Properties grouping

[Marbi]

Dear fellow Archi users,
As more and more I use Archi and appreciate its advantages, my appetite for new advanced functions increases. Perhaps this is not an original idea, for which I apologize in advance, but please consider a new Archi functionality. Often you need to stereotyped a frequently occurring architecture element type by describing it with a specific set of properties. For example, motivation Driver stereotyped as a "risk" can be described by type, impact, probability, priority, status, or infrastructure Device stereotyped as a "server" can be described by number of cores, ram, hdd, operating system etc. To avoid multiple clicking of the same set of properties, property by property, it would be more efficient to define a named group (set) of properties (eg. "Risk" group or "Server" group ), pre-assign to the group some set of properties, and assign the entire group to the architecture element just by one click. Maybe it makes sense also to implement a predefined group assignment to a given type of elements in the context of the model as a model configuration, thus implementing some form of stereotyping mechanism?
You could as well add the "group" column in the _properties.csv to make group more functional in exported files.
What do you say
Regards,
Marbico   

[Phil Beauvoir]

Hi,

thanks for the feedback. Sounds like a useful idea. Perhaps the whole Properties feature needs revisiting in a future version of Archi. You could also open a feature request and discussion at Githib if you wanted to - https://github.com/archimatetool/archi/issues

Phil

[Hervé]

Looks great ...

At the moment, I also add manually a set of properties but the risk is effectively to forget one. Should the properties set created automatically, there will be less risk to forget one.

Best regards

[prgee]

Hi,

I have used the following workaround to avoid having to manually add user properties to each element:

For each type of element I plan to use I create a template element with the name formatted the way I want and add any User Properties that relate to it. For example, I use one named "(Business Unit)" for an actor that represents a business unit and add user properties "BU:ManagerName" and "BU:FTEcount".

Each time I need to create a new instance of this I simply the template element and use the Ctrl+D command to duplicate it and replace "(Business Unit)" with the actual name. The Ctrl+D function will also copy the user properties so it helps enforce consistency. I also make use of sub-folders and I tend to create a separate template element for each sub-folder which includes the user properties that I want for that category.

Since the template name begins with the "(" character and Archi sorts elements alphabetically within folders it always appears at the top of the list. Also, as long as you select the "Display unused elements in italics" option in Preferences, the template element name should always show in italics since you would typically never include it in a diagram view.

Regards,
Peter

[RubenS]

Hello,

can anyone provide input as to how to create a "template element"?

Is this still possible in Archi 4?

br,
Ruben

[Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie]

Hi,

can anyone provide input as to how to create a "template element"?
Is this still possible in Archi 4?

"template element" as described by peter are just normal elements, so you can always use this trick.

FWIW, I personaly do it a lot with a slight difference: I don't create those "templates" in my main model but in a dedicated one that I use as a toolbox. See this page for more information.

Regards,

JB