Groups

Collection Explorer ◢ Places/Organization/Persons group ◢ Groups collection

Purpose §

Identifies a specific responsibility in the change review procedure, and the persons who are assigned that responsibility.

Where used §

Change form and related workflow

Data fields §

General §

Name §

This is the complete name for the group.

Description §

This describes the group and its function.

Persons §

Add a person record by dragging it from the Persons collection and dropping it onto the list.

If the group is used for change reviews, then the person must have a full-function user account.

Setup §

The Batch Importer tool can import and update Groups collection members and persons.

How to use groups §

A group is a responsibility or authority. Name the group to show What is the responsibility or authority of the group's persons?

A responsibility may be given to one person now, and to another person later. Several persons may have the same responsibility, and any one of them can do the work. Some persons may be qualified for more than one responsibility, and can be added to several groups.

Change form review groups §

To provide a response to the change form, the reviewing person must have a full-function user account.

A group can be added to a change form's workflow only when there's a person in the group. However, after the group is on a change workflow it's possible to change the persons list. Be sure that each reviewing group always has at least one responsible person.

Every person in a reviewing group receives that group's change workflow notices. The first person to respond completes the group's review.

A group is most often used to identify the responsibility (knowledge and skills) needed to review a change form.

In smaller organizations, this responsibility may be rather broad: Engineering, Quality, Production. Larger organizations have more limited or special review responsibilities, like Component Engineer or Metal Fabrications Purchaser. Create each responsible group and add the responsible person to the group. When that person is no longer responsible, update the group with the person's replacement. The change workflow remains the same, and years from now the change forms will show they've all been reviewed by the correct authority.

The group's responsibility is not the same as a person's name, job or department. Don't create one group for each user. For example, assigning the person Pat Lee to a person-based group Pat Lee Review has disadvantages.

• Responsibilities change less frequently than users. You may need more person-based groups than responsibility-based groups, and may update change form templates more often.

• Change form originators (especially new employees) may not always know which person has a specific responsibility, but usually know when a responsibility like Quality is needed.

• When one person has several responsibilities — say, Quality and Production Engineering —, the group name shows the authority that the change needed, and the reviewer used.

• The group name confirms that your review workflow is correct before routing the change. Change participants can immediately see that Program XYZ Engineer doesn't belong on a change for the ABC program, but Pat Lee Review needs more information. Similarly, a change that has little impact on marketing may suggest removing the Marketing responsibility or setting the group's participation from Must Act to Can Act. This can improve the approval list quality, and shorten the review process.

• If a reviewing person must be changed after the change form is routed, the reviewer is easily replaced in a responsibility-based group. When using a person-based group, the workflow must be restarted because the group must be replaced.

• Adding new persons to share responsibilities, or using an out-of-office agent, can cause confusion if the reviewer doesn't match the group name.

• Responsibility-based groups show a consistent, useful history. On released change forms, the group shows why a person was on the reviewing list; on new change forms, the group shows who has that same responsibility today. Person-based groups can't show this history.

Responsibilities may change as the organization and products evolve. As a product moves from development to maturity, the sustaining engineer replaces the design engineer; possibly several groups are assigned to one person. When a responsibility is no longer needed, the Groups member is set as inactive to keep the review history. The group can be set to active if it's needed again.

Group reviewer permission §

A person who is added to a change form's reviewing group has permission to view the change and its affected items. This expands the viewing permissions of the person's role.

Group reviewer permission is equivalent to applying these Roles collection permissions to the change form's affected items:

• Document View pending, View released, View canceled checkboxes
• Part View pending, View released, View canceled checkboxes
• Change form View unreleased and View released checkboxes

It doesn't affect the user's Create new, Is an analyst or Collections/Rules administrator permissions.

For example, if the user's assigned role has only View released permission, then the reviewing group lets the user see a routed (unreleased) change form and each affected item's pending and canceled iterations. This expanded permission lets users with a full-function user account give the group's response.

The group reviewer permission expands users' roles only while they're added to the group. Users added to the group can view items previously reviewed by the group. Users removed from the group's Persons list will return to their role's normal permissions. This may prevent users from viewing items they've previously viewed and approved. A user with a role that has no permissions can only view items related to the group's change review responsibilities.

Group reviewer permission enables access to items listed on the change form, but doesn't apply to related items. For example, an assembly listed on a change may be viewed, but if none of its BOM items are on the change, then these cannot be viewed unless other permissions allow viewing.

Change form observing groups §

A group can also be a set of observers organized by product, functional team or partner. They don't have reviewing responsibilities, but perhaps responsibility to rework parts or update computer records when the change form is released. When set in the workflow, observing groups receive email notices.

Other groups §

Groups can identify a team in custom attributes on parts, documents and change forms. It's possible to use this team to link, for example, email addresses or phone lists in custom exports, reports or automation.

2017