| Estimating Implementation Effort |
This chapter describes the responsibilities of an administrator involved in running group projects with particular emphasis on the use of group worksheets. It is assumed that you are familiar with worksheets and have read the chapter Using Worksheets.
Group working requires a consistent approach to policy and standards, especially where you have several projects in one enterprise.
Projects may be independent of each other, or may be related, for instance, if a very large project has to be divided into subprojects. Each subproject is treated as a separate project.
There are a range of tasks including setting up, customizing and maintenance which are best coordinated by one person, the administrator. To enable a group to work together, the administrator needs to define a strategy and the process for group working. It is worth taking time to develop a system that applies to your specific project for everyone to use consistently: this can save a great deal of investigative time and effort.
Having decided on your group working policies, there are three possible ways that group working can be established. These are discussed in the section Group Working in the chapter Using Worksheets.
The method described here is that of sharing a project for which the administrator needs to do the following:
When you make a project shareable you automatically create a duplicate copy of the project with an .sha extension. This is stored in a separate directory from the initial project and is referred to as the Shadow Project: it is used by the administrator to perform updates to the project without interfering with other users.
All users need access to the shared project and require its name and location. Users cannot update the source files directly but pass changes to the administrator to be loaded into the project. For further details, see the chapter Administering Group Working in your Revolve User's Guide.
Your application code is metered on a line-of-code basis, which means that the code has to be metered before you can process it. However, only one person needs to meter the code and then everyone can process the code without further cost. Authorizing a user includes enabling a usage counter for that user and giving write access to the metering control file. See the chapter Metering Lines of Code.
Customize and make shareable the analysis tool settings and default categories. Create new composite tools where appropriate. See the sections Customizing Group Settings, Sharing Worksheet Classifications and the chapter Using Enterprise Analysis Tools and Sets.
For everyone to be able to view the current state of the group's analysis information, this involves merging users' changes into the group worksheet, and backing up and restoring the group worksheet. See the section Sharing Worksheets.
See the section Sharing Worksheets.
The administrator needs to merge all the local worksheet information into the group worksheet before running the reports to ensure accurate information is produced. See the chapter Worksheet Reports for further details.
Revolve Enterprise Edition enables you to share custom analysis tool settings, composite tools and batch processes so that results are consistent and meaningful.
Items to be customized for the group are:
Users can specify different settings for each analysis tool every time they run it, but if they do, each user would identify different points of interest for the same problem and the worksheet would end up with conflicting points of interest and misleading information. To ensure consistency, you need to create one group of settings for everyone to use. See the section Sharing Analysis Tools Settings.
Users can create composite tools to address their specific analysis requirements. To find out how to share these composite tools, see the section Sharing Composite Tools.
Users can use any analysis tools in any sequence, but to ensure consistency they need to use the same sequences of tools. To enable this, you can create batch processes, which contain sequences of other tools. See the section Sharing Batch Processes.
The default settings for the analysis tools are stored in a group called defaults in the Config\Enterprise\Settings directory.
To share customized individual tool settings, copy the tool settings file (.dts) onto each user's computer. The .dts files are created by the Configuration Wizard.
You can define new tool settings each time you run a tool, although this does not guarantee a consistent method of locating POIs when working on a group project.
Note: If you do not use the Configuration Wizard to customize the tool settings, they are active only until you close the project. If you have used the Configuration Wizard to customize tool settings, they are automatically saved as a new settings group.
For full details on how to customize and share settings, look up Settings in the index of the online help. See also the chapter Using Enterprise Analysis Tools and Sets for for details on configuring settings.
As an administrator, you create and share composite tools to avoid users using tools in different ways and so finding different points of interest. Composite tools have the filename you specify with the file extension .ct.
You can make a composite tool (.ct) available to only the current project, to all the projects for the current user or to all projects by anyone whose computer has access rights. Composite tools are stored as follows:
| Available to: |
Where Stored |
|---|---|
| Local projects | In the Enterprise subdirectory of the project's directory |
| All projects for the current user | In the Tps\Enterprise\Tools subdirectory |
| All projects by anyone whose computer has access rights | In the user defined Remote Configuration Directory. You can specify this on the Analysis Tools Options page of the Analysis Tools Properties dialog box. |
If tools with the same names exist in the shared directory, the users' project directory and also in the users' Enterprise\Tools directory, the shared tool is used. The tools are searched for in the following order:
For full details of sharing composite tools, look up Composite tools in the index of the help. See also the chapter Using Enterprise Analysis Tools and Sets for details on creating and editing composite tools.
Note: When you create a composite tool, the settings active at the time become the default settings of the new composite tool. You do not have to distribute a settings file if you intend to use only the default settings.
Batch processes provide a means of running a sequence of composite tools one after the other in a defined order. If it is important that all users run the same set of tools in the same order, then you should create a batch process to share between the users. Sharing batch processes works in the same way as sharing composite tools.
You can make a batch process available to only the current project, to all the projects for the current user or to all projects by anyone.
See the section Batch Processes in the chapter Using Enterprise Analysis Tools and Sets.
Group users need to use the same classifications in the same ways so that, for example, final reports contain accurate information for each type of classification. You can customize the default settings for classifications for everyone to use.
Taking the time to develop a shared system of classification can save a great deal of investigative effort. If you decide to do this and want to avoid unnecessary work later, we recommend that you plan your classification strategy with care.
There are four types of classifications that can be assigned to points of interest:
These are assigned to points of interest and can indicate, for example, how the points of interest were found or the type of work required to overcome the problems.
The administrator can choose whether an individual user can define his own local categories: individual users can never change group categories.
See the section Categories in the chapter Using Worksheets for more information.
When you add points of interest to the worksheet, you can add a note to describe, for example, the origin of the items or why they are being added. Reasons for ascribing notes will differ according to the individual organization and project requirements.
Revolve Enterprise Edition can remember recently used notes. The precise number of notes to remember can be adjusted. See Notes in the help index for further details.
Removal reasons are notes that you add to explain why you are removing points of interest.
Data types show how data items of a particular type are handled, such as data items used to store dates of different formats and monetary values used in different contexts, for example, an account balance and an item price.
See the section Data Types and Assignment Rules in the chapter Using Worksheets for more information.
Note: There are two other sets of data that can be shared in the same way as the above classifications. These are filters and assignment rules and they are included here for completeness.
The way in which users share classifications, filters and assignment rules depends on whether projects are stand-alone or group working. Within group working the sharing of classifications differs depending on which worksheet is involved, group or local.
| Project Type | Worksheet Type | How to Share Classifications, Filters and Assignment Rules |
|---|---|---|
| Stand-alone | Local | Use the Export facility on the Settings page of Worksheet Properties to export the classifications, filters and assignment rules to a settings database where you can then add, remove or change them. Users should then import them from this settings database. |
| Group working | Group | Use the Export facility on the Settings page of Worksheet Properties to export the classifications, filters and assignment rules to a settings database where you can then add, remove or change them. Users should then import them from this settings database. |
| Group working | Local | Local worksheets in group working
environments always start with the classifications, filters and
assignment rules as assigned to the group worksheet - the default list
is copied from the group worksheet to the local worksheet when the local
worksheet is created. Subsequent changes in the group worksheet to:
|
In a group working environment with local worksheets, you need to be aware that different conditions apply when users want to change classifications, filters or assignment rules:
Individual users can always change or add to these types of classifications within their local worksheet but these changes are never merged into the group worksheet.
A group worksheet is useful for everyone to see the current state of the group's analysis information. The main areas of responsibility for the administrator are:
As administrator, you are responsible for creating the project and the group worksheet. We suggest splitting up the work by source file, although you can split it up in any way that suits you.
Note: The data items in working storage copyfiles are likely to be shared by more than one program, and so, to avoid conflicts, each of these common data items needs one owner.
There are two approaches to populating the group worksheet with the candidate points of interest (POIs):
After you have populated a worksheet with all the initial points of interest, this worksheet is still a local worksheet. You then must promote the local worksheet to a group worksheet and assign it a password.
The group worksheet password is required for read-write access to the information stored in the group worksheet. It is also needed to change some properties of local worksheets created from the group worksheet. Group users without the group worksheet password have read-only access to the group worksheet. Local worksheets do not require a password. See the online help for further details.
Or
For more information about group and local worksheets, see the chapter Using Worksheets.
We recommend that you backup the group worksheet before making any changes.
You might need to restore a previous version of the worksheet if, for example, the new worksheet has some incorrect information or if there are many conflicts when merging. For further information look up Worksheet in the online help index.
The administrator is responsible for merging users' local worksheets into the group worksheet. Depending on the procedures in your organization, you can do this:
Before merging in users' changes, you must backup the group worksheet in case you decide to restore the previous version. You should also ensure that you have backup copies of the local worksheets that you are about to merge into the group worksheet. If you decide to restore the group worksheet after merging items from the local worksheets, you should also restore the backup copies of the local worksheets. Otherwise you may lose some of the information that was in the local worksheets before you merged them. See the section Backing Up and Restoring the Group Worksheet for details.
You use the Merge wizard to merge in the information from the users' local worksheets and to resolve any conflicts between the new entries and the existing ones. When you merge the worksheets:
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| Estimating Implementation Effort |