completed changes to the checked-out copy, you must save it and check it in, so it is available to others. It then becomes the latest iteration. Objects that are being managed by an earlier iteration continue to be managed by that iteration. They are not affected by the newer iteration.

Importing and Exporting Life Cycle Templates

Before you begin importing or exporting life cycles, you should be familiar with the following information:

•Upgrade to the latest maintenance only release (MOR) as it becomes available, to ensure you have the latest enhancements to the import and export functionality.

•You can import a life cycle into a later version of Windchill; but not to an earlier version. To import from an earlier version of Windchill, you must set the wt.ixb.import.allowCrossReleaseImport property in wt.properties to true.

•Importing or exporting life cycles creates objects in a JAR or ZIP file format. (This is the same format that the load.Installer functionality uses.)

For more information about how to import or export life cycle templates, see the life cycle help.

Promotion Process

When you want to promote an object from one life cycle state to another, you can use two standard review and approve workflow processes within a life cycle template. With the enhancements to life cycle management, these two processes can be used to manage the development of CAD documents, parts, and documents.

The promotion request window guides a user requesting a promotion of one or more CAD documents, parts, and documents through the promotion process. The user can add dependents of parts and CAD documents to the request through this process. All objects requested for promotion must be set to the same target life cycle state. If the objects requested for promotion do not share any life cycle states, no promotion can be completed.

Two standard workflow processes for promotion are as follows:

•Promotion Request Approval Process - A process to notify a set of Approvers to approve or reject the Promotion Request and invite a list of Reviewers to provide comments to the Promotion Request. If all Approvers approve the request, the objects in the promotion request are updated to the target life cycle state. Otherwise, these objects are returned to their original life cycle state.

•Promotion Request Review Process - A process to automatically set the state of promotion request objects to the target life cycle state and invite a list of Reviewers to provide comments on the promotion request.

A list of Approvers who must approve the promotion request is defined by the Promotion Approvers system group for a product or library. A list of Reviewers, who are invited to provide comments to the objects under review, but do not approve the request, is defined by the Promotion Reviewers system group for that product or library. The user submitting the promotion request can also add (in the last step of the Promotion Request window) Approvers or Reviewers for each specific review through a list of users and user-defined groups for the product and library.

When a promotion request is created for one or more CAD documents, parts, and documents, the list of specific iterations of these objects is maintained in the baseline for this promotion request. Additionally, for a set of CAD documents on a promotion request, a set of viewables is generated for this baseline set, and it can be viewed directly from the promotion request task or from the promotion request form.

Note

If you want to disable viewables from being generated in the promotion process, set the following property to FALSE: publish.promote.enabled=false.

Out-of-the-Box Workflow Processes using the Promote Transition

Windchill PDMLink uses two out-of-the-box workflows which use the Promote transition; Promotion Request Approval Process and Promotion Request Review Process. For more information about these workflows, see Promotion Process on page 328 .

The Default Promotion Processes preference sets the default workflow processes that are used by the promotion process; initially, this is set to Promotion Request Approval Process and Promotion Request Review Process. These two workflow processes are presented for every promotion request; however, preferences may be configured to provide zero or more workflows to reflect business practices.

You can view and edit the preference value using the Promotion Preference Management utility from the Utilities page available from the Products ,

Libraries , Organizations , or Site contexts.

Note

The Promotion Preference Management utility is also used to manage new promotion preferences for use with custom promotion workflow processes. Only site administrators can create new promotion preferences. For more information, see the promotion requests help.

Overriding and Reassigning Life Cycle

and Team Templates

In Windchill PDMLink, during the creation of a part and a document, the life cycle template and the team template can be manually selected. It is also possible to reassign a life cycle and reset a team template on an existing part or document. In most cases, the manual selection can be done from either a drop-down list or through a search.