Project, Products and Libraries - how do youdefine their uses?

[ddemay]

Also to add to this ...Products, Projects, and Libraries can now be soft typed with attributes editable in the OOTB UI meaning you could associate a product template per product soft type - even name them the same.

You can edit the JSP for the product list page (where you see all active or guest member listing of products) to make the showcustomviewlink=true and you can have your product or other container soft attributes displayed.

Anyone who wants to use this on existing products, email me for directions.

Product templates are good for kicking off different configurations, including domains, just be mindful of the level of work to possibly reconfigure existing data should the need arise.

Multi organizations can also be used and can be configured to disallow hosting of products or other containers. Your user's Org I'd ref in principal admin can be used to associate users together and also add them as members to a container, but automatically be read only without further ACL access. This gives you abilty to use guest role to allow different access configuration if desired.

Dave


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[ddemay]

I totally disagree with one product per engineering group. Overtime you or someone reading this thread may find themselves moving items to new products to solve a business problem.

It is best to find a way to break things down further unless you are such a small comany or do not use Windchill exclusively to manage all of your engineering and or manufacturing data.

if you are happy with that configuration as a solution, great. In my case, I'll be supporting such a large diverse system, it would be a nightmare to go with too few as much as it would be to go with too many. Products and containers are not just about the team. Sometimes it's replication, searching, reporting, to name a few.

One big bucklet causes you to lose functionality. Especially with larger datasets.


Dave




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[RussPratt]

There is no one answer to this question. The "scope" of any given Product or Library may vary considerably based upon the business needs of an organization. The critical key is to design a solution that creates a Products and Libraries with a balance of the three primary aspects of context design: People, Data, and Processes. The intersection of these three "sets" is where you will find logical Product &Library definition. See the attached image.

One thing to remember is that you should never attempt to use Folders to try and define "Sub-Prod/Lib", This will only lead to problems, as folders only address the "data" aspect of design.

Russ

[Pascal_Brunet]

Thank you @RussPratt. I found many comments about Product definition but yours is probably the most interesting one, even after 13 years !

I like the powerpoint slide you attached, do you have another one more up to date ?

Best regards,

Pascal

[RussPratt]

The most recent version is in a recently retired Portfolio offering.

https://ptc-internal.workrails.com/item/40ff9401-fc0b-4fc2-b562-ac77e1ea6e0e

[Pascal_Brunet]

Thank you for your quick reply. Unfortunately my PTC.com account (pascal.brunet@hagergroup.com) doesn't have access. I suppose it is reserved to PTC employees.

[MP_10544568]

@RussPratt would definitely agree with Pascal. This is one of those very useful concept slides that would be terrific for the community to have. Would be a great thread to post it to.

[Pascal_Brunet]

Hello @MP_10544568  in the meantime i found this documentation: http://support.ptc.com/help//wnc/r12.1.0.0/en/index.html#page/Windchill_Help_Center/contexts/ContextsExample.html 

Ideally a webcast or a video demonstration should be great to show to my users.

BR,

Pascal

[RussPratt]

The updated version I mentioned has no significant changes (more a branding update).

At the end of the day, there is no single "right" solution, it depends on the enterprise.  The key is to take the different factors into consideration when making the decisions on context definition.

I do appreciate the responses, thank you all.

Russ

[DanielReid]

This is very helpful to keep in mind. Reading the other updates there
are lots of good solutions for the specific company and need.

For example, Kenworth and Peterbilt have one "product": a truck (with
thousands upon thousands of options). It certainly doesn't make sense
for us to use just one Product container though. Good timing too as
we're revisiting a layout that was dominantly defined by Data.

Thanks!