If the increased number of vaults and file vault rules becomes unmanageable, the site administrator can force vaulting to be accomplished through a single vault by setting the wt.fv.forceContentToVault property to true. For how to set external file vault rules or set up a single vault, see the External File Vaults chapter in the PTC Windchill Enterprise Administration Guide.

Site administrators typically define the replica site and the replication schedule, and the product or library managers configure the replication rules for a particular product or library. Product and library managers can access the

Administration utility, but can only work on setting the replication and file vaulting rules. For how to set replication rules, see the help available from the Content

window.

Creating a Product

A product context provides the space in which a team of people can create and manage all of the information that is relevant to the design, manufacture, and support of a customer product. This information includes the following:

•A defined data storage area for the business objects associated with a customer product.

•A set of rules that control the access to the product and optionally set the numbering scheme, versioning scheme, life cycles, and workflows that are used with the objects that are associated with a product.

•The team of users who have access to the product.

Product contexts are created within an organization by members of the product creators group that is defined in the organization or by the organization administrator. The organization administrator can add users who are members of

the organization to the product creators group from Organizations Creators. The new product icon appears on the Products table (accessed by selecting Products View All) only for members of the product creators group.

For detailed instructions, see the help available from the New Product window.

Creating a Library

A library context provides the space in which you can store and provide access to business information. For example, all documents owned by a department can be stored in a department library.

Libraries can also hold objects that are not related to a single product. For example, parts that are related to more than one product could be stored in a common parts library (such as a Commodity Parts or Engineered Parts library), from which you allow multiple product teams access to those parts.

Libraries are created under an organization by members of the library creators group or by the organization administrator. The organization administrator can add users who are members of the organization to the library creators group from

Organizations Creators. The new library icon appears on the Libraries

table (accessed by selecting Libraries View All) only for members of the library creators group. For detailed instructions, see the help available from the

New Library window.

Administering Teams

One of the main activities that a product or library manager has is to administer the local team associated with the product or library.

Note

If the context team created in a product or library includes a shared team or is exclusively made up of a shared team, the shared team is managed from the organization context and is not managed by the product or library manager.

•Establish the roles that you want used in the team. You can add, remove, or create new roles.

The base set of roles that are established through the out-of-the-box templates

is the minimal set of roles that you should have for a team. (See Out-of-the- box Context Participation on page 214 Before removing any of these roles, ) consider the consequences of the removal. For example in a product team, you should not remove the Product Manager role because this role defines who can administer the product.

The roles you can add are roles inherited from your organization. For additional information about these roles, see Installed Site Templates on page 76 .

You can also create roles specifically for your product or library local team. In addition to creating a new role through the Team page, you must define the access control rules for the role by using the Policy Administration utility. As part of this activity, create the rules against the system group that is created for the team role. This group has the same name as the role that you create.

Note

Any new roles that you create are not available for life cycle, workflow, or team templates.

•Add users to the team by adding the users in the specific roles.

You can add users by selecting individual users or by selecting the userdefined groups or organizations that are available. For example, if the organization administrator has created groups for the organization context, you can select one or more of these groups to be a member of a role.

Note

When the organization context is created, the site administrator has the option of restricting user access. By default, users are restricted so that they see only users or user-defined groups that belong to the organization. Selecting the Restricted Directory Search checkbox when the organization context is created provides the ability to search for all users or user-defined groups. If this checkbox was not selected when the organization was created, the site or organization administrator can update the organization context to select it. Only site administrators can search for other organization participants regardless of the checkbox selection.

•Change task assignments for members of a team.

As the membership of a team changes or members change responsibilities, you can manage the ownership of the tasks assigned to team members.

From Products or Libraries , click the Team link to access the Members table. From this table, you can administer a product or library local team. For more information about teams, see Teams and Team Template Administration on page 297 .

Click the Assignments link to access a table of assignments with the following views: All, Open, Overdue, Assigned to Me, Completed, and Uncompleted. From this table you can manage the tasks assigned to your team.

Using the Product and Library Utilities

Page

The utilities listed on the Utilities page that is accessible from the Product and Library tabs allow you to perform administrative actions at a product and library level. The same set of utilities appears on both the Product and Library tabs. The difference is the context from which each utility is launched:

•Clicking a link from a product Utilities page launches the utility within the context of the current product.

•Clicking a link from a library Utilities page launches the utility within the context of the current library.

The utilities are grouped according to whether they are system administration utilities or business administration utilities. Many of the links provided on the page give you access to the utilities that you need to use to perform the duties described in Typical Duties of Product and Library Administrators on page 176

To explore the use of each utility, click the corresponding link on the page and then click the help icon in the window that opens.

Out-of-the-box Product and Library

Context Templates

When Windchill PDMLink is installed, the following product and library templates are loaded:

•Product Design – This template provides a demonstration of how to setup a product context for use with the One Phase Development and Two Phase Development life cycle templates and state-based versioning. As described in detail later in this section, the default set of roles defined is Members, Promotion Reviewers, Promotion Approvers, Collaboration Manager, Variance Approvers, Marketing, Procurement Engineer, Designer, Quality Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Design Team Leader, Option Administrator, Package Creator, Change Review Board, Change Admin I, Change Admin II, Change Admin III, and Received Delivery Manager. Also, the Guests and Product Manager roles are created automatically. Some basic information about these roles is as follows:

○The Members role is used as a basic role to grant context team membership. A set of access rules are defined for confirmed members of the context team.

○The Designer and Design Team Leader roles are unique to this template and identify the people who are responsible for creating and maintaining the business objects used to design a product.