Common Components Help

AEF Help

Workspace Example

This section describes how a typical workspace team might use Team Central to collaborate on a design specification for a part.

Create the Workspace

When creating a workspace, the creator adds folders, subfolders, and members, and defines workspace-level accesses.

Suppose a Design Engineer creates a workspace for the design of a part. The Design Engineer associates the Buyer Desk that is responsible for sourcing the part to the workspace. The Design Engineer adds the predefined folders called Design Specifications and Prototype, and creates a new custom folder called Competitor Analysis. Within the Design Specifications folder, the Design Engineer adds the Preliminary and Final Spec subfolders.

The Design Engineer also adds members to the workspace and assigns workspace privileges for each, including default accesses for all folders and content in the workspace. In order for Workspace Lead to add a person from another company to a workspace, there must be a collaboration partnership established between the two companies. For information on establishing collaboration partnerships, see the MatrixOne Common Components User Guide. These are the members who are added:

• A supplier from a company in Japan, can create routes, default access is Basic
• Design Engineer role, default access is Read
• Two Design Engineers from within his own company, default access is Add
• A project manager from within the company, designated as Workspace Lead, can create routes, default access is Add
• A manufacturing engineer from a company in China, can create routes, default access is Basic
• A manufacturing engineer from a company in Korea, can create routes, default access is Basic
• The buyers assigned to the associated Buyer Desk are also added to the workspace and the workspace creator gives them each Read access as the default access

Assign Additional Access to Folders, Add Content, and Subscribe

After creating the workspace, the Design Engineer adds content to folders and assigns additional accesses per folder and content item. He gives the Design Engineer role Add access to the Design Specification folder, and gives the members from collaborating companies Read access to Prototype and Read + Write access to Design Specifications. The collaborating partners still have None access to Competitor Analysis.

Next, the Design Engineer adds a few documents to Competitor Analysis and starts a discussion regarding one of the documents. The Design Engineer also adds a design specification to the Preliminary Spec subfolder. He subscribes to the file so he is notified whenever the file is revised. He also pushes subscriptions for the Prototype folder to the workspace members from the other companies.

Route a Document and Schedule a Web Meeting

The Design Engineer then creates a route that sends the design spec to some members of the workspace: first to the two Design Engineers added individually to the workspace for comment and review, then to the project manager for approval, then to the Supplier for review and markup, and finally to both Manufacturing Engineers for review and markup. When defining the route, the Design Engineer indicates that as soon as one of the Design Engineers completes the review task, the next task in the route should become active. He also schedules a Web meeting for a day after the route is scheduled to be complete so the workspace members can review comments and changes. The meeting attendees receive email and IconMail notification about the meeting.

When the route begins, the Design Engineers receive email and IconMail notification that they have a task pending. They will also see the task listed on the Team Central task pages. One of the Design Engineers enters comments about the spec and marks the task as completed. The task for the other Design Engineer is removed and the task for the project manager is activated. After the project manager approves the spec and completes her task, the Supplier is notified that a task is pending. The Supplier revises the specification and checks in an updated version. Since the Design Engineer who created the workspace subscribed to the file, he receives notification that the file has been revised. When the Supplier marks the task complete, the file is routed to the Manufacturing Engineers. When they complete their tasks, the route is complete and the Design Engineer who created the route is notified. He reviews the comments, approval statuses, and files. He removes the files from the route so other people can route and edit it.

At the scheduled meeting time, the Design Engineer starts the Web meeting and the other attendees join in. The Design Engineer shares the most recent version of the design spec so they can discuss the changes. As a result of the meeting, the Design Engineer makes additional changes to the specification and saves it with a new file name. He adds the file to the Final Spec subfolder and then routes the document to the workspace members again.