Messages

31

Suggestions and Requests / Re: 9.0 Linked documents (new formats)

« on: April 18, 2012, 12:20:38 am »

As you mentioned in the other thread, only the first page of the PDF is visible in the document, the user has to dble-click on the visible "page" to open the full document in the external PDF viewer.

I include a note at the beginning of the document with instructions on how to open the embedded PDF.

32

Suggestions and Requests / Re: 9.0 Linked documents (new formats)

« on: April 17, 2012, 05:24:02 am »

For now I just embed PDF files or Images in to the RTF, so far it seems to work.

33

Suggestions and Requests / Embedding images in Notes

« on: December 14, 2012, 12:56:26 am »

A lot of the projects I work on require the tracking of rules and requirements for Scientific Applications.

Often the "business rules" are related to the execution of an actual formula.

I'd love to be able to include the image for the formula directly in the notes instead of using the image manager, or creating a linked document.

34

Suggestions and Requests / Flag/icon for attatched document

« on: December 14, 2012, 01:12:24 am »

An indicator in the project browser, and/or element browser showing when the selected element has an attached document.

At the moment, unless I'm looking at a diagram containing the element (and see the small red A), there is no way (I know of) for me to tell there is an attached document.

35

Suggestions and Requests / Re: EA and Collaboration

« on: May 30, 2012, 11:11:36 pm »

Thanks Graham, you're right.  EA Lite users can participate in team reviews.

http://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/9.3/introduction/ea_lite.html

Now if only they could use the maintenance view too.

36

Suggestions and Requests / Re: EA and Collaboration

« on: May 30, 2012, 03:03:19 am »

Hi Paolo,
EA does have a "Maintenance View" Alt+4
That lets you track defects, changes, issues and task associated with each element.

You can also use the "Team Review" Ctrl+Alt+U feature to discuss a collection of elements.  

Unfortunately everyone that wants to participate will need a copy of EA and access to the repository.

I haven't seen anything about linking to Yammer.

I have been thinking about seeing how hard it would be to updated EA's HTML reporting script to include a form for each element's detailed page that would allow users to submit defects, changes, issues, and tasks for a specific element, with a scripting back end that would update the EA database with the submitted information.  

37

Suggestions and Requests / Read access to Sparx's bug/request tracking system

« on: May 30, 2012, 02:34:16 am »

Most of EA's clients are IM/IT industry professionals.

Instead of having to search through threads in a discussion group to see if anyone else has reported a bug, or suggested a feature, I'd prefer to see the list of bugs and feature requests compiled by the Sparx's team from these discussion groups, as stored in your internal bug/request tracking system.

I could then see which requests Sparx's has taken note of, and for Bugs, I could easily find out if the Bug was previously reported, or better yet fixed, assigned to be fixed, or a suggested work around.

If that isn't possible, giving the community more formal tools for posting and searching requests and bugs would allow us to more easily find existing bug reports, and feature requests, so we could find, or submit information on resulting solutions, workarounds, etc.  It would also allow us to self moderate, guiding each other on how to submit concise and meaningful bug or feature requests instead of these omnibus discussions.

JIRA, Bugzilla and Mantis come to mind.  I'd suggest Sparx's host the solution so at the very least you'll be able to cross link your internal tracking solutions to reference the external comments of the community.

If you want to limit users, set it up so only registered EA users can submit features and bugs to the new solution, but make it readable by all.

38

Suggestions and Requests / Re: make it easier to use instead of increase comp

« on: May 24, 2012, 12:50:46 am »

A bit cludgy, but this might be what we are both looking for:

Creating Word Master Documents
The new RTF reports now support the creation of bookmarks for Packages, Elements and Diagrams. These bookmarks are GUID based numbers.

Bookmarks are markers that are automatically placed into your rich-text document when it is generated. You can create a master document in Word, and link to sections of an Enterprise Architect report based on bookmarks. For example, a Word document may have a section for a small part of your component model – using bookmarks you can generate a full component model, and then link into just one section of the report.

This way you can maintain a complex Word document from parts of EA reports. If you link into EA reports, then you can regenerate the report and refresh Word links to update the master document, without having manually changed anything.

http://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/9.3/reporting/o526.html

39

Suggestions and Requests / Re: make it easier to use instead of increase comp

« on: May 24, 2012, 12:30:08 am »

Took a closer look at the current use of "MAILMERGE" fields for reports.  Currently the field is named by the element.property, and the value is the text to display.

If we could only add in an attribute for the GUID, we'd be able to have live documents.

40

Suggestions and Requests / Re: make it easier to use instead of increase comp

« on: May 23, 2012, 11:56:39 pm »

To expand on Tom's request.

I'd love to be able to generate a report that contained "data fields" instead of just text.  The data fields would contain the visible text, but also the GUID of the element, and the name of the property the text was from.  (If this is already possible using the Report template please let me know.)

An option in EA would then allow you to import one of these living reports and re-sync the fields.

This would allow us to change the layout however we need to, but still keep the information in the document in sync with the repository.  

41

Suggestions and Requests / Re: make it easier to use instead of increase comp

« on: May 23, 2012, 11:49:21 pm »

@tom,
You can drag and drop directly in to a report.

In EA you can drag elements from your project browser in to an RTF document linked to the element.   The element text will be linked from the document to the element using the element's GUID.

Unfortunately as is this is a one way link, e.g. click on the link in the document and EA highlights the element in the project browser.

I use this mainly for importing existing documents in to EA and then highlighting text in the document to create requirements elements, etc.

To make this more powerful, I started looking EA's API.
I've created 2 scripts:

• 1 to update the elements in the repository to have the same name as the linked text in the document,  
• the other to update the linked text in the document to be the same as the element name

The difficulty is if someone has updated the document and someone else has updated some of the elements.  

So I've decided that once the document is created, all updates must happen on the element.

42

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Multilanguage support

« on: April 29, 2012, 09:49:36 pm »

Thanks Simon, I guess it will have to stay as a manual process.

43

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Multilanguage support

« on: April 17, 2012, 05:54:42 am »

I should also mention, I've started looking the new "workflow" scripts.

My plan:
Use the Security -> Manage Groups to create "language groups"
Users will only be in one group or the other.

When a member of the "French" group accesses an element's properties (if it's not locked), it is automatically changed to French by default.

Ditto for English.

44

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Multilanguage support

« on: April 17, 2012, 05:50:29 am »

My current work around is using the API and tagged values.

5 main tagged values:

• CurrentLanguage: EN or FR
• Name_EN
• Name_FR
• Note_EN
• Note_FR

Assume that the element is currently in English.

• The user right clicks on the project browser and selects "Set to French" from the scripts.
• The scripts saves any changes to the current "English" version the _EN tagged values, loads the "French" as replacements, and sets the CurrentLanguage to FR.
• The user makes their changes.
• The user selects "Set to English"...

With this approach I can do the same for any other properties or tagged values that I need to have in multiple languages.

I've also be experimenting with using this approach for having French and English versions of attached documents by storing the RTF string in a tagged value's "Note" field.

45

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Filters on Package Explorer

« on: April 19, 2012, 12:38:13 am »

Another option would be to create a custom SQL search.

I currently use oracle, so for the "recursion" I use:

select Name from t_object where package_ID in (select  package_ID from t_package start with ea_guid = '{9F54BF3D-0F7A-4ec7-979C-7001A37FF9FC}' connect by parent_ID = prior Package_ID)

Where the ea_guid is the guid of the parent package.

Adding the filter for phase 6 would be:

select Name from t_object where package_ID in (select  package_ID from t_package start with ea_guid = '{9F54BF3D-0F7A-4ec7-979C-7001A37FF9FC}' connect by parent_ID = prior Package_ID) AND Phase = 6.0

If you don't have Oracle, the recursion is more complex.  I found an example here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0510rielau/ but haven't tried it.