Text Management

Key Features

The Text Management has the following main objects which interact with each other:

The central object is the Text Template.

In addition to these main objects and their functionality, text management enables the assignment of text instances to BOM positions as well as the creation of reports.


Note: All objects are under lifecycle control and the status of one object may effect a referenced object. Refer to the individual chapters for information about functional limitations due to certain states. In the chapter Change Propagation for Text Templates/Instances and BOM, you will find an overview of the dependencies between the three objects and their states.

Text Templates

The central object of the Text Management is the Text Template. It is used for defining text patterns similar to the message concept in Agile e6 and can be used in the sense of a glossary. A Text Template can consist of plain text and may contain Placeholders, e.g. "Fasten the screw with <P1:torque/>." When creating a text template a unique Template ID, a template text and a main Category are assigned to text template.

To associate the text with BOM positions, a Text Instance must be derived.

Lifecycle of Text Templates

 
In work
In Approval
Released
Correction
Withdrawn
Delete
 
 
 
 
 
Changes
 
 
•*
*nonstructural changes only (fixing spelling errors, moving place holder etc.)
  
Add placeholder
 
     
Create Text instance
 
 
  

Categories

The Text categories are used for grouping text templates/instances and glossary terms. They can simplify the search for specific text templates/instances. A text template can have several categories with one main category defined. New categories are created via the menu Start > Text Management > Categories and are available from selection menus in the Text Template mask. . As a text template must be assigned to a category, you have to create a category before creating a text template.

Placeholders

A placeholder is similar to a variable which is used within the text template text. A text template text can contain up to ten placeholders. A placeholder has the following syntax <A:color/>:

<[placeholder-id]:[placeholder name]/>.

[placeholder-id] = Is the unilingual ID of the placeholder
[placeholder name] =Is the multi-lingual name of the placeholder. Allowed data types are String, Float, Integer and Date

When saving a text template, the placeholders used in the template text are automatically created and listed under the Placeholders tab in the Text Template mask. If you want to edit a placeholder you can either update the placeholder in the Text Template mask/ Tab Placeholder, edit the text template or the text instance.

Placeholders e.g. <a:color/> can be entered multi-lingual - for entering the multi-lingual information, click CTRL + L and fill in the corresponding fields .

Placeholders in a Text Template can only be edited when the text template is in the status "In Work". When saving the modified template text, the placeholder list is updated (new placeholders are added, deleted from the list etc.). The consistency of the placeholder in the text template is checked automatically across all languages.

Defining placeholders values

When deriving a text instance from a text template, the placeholders are replaced by "real" values in the Text Instance Editor. There are two ways to replace the placeholders:

Note: Placeholders in a text instance can only be modified if the text instance is in the status "In Work"

Glossary

As mentioned in the previous section, placeholders can be replaced by a reference to a glossary entry.

The glossary is a central management facility to manage multi-lingual terms not only in the Text Management but also in the whole system. The glossary will be used to create the (text) values for e.g. the pool of attributes for classification. Furthermore any other text attribute can re-use the term definitions in the glossary. It allows to optimize the translation process of terms and helps to improve the consistency of text data in the system.

A glossary entry ( or term) is similar to the text template, except that it has no placeholder definitions. It is always created in the Glossary mask (Start > Text Management > Glossary) and automatically assigned to the Category Glossary.

Glossary entries are used for: Updating a glossary entry may be caused by different reasons and has different influence on the objects to which the glossary entry is assigned to:


Text Instances

Text instances are derived from text templates and possible placeholders are replaced by specific values. These placeholders are defined either manually or by referencing a glossary entry ( see Defining Placeholder Values). Instances can only be derived from a Text Template which is in the state "Released". Derived Text instances can be assigned to a Bill of Material as a BOM position and Product structure elements in the Conceptual Product Structure

Modifying a Text Instance
To modify a text instance, it must have the status "In Work" or "Correction". Changes to a text instance are updated at the BOM position when releasing the BOM positions. Using the Update Where-used function in the context menu, it is possible to update the instance manually.

Delete a Text Instance
To delete a text instance, it must have the status "In Work" or "Inactive". It is not possible to delete a text instance if it is referenced to a BOM position or used as an entry in the glossary.

Reference to Bill of Materials (BOM)

You can either reference a text instance to an item used in the BOM (Example 2) or as an individual text position without references to an item (Example 1).

 

Reference Text Position to Conceptual Product Structure

You can reference a text instance to a Conceptual Product Structure in the same way as described for the Bill of Materials by either adding a text as an item position or adding a text to an existing item.

Change Propagation for Text Templates/Instances and BOM

Text Management will provide a mechanism for propagating changes made to the template or the glossary term through the various text instances and to the places where those instances/terms are used. Modifications in Text Templates/Text Instances/Glossaries are propagated to Text Instances/Object records by using the Where-Used functionality.

Text Template -> Text Instance

The modification of a text template will be applied to all text instances that are not in the state "Withdrawn" as soon as the text template is the state "Released" (Orange arrow).

Text Instance -> Text Position BOM

Modifications of a text instance will be propagated e.g. to the text positions in a BOM, when the status of a text position in a BOM is changed from "In work" to "In approval/Released". Additionally the user can initiate the propagation of the modification by activating a context menu function for the text position in the BOM or for the text instance (in that case the modification will be propagated to all text positions in the BOM which are in status "in work".

Reporting Facilities

Generate BOM Report

Generating a BOM report is a functionality to visualize and print out a BOM in a comprehensive way. The BOM report is for viewing only, it is not possible to select a BOM position and perform further operations on the BOM positions. The report will be created using an HTML/XML data file. This HTML/XML data file, includes all relevant data of the BOM.

Where Used Function

The Where Used function provides a list of all objects where a Template, Instance, or Glossary text data is used. To open the Where Used mask, select the Where Used menu from the context menu . When opening the Where Used mask from either the Text Template (TPL), Text Instance (INS), or Glossary (GLS) mask, only the respective type will be listed in the Where Used mask.

When selecting Start > Text Management > Where Used, the Where Used mask will list all types (TPL, INS, and GLS).

Update Where Used

Before the Update Where Used function can be used, it has to be activated first. See topic Configuration of Update Where-Used Function.

The Update Where Used function allows to update textual data whereever it is used.

From Menu or Mask Update Where Used

Start > Text Management > Where Used

Opens Where Used mask.

In Where Used mask, select one entry and from context menu select Update Where Used .

Updates only the selected entry.

 

In Where Used mask, select all entries and from context menu select Update Where Used.

Updates all entries.

From mask Text Template, Text Instance, or Glossary

From the context menu select Where Used. Opens Where Used mask.

Opens the Where Used mask for this text data type and lists all objects where this text data type is used. Select one entry and from the context menu select Update Where Used.

The text data will be updated only for the selected entry.

 

Opens the Where Used mask for this text data type and lists all objects where this text data type is used. Select all entries and from the context menu select Update Where Used.

The text data will be updated for all selected entries.

From mask Text Template, Text Instance, or Glossary

From the context menu select Update Where Used.

The text data will be updated for all objects where it has been assigned to.

In case the update failed, error messages will be displayed in the Messages mask, giving the reason for the failure.