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23-Emerald IV
TomU23-Emerald IV
23-Emerald IV
February 12, 2018
Question

Change Notice vs. Promotion Request

  • February 12, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 9723 views

I'm trying to understand how a change notice could be used in place of a promotion request.

  • Does the change notice need an implementation plan and change tasks or is the change notice object itself sufficient to handle the promotion process?
  • Where do I choose the target state for the objects being promoted?  There is a page on the promotion request wizard to select the target state but I'm not seeing anything like this in the change notice or its related change tasks.
  • Same question for reviewer and approvers.  Where are these roles selected if using a change notice?

Thanks!

4 replies

GregoryPERASSO
GregoryPERASSO16-Pearl
16-Pearl
February 14, 2018

Hi Tom

 

point 1: Think you have to use Change activities and plan cause you can not link directly Business Objects to the Change Notice in order to apply actions through the workflow ...  or may be investigate to the new Change configurable links.

 

point 2:  there's no target state in Change Mgmt.   It is more drived with transitions of related Business Objects lifecycles , or even you can implement in your own workflow your own logic.  So you can mix  in one Change Notice , business objects in different lifecyclestate and "promote" them to different target states...

 

Point 3: Roles are more driven by the Change Notice team roles and/or Container team Roles. 

OOTB , roles are Change Admin I and Change Admin II, etc ...

but depending of your implemented workflow , you can imagine whatever you need....

Simple observers for mail distribution, or even more  than one approvers with different branching depending of the Change complexity ...

 

J
JeffZemsky17-Peridot
17-Peridot
February 28, 2018

Some comments to @GregoryPERASSO's list

 

Point 2 - You can have selectable Target States in Change Tasks.  These were first supported in 10.1 M010.  I am attaching an example video (Note - the video is a clip from a larger demo - but one can see the Release Target selection).  These are more flexible then promotion request as they can have different targets for different objects.  Even the OOTB transition targets can have different targets for the release of a CT.

 

(view in My Videos)

 

Point 3 - The roles in a CT workflow can be determined based upon the role and resource pool mapping for the CT - no necessarily by the CN.  In 10.2 M030 we additionally added ability to have Resource Pool mapping all the way down to the Context team Role - not just the context team providing some good granularity

 

 

    B
    BenPerry15-Moonstone
    15-Moonstone
    February 27, 2018

    @TomU,

    You can investigate "embedded change task" if you're just starting out.  It could be a good solution for light-weight changes/releases.  Reduces the complexity of the "data model" for the end user.  Makes it seem "simpler" for them if you're just getting started using Change Objects.  But, of course, you can go the opposite way too.  You could have multiple Change Tasks related to your Change Notice.  It all depends on your business configuration.

     

    The "promotion" happens by the Change Notice expression robot in the workflow running the:
    com.ptc.windchill.pdmlink.change.server.impl.WorkflowProcessHelper.promoteChangeables();

    command.

     

    That command will change the state of the objects as you have defined in the lifecycle.

     

    We personally use 1 CT per 1 CN.  And I wish I turned on the option for embedded change task.  We might still take a look at that in the future.  The only thing the CT workflow does is sync on the CN workflow and sets the state of the CT as the CN progresses.  All of the user tasks are handles in the CN workflow.

     

    Additionally, we resolve roles/team members from a team template that is chosen during CN creation.  However, most companies map them in from the context that the CN object is created in.

      J
      JHall1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      February 27, 2018

      @BenPerry  I am curious.  I suppose if we set the preference to "Embedded Change Task" that is for all ECNs created after the change of preference?  I used this at another company, but it seemed some in the same organization created individual implementation plans/tasks also.

      B
      BenPerry15-Moonstone
      15-Moonstone
      February 27, 2018

      Yes - I think this is more of a preference for how data is displayed as opposed to actual functionality.

       

      If I set the embedded change task preference to YES, then I can see Affected Objects and Resulting Objects directly from the Change Notice for all existing CNs and all future CNs ... with one caveat.  The Change Notice must have 1 CT.

       

      If I go back and look at a CN that was created a long time ago that has 2 CTs, then the preference doesn't work.  It reverts to previous functionality for that CN.  It also doesn't prevent me from creating a CN with multiple CTs.  And if I do create CN with multiple CTs, it will display them all individually instead of showing the Affected/Resulting objects tables directly on the CN information page.

       

      Either way, when creating a new CN, there is still a step in the wizard for the CT.  So I guess I should retract my previous statement.  This preference doesn't really fully resolve the more complex data model.

        M
        22-Sapphire I
        MikeLockwood22-Sapphire I
        22-Sapphire I
        February 27, 2018

        Two major, major downsides of using CN + CT instead of promotion continue to be:

        - User confusion: two objects, with two workflow processes, with two teams

        - OTB, cannot create CT without having assigned people to "do the work" (Assignee and Reviewer)

          J
          JeffZemsky17-Peridot
          17-Peridot
          February 28, 2018

          Some commencts on @MikeLockwood's reply

           

          A - There actually need to be two workflows or teams.  The work could all be done from the CN workflow as well as controlling the CT state and the release of the data just using the CT as a container.  The CT would still have a team, but would only be needed for access control purposes.

          B - The assignee and reviewer can be setup based upon resource pool definition starting with 10.2 M030 - use the Multiple assignee and reviewer option to allow these (even if only assigning one user for each).  That is assuming one is going to use the CT workflow.

           

          Again - these are not hard rules - just several ways it can be configured based upon needs

          B
          BenPerry15-Moonstone
          15-Moonstone
          March 1, 2018

          @JeffZemsky,

          Side question about embedded change task.

           

          When customer chooses this preference, the Change Notice information page displays the Affected Objects table, and Resulting Objects table in lieu of the Implementation Plan table.

           

          However, for native task form templates (where CN is the PBO), we cannot achieve the same functionality for workflow tasks from the CN.  It would be nice to be able to close that gap and provide consistent UX.  I'm seeing this in 10.2 M030.  Have those tables been made available for native task form templates (when CN is the PBO) in later versions of Windchill?  Or are they still missing?

           

          You can reference case C13281629.

           

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