Item-Request Relationships

You can relate items and requests in order to track which items need to be changed and to see whether the items have been modified or approved. Items and requests can only be related to one another by system-defined relationships.

NOTE Valid relationships are not effective if CM Rules have not been set up for a particular Dimensions CM request type. Therefor any request, whose type rules are disabled, may have any product item revision related to it, provided its item type rules are also disabled.

Item-request relationships are:

- Affected By. An item (or item revision) can be affected by one or more requests. This means that the item(s) need to be modified to implement the changes required by the request(s).

- In Response To. An item (or item revision) can be in response to one or more requests. This means that these versions of the items are intended to satisfy the required changes as requested in the request.

- Information. An item (or item revision) can have an informational relationship to one or more requests. This means that the change is related for information purposes only.

For a request and item to be related to each other:

1. If CM Rules are switched on, the item and request types must be allowed to be in a valid relationship. This relationship is a parent-child one, with the request type always the parent of the item type.

You can relate any item to any request if CM rules are off.

2. For all relationships types, the item and request must both be open.

3. For the Affected By and In Response To types, the request type and the item type must both have rules enabled or must both have rules disabled. See Change Management Rules for information.

4. For the Affected By type, if rules are enabled, then the relationship can only be established (or dissolved) if the Dimensions CM request is in the CREATE, ANALYSIS, or AN+WORK phase.

5. For the In Response To type, if rules are enabled, then the relationship can only be established (or dissolved) if the Dimensions CM request is in the WORK or AN+WORK phase.

Example: Relating a Request to Item Revisions

In-Car Inc. has decided to change its website to American spelling. Sally was assigned the task of combing through the pages and submitting requests for instances of different spellings. One of the resulting requests is a request to change "catalogue" to "catalog".

The request passed to Jane, the web site manager, who identified the page as Product_List.html. She relates the existing version, revision 3 of this item to the request as Affected By.

The changes are assigned back to Sally. When she checks out this item to create revision 4 and update the file, this new revision is automatically related to the request as In Response To.