The system provides the ability to define a progress reporting hierarchy at a system level or for specified projects. If a hierarchy is not defined for a project, then the system-wide hierarchy will be used. The definition of these hierarchies is an administration task. Hierarchies are created using the Schema Editor. An existing hierarchy can be modified to expose additional properties or produce a new (modified) one.
Each progress hierarchy consists of one or more levels. When defining workpacks for a project, the workpack must contain properties with a value for each of the hierarchy levels, and the combination of values must be unique.
Deliverables are assigned to an appropriate workpack based upon matching each of the hierarchy levels with one of its properties or relationships.
To define progress hierarchies for workpacks, interface definitions are created that imply an interface definition called ISPFPrgWorkpackHierarchy, which in turn implies an interface called ISPFPrgHierarchy. A sample progress hierarchy interface for workpacks is supplied (called ISPFPrgWorkpackH1).
Similarly, to define progress hierarchies for workpack templates, interface definitions are created that imply an interface definition called ISPFPrWorkpackTemplateHierarchy, which in turn implies an interface called ISPFPrgHierarchy. A sample progress hierarchy interface for workpack templates is supplied called ISPFPrgWorkpackTemplateH1.
The ISPFConfigurationItem interface optionally implies each of the hierarchy interfaces. This allows one of the hierarchy interfaces to be selected for each configuration item (such as plant and project). When instantiating these optional interfaces, the following rules are applied:
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Only one workpack and one workpack template hierarchy interface can be instantiated for each configuration item.
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If at least one workpack has been created at a particular configuration, then the hierarchy interface cannot be deleted, amended, or added for the corresponding configuration item.
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The configuration item must have a workpack hierarchy interface instantiated before a workpack can be created for that configuration. Similarly, the configuration item must have a workpack template hierarchy interface instantiated before a workpack template can be created for that configuration.
When creating a workpack (or template), the hierarchy interface that is relevant to the current create configuration is instantiated for the workpack and includes a value for each of the interface’s properties.
To be able to associate a set of valid values to each property definition on the hierarchy interface, two approaches are implemented. When an item is registered for progress, the values are extracted for the item that matches each of the levels in the progress hierarchy for the current create configuration. Each value may represent one of the item's properties or a property on a related object. To retrieve this data, the system needs to expand a pre-defined view definition for the item.
It is necessary to resolve a view definition for each type of progress item because a single view definition for each hierarchy is not appropriate. See also Progress reporting hierarchy.
Any class definition that represents a configuration item must optionally realize
any workpack or workpack template hierarchy interface definitions that are required
for selection.