Generating and Editing Fixes

Chapter 11: Group Worksheet and Administration

The tutorial in this chapter demonstrates group working and the group worksheet.

11.1 Overview

SmartFind Plus enables you to share a worksheet among a group of users, so that they can share the information they gather and their analysis. You do this with:

• A group worksheet - This is a master copy of the worksheet containing everyone's entries. It is read-only to everyone in the group. Only the administrator can update it.

• A local worksheet for each group member - A user's local worksheet contains the entries that that user owns. Users can update entries in their local worksheets freely, and they can view the group worksheet simultaneously.

From time to time, the administrator merges in the changes from users' local worksheets into the group worksheet.

11.2 Preparation

As administrator, you are responsible for creating the project and the group worksheet and for initially populating the group worksheet with the potentially problematic data items, statements, and data files.

1. At the worksheet, click Load from File and select the backup worksheet Tour\EndofChap6.mdb.

2. Click No to overwrite the existing project worksheet that you no longer want, and click Yes to confirm overwriting.

   The title bar of the worksheet now shows Worksheet - Tour, and you can work on this leaving the backup EndofChap6.mdb intact in case you need it again.

3. Set the options for the analysis tools and the worksheet, as appropriate. See the sections Setting the Analysis Tools Options and Setting the Worksheet Options in the chapter Finding and Adding Dates to the Worksheet

11.3 Making the Project Shareable

A shareable project is a project that can be accessed by multiple users across a network at the same time, so that they can perform their individual analysis tasks simultaneously. A shareable project is read-only to the users, and only an administrator is able to change the project.

When you make a project shareable, a duplicate copy of the project is created, with the extension .sha, and is stored in a separate directory from the initial project. This copy is referred to as the shadow project. This shadow project is accessible only to administrators.

When the project needs updating, such as to add or delete components, or to reparse the project, the administrator updates the shadow project. This enables the administrator to update the project without interfering with other users, who can continue with their analysis, working on the original shareable project.

1. Using Windows Explorer or a DOS prompt, create a directory to contain the shadow project. For example, create a directory called shadows at the root of the drive where you installed SmartFind Plus.

2. Click Make Shareable on the Project menu.

3. Specify the name and directory for the shareable project, such as \shadows\tour.sha, and click Save.

4. Click Make User on the Project menu, to return to working on the original project, which is now shareable and is now read-only.

For more details, see the section Shareable Projects in the chapter Managing Projects in the User Guide.

11.4 Setting up a Group Worksheet

Having created an initial worksheet, you now need to make this into a group worksheet, so that this becomes the master worksheet containing everyone's entries.

1. Enable the administration tasks, as follows:
   • Click Options.
   • On the Worksheet tab, check Enable Administration tasks.
   • Click OK.

   Notice that the title of the worksheet is now appended with (Administrator).

2. Create an empty group worksheet as follows:
   • Click Administration.
   • Click Create a new group worksheet.
   • Enter the name redeem-group for the new worksheet.
   • Click Save.

3. Group working is now enabled, which you can tell because:
   • Enable group working is checked on the Worksheet tab of Options and the group worksheet is set to redeem.grp.

   • Show group items is checked and visible at the right of the information bar. There are still 53 data items and 119 statements in the worksheet. Unchecking and checking this does not change the counts, since there are not any points of interest in the group worksheet yet.

4. Display the new empty group worksheet as follows:
   • Click Administration.
   • Click Load group worksheet.

   Notice that the title of the worksheet is now prefixed with [Group], and its name is redeem-group. Also notice that Show group items is no longer visible.

5. Move the points of interest from the local worksheet into the group worksheet, together with all their information, such as categories, year types and history. To do this:
   • Click Administration.
   • Click Merge items.
   • In Selected worksheet, choose the local worksheet, tour.mdb.
   • Follow the rest of the wizard's instructions, accepting all the defaults.

   The group worksheet now contains all the points of interest that were in the local worksheet.

6. Display the local worksheet, as follows:
   • Click Administration.
   • Click Load local worksheet.
   • Notice that the left-most column, theType column, now shows the entries with a star, indicating that they are in the group worksheet.
   • Uncheck Show group items.

   The local worksheet is now empty, because all its points of interest have been moved into the group worksheet. If you had had any points of interest in the removed list of the worksheet, they would remain in the local worksheet and would not be transferred into the group worksheet

11.5 Assigning Group Worksheet Entries to Owners

Having created the group worksheet, you need to assign worksheet entries to individual group members, so that each person owns and has authority and responsibility for specific entries. Note that ownership is informational only and is to help you in delegating the group's workload and in resolving conflicts when updating the group worksheet with users' changes.

We suggest splitting up the work by source file, although you can split it up in any way that suits you. Notice that 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.

1. Make sure the local worksheet is displayed and that Show group items is checked.

2. Go to the Data items tab of the worksheet and sort the entries by program, by clicking the heading of the Location column.

3. Select all the data items in Redeem.cbl. If they were any local items, you could select those too and only the group items would be assigned to the new owner.

4. Click Administration.

5. Click Assign items to owner.

6. Enter JOHN DOE as the name of the person to own these entries.

7. Check Copy items to client worksheet and click OK.

8. Click Save to accept the default filename for the user's worksheet, John doe.mdb and accept the default location. The user can copy the worksheet to his or her machine later.

   Notice that JOHN DOE now appears in the Owner column of the worksheet.

9. Now select the worksheet entries in the program remind.cbl, and assign these to Jane Doe in the same way as you assigned entries to John Doe.

Notice that you can change ownership from one user to another freely. Be careful to select exactly the entries you want to assign, so that you don't accidentally change ownership.

You now have two local worksheets john doe.mdb and jane doe.mdb, as well as the group worksheet redeem-group.mdb.

11.6 Updating Local Worksheets

In a real life situation, the administrator would now tell each user the filenames and locations of the:

• Shareable project file
• Group worksheet
• User's local worksheet

The users then work on their own entries, viewing the group worksheet as necessary.

In this session, you make some changes to John Doe's worksheet and then Jane Doe's worksheet, as if you were John and Jane respectively.

1. Return to working as a user instead of an administrator, by disabling the administration tasks on Options. Leave group working enabled and pointing to the group worksheet, redeem-group.mdb.

2. Load the worksheet John Doe.mdb and click Yes when asked whether to change to this worksheet.

3. Display just the entries in this local worksheet and not the group entries, by unchecking Show group items.

4. Change the year types of these entries. For the purpose of this tutorial, select all the entries and change their year type to MANUAL, using Select year type.

5. Now load the worksheet Jane Doe.mdb and click Yes when asked whether to change to this worksheet.

6. Change the year types of these entries. For purpose of this tutorial, select all the entries and change their year type to NOTDATE, using Select year type.

Notice that the changes to the local worksheets are automatically saved in the local worksheet, John Doe and Jane Doe don't need to explicitly save them.

11.7 Merging Local Worksheets into the Group Worksheet

The next stage is to merge the changes from John's and Jane's local worksheets into the group worksheet.

1. Enable administration again using Options.

2. Before merging in users' changes, we strongly recommend backing up the group worksheet in case you decide to restore the previous version. Do this as follows:
   • Load the group worksheet.
   • Use Save to File.
   • Specify the backup filename as redeem-group-bak-mdb.
   • Click No when asked whether to change to this worksheet, so that you continue working in redeem-group.mdb.

3. Click Administration and click Merge items.

4. Select John Doe's worksheet.

5. Click Next and then Merge again to start merging.

6. When you are informed of a conflict with the group worksheet, notice that this refers to one of the year types that you changed. Click Accept to overwrite the entry in the group worksheet with the corresponding one in the local worksheet.

7. When you are informed of the next conflict, click Accept all.

8. When the merge has finished, click Back.

9. Now select Jane Doe's worksheet and merge in the changes from that worksheet in the same way.

The group worksheet is now up to date with all the users' changes merged in.

11.8 Other Administration Tasks

Creating and maintaining the group worksheet is a major part of effective group working. However, there are some other activities that make the work easier for the individual analysts and that ensure that everyone in the group uses consistent procedures.

• Setting up categories
• Setting up year types and the corresponding macros
• Setting up the rules for year type automatic assignment
• Policies on coding conventions

For full details see the User Guide

Generating and Editing Fixes