Idea will help make it become a feature within Windchill. Better yet, the feature will meet your specific requirements as this is your opportunity to voice your companies specific business needs in this area.

Thanks,

Jen Reding, Senior Architect IS at Boston Scientific, Inc.

[MuraliRegulaged]

We have customized Park edit page for commodity values cascade from a group to a finite commodity list and inter atttirbute dependencies such as Item source to its Mastrer and plant templates that drive ERP attribute default values upon publish. I can think of many use cases where the cascading attributes can be driven from text file source or DB table data source or static list. If this is impleted, please do not limit this to certain type of objects but extend the same to all objects that need CRUD acxtions.

[janis_king]

Describe the following:

1. What types of cascading behaviors does your company need?  The ability that allows for only certain combinations of attributes, based upon selecting. A lot like a drive down
2. How would your company benefits from cascading attribute capabilities? Attribute intergrity along with data mining reporting
3. Have you implemented a customization for this? - Yes currently we have to do validations to ensure that the proper attributes are tied together based upon business rules, where if we had cascading, the user would not have been able to have incorrect combincations. It would also eliminate confusion for the users.
4. What object types would benefit from cascading attribute capabilities? WTpart, WTDocs, Change Objects (probably CAD but not my focus area).

[jreding]

To all who have voted up on this product idea, I am hosting a webcast on Monday, September 14th at 10AM EDT on this topic.

The PTC/USER Technical Committee’s have introduced a process to work with the larger PTC Community to build out use cases and business cases for Product Ideas posted within the PTC Community.  This will be the first meeting to introduce this process and start discussing use cases for this Product Idea.  PTC product managers will be in attendance.

I have invited members of the PTC/USER Windchill Solutions Technical Committee.  However, I would like to include anyone that is in favor of this Product Idea.  Unfortunately, most people's email addresses are marked private within the community.  If you would like to be included in the meeting, please send me your email address at Jennifer.reding@bsci.com and I will invite you to the meeting.

Thanks,

Jen Reding

Senior Architect

@Boston Scientific

[RajuPulavarthi]

This will be really useful feature for Parts,Documents (Setup Product Segment|Family|Line, functional classification) and Change Objects(Questionnaire based assessments that determine follow-up tasks - Currently these are done as manual file attachments)

I have done JavaScript based client customization in the past however I prefer the solution coming from PTC to avoid maintenance during upgrades and UI architecture changes

[ZainRoomi]

This will vastly improve searching capability. Difficulty in finding parts and documents has been a common theme here. This will also help us
organize our large drop down values against set of derived attributes. LONG OVER DUE!!!

[RoshanMendes]

Always missed this great functionality! A big YES to this new IDEA!!

[ceixenberger]

We have multiple implementations of this sort of functionality across typed objects.  We need to make sure that we support multiple driver attributes for a given target attribute.  One example for Parts would be ViewName, State, and Source driving an "ERP Template" (custom attribute) list of values.

In terms of managing the rules around cascading attributes, we would also like to see a user-friendly way to report the rules.  Also we need a way to query the database to perform validation of existing data when the cascading rules are changed.

[JohndeRaismes]

Bose would definitely use this feature to allow us to remove data validation code from the workflows and event model.  The ability to hide unnecessary choices and unnecessary attributes would also improve the usability of the interface from our user's perspective . 

[elyons]

Hi Jen... thanks for championing this idea.

Lockheed Martin Space has implemented a dependent attribute approach for specific Part and Document Soft Types with Source and Target attributes.  I will use your uploaded PP to document some of our use cases and document our thoughts as to a priority for implementation by PTC based on our business needs.

The ability to manage a master list of values for an attribute definition would be valuable and have the WC application filter what is presented to the user based on one or more values set for a given set of SOURCE attributes.

Thanks for getting the ball rolling.

[gmehta]

we would like cascading for documents.

Example you find a control plan then you would have all the related process sheets. From the process sheets you would have all the related operator instructions. I guess you would have to define the process sheets / operator instructions as some type subtype objects and relate them somehow but the idea would really help us.

I guess it would be similar to CAD Assembly --> Sub Assembly --> Parts

[RajuPulavarthi]

It would be useful to have this functionality within advanced search beyond Create and Edit screens.

[ChrisPLM]

Hi

I fully agree with Raju.

creating data the way explained in the idea is fine but, this needs to be matched when searching.

For EPMDocument, we created our own "Embedded Parameter Creator" which is used by the Creo users so we could have cascading parameters.

This also allow us to create only the relevant parameters for each file we created.

A wheel has different parameters than a box but both are EPMDoc for Windchill. We did not want to go down the route of creating EPMDoc subtype especially when the functionality did not exist in 8. We did not want to see in the information page parameters not relevant.

Having such functionality as part of OOTB package will help the companies a lot.

However, I do not see that coming before Windchill 12.......

[gmehta]

I thought this was being implemented in WC 11...........but its still open for Voting.

Does anyone from PTC or the user community know if this will be implemented....

[GregoryPERASSO]

in 10.2 some UI works with Conditional constraints in Type manager, ... but not homogeneous in all UI ....

but Don't know yet for WC11 ....

[vkotra]

It very strange that We can do many things with Type and Attribute Management Utility, but can't do this cascading ?

In fact, i was surprised to hear that we can use use Legal Value List for two different attributes and use one as drive attribute for another and provide legal value list based on the condition if A then B's list. I thought this will change drop down list for B based on chosen value of A's drop down list. But PTC TSE told me that it only validates if we type the value.

PTC can implement this very easily, as the logic is already there through driver attribute conditions, instead of validating, just change the drop down value list.

We have at least 3 business scenarios and 300 users will get benefit from this. Business name is Spectrum Brands HHI.

[vkotra]

I heard that we can expect from WC12. But we need it in WC 11 M20 or M30. what we need to do for this ?

[zgodula]

You can go the customization route to do this, but I wouldn't recommend that.  We've tried some things in a sandbox environment.  The UI works when creating/editing attributes, but a user cannot use the advanced search on one of the cascaded attribute values.

Disappointing that PTC has not implemented this yet.

[gmehta]

I really hope this gets implemented for WC 11 M20 or M30.

[BenLoosli]

This change is too big to be implemented at a new build of WC11.

It needs to be in WC12 and fully implemented across all *link products and their UI's.