WTPart creation approval task

[Robinske]

Looking for any ideas/suggestions if its possible to create a "Part Creation Task", similar to what is available in "Windchill Supplier Management", which we do not have available.

We would like to have an approval of creation upon submission of "Open>New>New Part" with approve vote creating the WTPart and reject not creating the actual WTPart.

[avillanueva]

Creating a WTPart should be a very simple task but if you want to front load it with an approval process, recommend first try restricting rights to a small team with authority to create parts. They can then process the requests normally.  There is also a workflow I have seen floating around related to automating access to Product areas. What's nice is that it appeared in the interface as a selection which triggered a workflow. It could be altered to support your request. The biggest challenge will be writing the interface to trigger your approval workflow.

[d_graham]

So, you need a workflow to run for approval to create a WTPart

Two thoughts on this?

Create a new WTPart Approval workflow template.

Create a custom action that opens a page the user fills in WTPart request info.

After hitting a Submit (or whatever) button the page starts the workflow that references the new workflow template and passes the info the user supplied to workflow level variables. Note, the workflow has no primaryBusinessObject.

If the approvers approve, the workflow creates the WTPart.

If they reject no part is created.

Another similar way that would require much less custom work but would require a PBO would be to create of subType of Windchill object.  It can be subType of any, even a subType of a WTPart). For this example maybe a subType of a Change Request. Let's call is wt.change2.WTChangeRequest2.<xxx>.NewWTPartApprovalForm (you get the idea).

Add attributes to the new subType that the user will fill in during creation of the request.

Add appropriate attribute constaints (Required for example).

Next, create workflow template for the approval process.

Create a new LifeCycleTemplate for the new Change Request subType and point state Open to the workflow template.

Create a new OIR for the new Change Request subType and point the OIR to the new LifeCycleTemplate.

Either way should get the job done.

Thoughts?

David