Update and distribute templates

With the document templates, in-STEP BLUE offers a powerful feature with which documents in projects and organizational units can be created according to the same pattern and thereby allow, for example, business  specifications to be implemented easily. These document templates are managed project-specifically in in-STEP BLUE. If you want to change a document template then you have to do this manually in the circumstances of each project or organizational unit. in-STEP BLUE now offers a new feature, update templates, with which documents can be managed and changed in a central organizational unit (or in a central project), to distribute them simply in with the press of a button into individual projects.

Each organizational unit and project can only be configured by a user with project administrator rights and to execute features, system administrator rights are required. All in-STEP BLUE templates can be updated with the exception of the form templates! in-STEP BLUE identifies the document templates that need to be updated  with a unique ID that is to be assigned before the command Update templates can be used.

Preparation

Imagine that you want to manage document templates centrally in one organizational unit. First, register the admin extension in the organizational unit (isAdminExt.dll), which has already been installed with the other components of in-STEP BLUE. Select the menu option Organizational unit/components from the main manu, click the Register button and select the file isAdminExt.dll from the in-STEP BLUE installation directory. Then check Update templates and confirm with OK. Finally, close the component dialog with Close.

Registering the components

Before activating the feature, a few preparations are still necessary:

Next, define a unique ID for the document template in the new property TemplateSyncID. Then, in the main menu of the organizational unit, open the category dialog under Organizational unit/component and add the property type TemplateSyncID of the type Alphanumerical to the category PRODUCTREVISION.

Add the property type

In the next step, enter the unique ID for the document template that you want to update in the project. It’s easiest to expand the standard view for the templates to an editable column TemplateSyncID and enter the value here:

Expanding the template view in by a column

In our example organizational unit, all the ”central” document templates will be summarized under the directory master template. Because the TemplateSyncID is used instead of the  names when updating the templates, you have probably already supposed that you can just the same define this property in the projects with document templates that should be updated. It’s best to do it just like the before with the  central organizational unit.

Expand the template view in the project

Only the documents that are provided with a value for the TemplateSyncID will be updated. For future projects, of course, it makes sense to put the document templates in the project templates!

Set the functionality

Now you can set up the updating in the central organizational unit. Open the corresponding button in the in-STEP BLUE bar. Open the dialog adapt in-STEP BLUE bar (in the main menu under ..), select from the external components the entry Update templates and allocate them to a group. In the example is the group administration.

Vorlagen aktualisieren einer Sichtengruppe zuordnen

When it’s allocated the configuration dialog of the command Update templates opens automatically:

Den Befehl konfigurieren

The selection of distributable templates can be limited with the Template registry.

Under Consider templates in this condition you can determine in which condition the document templates should be considered for updating.

Under selection of the projects to update you can specify which projects and organizational units should be updated.

The option Unavailable templates offers the opportunity to automatically generate missing templates (with regards to the identification with the TemplateSyncID) in the projects that are to be updated.

Of course you can always change the configuration at a later point with the properties of the command – like before with in-STEP BLUE.

And by the way: if not all projects in the business are the same, but maybe you use different document templates, then you can of course configure multiple Update template commands. 

Update commands

Now everything is already prepared to distribute templates in your central template organizational unit and to update them in the project. Here in the example the document template for Lastenheft.doc is being changed:

Das Lastenheft wurde verändert

Now call up Update templates.

Use the new field

The result of the update will be displayed as a report in the dialog window:

The results of the update

Here in the example, the templates from the projects “moPATIS” and “Virtual Guide” are being updated. Grundsätzlich werden nur die Dokumentvorlagen aktualisiert, die eindeutig über die vergebene Id identifiziert werden, und die Änderung auch nur dann ausgeführt, wenn die Vorlage tatsächlich nicht dem aktuellen Stand entspricht.

Please note: the condition of the document templates in the project that it to be updated will not be taken into account!

In the template’s history you will find another entry with the action name Update templates:

See all changes of the template in its history

That was it for adapting and distributing of templates with in-STEP BLUE. If you have questions or suggestions, just get in touch with us! You can contact microTOOL Support at service@microtool.de or 030/467086-20. See you soon!