What is the feature?

The Enterprise-level view or Supplier view of a spec has been refined so that users have the ability to create custom views for any department in a company.

As part of this, we have changed the term "Specification Template" to "Specification Type", allowing us to add more abilities to a TraceStation and also specify clearly that a particular TraceStation is configured for use as a spec.

Why did we create this feature?

Customers often require several of their departments to input data into a specification or other TraceStation. For security reasons they needed the ability to restrict each department to only editing or entering data into that department's fields. This feature also creates a history of the approval of changes for confirming compliance.

Additional recent improvements associated with this feature:

• Configuration Workbook updated to include "Specification Type".
• "Specification Type" column added to the TraceStations grid.
• Snapshot taken of each TraceStation at the time its spec is approved.

How do you implement/use this feature?

Steps to Set Up Spec Sharing

Step 1: Create separate tab views for each of your user roles, starting with the "default" view that covers everything.

Step 2: Create custom tab views such as "Enterprise - Specification Marketing", "Enterprise - Specification R&D", "Enterprise - Specification Quality", etc. A tab view sets what parts of a TraceStation, including a specification, a user can see and edit. If you have three different tab views for a specification, then you must have three different TraceStations, so that the system can follow the command to display restricted info. Learn more about configuring TraceStation here.

Step 3: If one exists, be sure to leave the "Enterprise - Specification" view (the default, overall view) as is. This is also the "master" view which contains all the required attributes. (Permissions to these attributes are still handled through the Roles page).

Steps for Assigning a View to Each Tab

Step 1: Select a role from the Roles page

Step 2: Find the Tab-row that needs a View

Step 3: Select a View for that Tab using the dropdown options

Step 4: Set appropriate permissions for that Tab View

Step 5: Save.

Important Info

• When configuring a TraceStation as a specification, simply select or create a tab view name that contains the word "specification". This will give you the Specification Type drop-down under the View Name drop-down.
• The change from the "Specification Templates" to "Specification Types" allows linking of templates for different views. If a user updates a template, upon save they will be given a choice to "Update other specs of this type?", with a list of attributes NOT used on other templates of this type. This keeps your data coordinated.
• Make sure that the combination of tab view, spec type, and TraceStation is unique across templates. For instance, you cannot assign a given tab view to two "Raw Materials" type templates.
• Types can be assigned to multiple TraceStations, which allows for advanced configuration of tab view / TraceStation combinations. However, for each tab view, a given TraceStation can only have one specification type.
• You must ensure that there is a specification type in place on ALL of your specifications, and ALL of your specification TraceStations.