A shared team is essentially just a team (roles, members, users) that can be used in multiple contexts and managed from a central location.
For example, you have "Example Organization." Under this organization, you have "Product_A," "Product_B," and "Product_C."
You have 75 users in 6 different roles who will be working on both "Product_A" and "Product_B."
You have 3 options:
1.) Create Product_A, go to the Team page, add the roles you need. Populate those roles with the 75 users you need. Then, create Product_B and do the exact same thing all over again.
2.) Create Product_A, configure the team accordingly. Save Product_A as a template, and then use that template to create Product_B.
3.) Create a shared team ("TEAM1") at the organization level. Configure it with the 75 users and 6 roles. Then, when you create Product_A and Product_B, select TEAM1 to use as a shared team. The context teams are automatically populated with all the roles/members configured for TEAM1.
There are a few benefits to using a shared team:
- Shared teams are dynamic, meaning that you can add/remove users and roles from a central location. For example, you hire 3 new employees who will be working on Product_A and Product_B. Instead of manually adding the users to each context, you can simply add them to the TEAM1 shared team. They are automatically added to every context that uses TEAM1.
- You can also combine a shared team with local team roles. For example, TEAM1 will also be working on Product_C. However, Product_C has a special "Consultant" role that should be populated with a unique group of users who do not have access to the other products. In this case, you can create Product_C, select TEAM1, and then later manually configure "Consultant" as a local role.
- Similarly, you can use a shared team alongside teams defined in the context template. Depending on the options you choose, the shared team can replace the team defined in the context template, or the context team is populated from both the shared team and the team members configured in the template.
The potential drawback is that you can't remove shared team members on a context-by-context basis. For example, "Sally" is a member of TEAM1. However, you don't want Sally working on Product_B. In this case, you must remove Sally from TEAM1, and then add her to Product_A and Product_C as a local member
For more information, see the Windchill Help Center: http://support.ptc.com/cs/help/windchill_hc/wc102_hc/TeamSharedTeamAbout.html
