Documentation Vs. Document Bookmark

[Stephen Kropp]

I have been playing around with the documentation features of EA and am at a loss as to how to accomplish the following situation efficiently:

I have some packages that I would like to report on in multiple documents, let's call one of the packages, "Regulatory Requirements" but there are others. My organization would like the Regulatory Requirements to be reported in a section within multiple Word templates but they also would like those requirements to be sub-divided into categories such as "Environmental Regulatory Requirements" (but these categories vary based on the template).

1) I first tried creating a document from EA (Right-Click "Documentation", then selecting "Generate Documentation") by creating my own custom Templates and Fragments, which worked great until I noticed that I needed to include some of the same information in multiple locations... so I tried the next approach:

2) I then tried copying and pasting items into a new structure to continue using the EA documentation approach but I didn't like that the copied elements are unique and don't get updated when the original element is updated. I also tried just copying the diagram and the 3 copy methods available (shallow, deep, and smart) to see if I could somehow duplicate the elements without creating a unique instance but that didn't work... so I then tried the next approach, however this is the approach I would like to get working if there is a way to copy a "clone" of an item that gets updated when the original is updated?

3) I then tried using a Document Bookmark based on a master RTF document but I'm not sure I like the complexity of this approach and am wondering if there is a better way? This approach makes it hard to re-categorize the subsections of "Regulatory Requirements" since it just re-uses the original package contents.

Thanks,

Steve

[Geert Bellekens]

Steve,

You need virtual documents.
There quite a good step by step tutorial about that in the learning center: Alt-F1

Geert

[Stephen Kropp]

Ok, after reading the following post, I think I have a solution:

http://sparxsystems.com/forums/smf/index.php/topic,29727.msg218491.html#msg218491

I was making the problem more complex than it needed to be, here is what I did to solve my problem:

 1) I modified my custom template to report elements from external packages (http://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/9.3/reporting/report_elements_from_external_.html) as mentioned in the post.

2) I created new diagrams in the specific folders of the template with link elements to the "Regulatory Requirements" that satisfied the reporting granularity required.

So now when I generate the documentation, the requirement items display as if they were elements within the folder and they are updated whenever the element is updated!