Understanding roles

Publishing pages have content that reflects a specific purpose or role. By default, Teamcenter supports two roles, Work Instructions and Product Manual. You can customize Teamcenter to support any desired roles, for example, Repair Manual. The same dataset types are used for all roles. When publishing pages are attached to BOM lines or item revisions, the role is determined by the type of relation that attaches the dataset to the parent item revision. Multiple datasets can be attached to an item revision and the datasets can fulfill different roles according to the relation type. When a publishing page is attached to an activity, its role is determined by a preference setting. All publishing pages attached to an activity fulfill the same role. When a portfolio is generated from a structure, the pages that are added to it are determined by the role that the user specifies for that portfolio. Internally, each role is typically associated with:

• A relation type used to attach a publishing page dataset to a revision.

• A transfer mode for generating a portfolio for this role.

• One or more alias files for populating assets.

A set of preferences associates the role with the relation type, the transfer mode, and the default alias files, as well as the following:

• The list of roles in the portfolio generation dialog box

• A set of useful alias files

• The user’s favorite list of templates

You can create a custom roles to reflect your company’s needs. There are two steps necessary to do this:

• Add a new relation object for the new role using the Business Modeler IDE.

• Add a new rich client plug-in that extends the com.teamcenter.rac.cme.tcpublishwrapper.publishingPageViewRoles extension point.