As explored in one of our previous articles, tracking metrics is a crucial component of a successful development system. But how can you leverage those metrics further? The solution is quite simple: with the trace reporting function available in Windchill Requirements, Validation & Source (RV&S), formerly known as PTC Integrity Lifecycle Manager!
In the example below, we will walk through the steps of building a simple, backtrace report. Traceability metrics within these reports ensure content items from various documents track and source properly. In fact, one of the best features of Windchill RV&S (PTC Integrity) is the ability to thoroughly count backtraces!
This report performs the following activities:
For example, in the above screenshot, we can see 13 Design Specification documents, as well as the totals for all the various content metrics.
You can create this report with the support of the PTC Integrity Report wizard.
From the Report menu in your Windchill RV&S, select “Create…” If the Report menu or the “Create…” option does not exist, you may have to customize your ViewSet to make it visible. Only use the “Create Admin…” option if you are a member of the Administrator group, and hope to build a system-supported report for use across your team. In this example, the report is for individual use — or for sharing with one colleague.
After you hit “Create…” the Windchill RV&S (PTC Integrity) Report Wizard will open. When creating a new report, first select the ‘Type’ of report you want to produce. These types are called Report Recipes. In this example, we select the “Basic – HTML, Column, One Grouping, Field Compute”
After selecting the “Next >” button, fill in attributes like a Name for the Report, the query you want to base your report on. In this example, we use the admin-provided query: “Documents In Active Projects,” and a simple description. Do not fill in the “Is Admin Provided” checkbox, unless you belong to the administrator group.
On the Next panel, select the style that will apply to the HTML report. There are several basic styles available for your convenience. In this example, we selected ALM 2009 for both the screen display and the physical copy.
In the next panel, select an image to serve as a logo for your report. Have the image stored on your server beforehand.
Next you can set up a title, a header and a footer that will display on your report:
After that, select the fields you need in the report, as shown below:
The “group by” option will pair all results returned from the query by the values of the field specified in the Group By field. Within this example, we will group the results per the Type field.
Since our specified query will only return document items, the values for Type feature restricted options like “Design Specification,” “Requirements Specification,” and “User Needs”. Thus, the report will organize such that all returned “Design Specifications” sort together, all “Requirement Specifications” sort together, and all “User Needs” sort together.
On the next panel, you can perform computations on each column of data within each grouping.
For the first computation, we will count all of the “Document Short Titles”. First, select the line with Document Short Title, and then select the edit button. This will open the Edit Expression dialog, where we can name the expression, set up the computation, and set a display pattern for the resulting integer.
Next, we want to add up all of the integers in the All Content Count column. Use the “sum()” function to add up all the values in the named field.
Similarly, we can use the sum function to create totals for each of the columns, “Meaningful Content Count,” “Content Back Trace Count” and “Content Without Back Traces Count.”
Next comes the “Sort By” panel. Since this report groups the major items together already, sorting is less critical. In this case, I simply sorted the items by their IDs.
The final panel is the ‘Report Sharing’ panel. Using the ‘Choose Principals’ button, you can share your new report with specific individuals and/or groups throughout your organization. You can even delegate individual permissions to make changes to the report. For the sake of this example, I only shared the report with myself!
In conclusion, this example report is one look into the capabilities of reporting within Windchill RV&S (PTC Integrity). In this case, the ability to report on properly traced items or documents within Windchill RV&S (PTC Integrity) will help you determine your next steps in your product delivery cycle!