Please note : This help page is not for the latest version of Enterprise Architect. The latest help can be found here.

Virtual Documents

Both standard and custom report templates generate documents that present information reflecting the organization of the Project Browser. You can also generate document and web reports independent of that organization, grouping and ordering individual Packages and elements according to whatever criteria you want to apply. For this purpose, you use virtual documents.

You can create separate virtual documents describing, say, the Requirements, Use Cases or Design elements of a project, based on individual Model Document elements. Alternatively, you can make these separate sections of one report, retaining their own different formats but with common headers and footers, organized under a Report Package element. Any Table of Contents, Stylesheet and/or Cover Page you select would be applied to the combined document and could apply your corporate standards across all the Model Document sections. You can create as many virtual documents as you want, for as many combinations of information as you need.

Elements, Templates and Content Definitions

Construct

Detail

See also

Document Elements

Report Package and Model Document elements are available from the 'Documentation' page of the Diagram Toolbox; on the Toolbox, select 'More tools | Extended | Documentation'.

When you drag the Report Package and Model Document elements onto a diagram, these symbols display, respectively:

The 'Documentation' Toolbox page also provides the:

  • Document Artifact icon, to create an element into which you can generate a virtual document or through which you can add a linked document to an element
  • Chart template icons, to present the values of selected properties of elements in a number of graphical formats
  • Report and Matrix Specification elements, which capture report and matrix profiles to help you regenerate custom reports and matrixes consistently
  • A Master Document icon that has been replaced by the Report Package and is therefore deprecated; you can still use the Master Document instead of the Report Package, but you do not need to provide a value for its RTFTemplate Tagged Value

 Charts Create Model Document Document Artifact Diagram Toolbox Create Master Document Generate Report to an Artifact Element

Templates

For each Model Document element, you can use a standard document template (such as Model Report) or you can create a custom template; for example, a specifically-designed Requirements template for a Requirements document, or a Use Case template for a section on Use Cases.

For web reports, you identify the template on the 'Publish as HTML' dialog; for document reports, you specify the template name as the value of the RTFTemplate Tagged Value.

 Import Template Design Custom Document Templates

Content

The content of the report is defined as either:

  • A list of Packages (defined as attributes) dragged onto the Model Document element in whatever order or combination is most appropriate to your requirements; you can easily add or delete Packages as necessary
    or
  • (Not for web reports) a standard search (identified by Tagged Values) created within the Model Search facility - when you generate the document, this search captures the required data throughout the model and populates the document; note that diagram searches are not supported

You can control the sequence in which information is presented in the document by, for example, changing the sequence of Packages in the Model Document or the sequence of Model Documents in the Report Package.

 Document Order Add Packages to Model Document Delete Package in Model Document Define & Modify Searches

Notes

  • In a Model Document for a document report, you should not define both a list of Packages and a search; if both are present, when you generate the document it is created from the Package list only
  • You cannot use Bookmarking in Report Package elements, which effectively replace Bookmarking in Word
    Bookmarking requires each bookmark to be unique; when you generate a report with a standard template (including in a single Model Document element), each bookmark is unique and there is a 1:1 association between the Elements-details being generated and the elements in the repository
    As Report Packages are intended to contain multiple sub-documents, the association ceases to be 1:1; there is no simple method that enables the generated data to be uniquely identified directly in association with the original element

Learn more

Learning Center topics

  • Alt+F1 | Enterprise Architect | Reporting | Rich Text Reports | Generate a Virtual Document