Deliverable in custom link

Hi,

I am trying to create a custom link and use it in a modeler.

Everything is fine when I try to create custom link by name "Deliver" with Start Type Organization and End Type Organization with the interpretation as shown in the attached picture. Then I associated this custom link to Communication Modeler. I am able to use in the modeler too.

The main aim of doing so is to represent that an organization will provide a deliverable to another organization. But I am not able to see the "Deliverable" drop down when I double click on the custom link after specifying in the communication modeler. According to my understanding by going through the Provision Help through Help button in attached picture, the "Flow" interpretation allows to carry a payload from one instance to another. Am I missing something here while creating or my understanding is wrong? Can you please clarify?

Note this I am trying in Provision 6.1.3. Probably newer version allows this?

Thanks

Anand

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Comments

Roger_Blair

Hi Anand,

I dont think you can add a deliverable to a custom link. I have tried in Version 6.24 and when you set the link style to 'Flow' it allows you set a start and end phrase but not a deliverable. You could use a Communication link and add a stereotype if you wanted to filter. I would suggest only using custom links as a last resort. I would be interested if anyone else has found a way to add a deliverable to a custom link.

Cheers

Roger

Anand Viswanathan

Hi Roger,

Thanks a lot for your reply and thoughts. You are right that I can actually use a communication link.

But my real interest was to represent the list of features or deliverables a transformation project we are undertaking is entitled to provide to various departments in the organization using Navigator. Currently I don't think we can create a link between the objects "Project" and "Organization" in Navigator. So tried to define a custom link and tried to use a deliverable. I was thinking I will get a list of deliverables defined like a standard "Link" from where I can select to my wish.

Any views or ideas how I can achieve it?

Regards

Anand

Roger_Blair

Hi Anand,

I can think of some ways of doing this but all have their drawbacks.

The communication link has some flexibility but I dont think you can add new communication links to inbuilt ProVision objects i.e. you cannot add a Comm link between an Organisation and a Project but you can create a Comm link between and Organisation and a Custom object using the 'Laws' tab so if you were willing to use a custom object in place of the Project object you could do that. Then you can see the deliverables.

An alternative is to use a custom link and set a custom property on the link with a number of predefined 'deliverables' in a drop down list that could be user selected - this is if you want to constrain the list. The disadvantages are that you have to go into each link and find the property and select that value. Also it dows not appear graphically.

If you can live without a drop down list you could just use the stereotype value on a custom link and that will be visible graphically and can be reported on. We did ask metastorm to give us the ability to add new stereotypes that could be defined per object type but I dont think that got built.

Anyway some options perhaps?

Cheers

Roger

Jim Clendon

Hi Anand

You could try 2 custom links to a deliverable object, one could be "deliver to", the other "received by" or some similar term. Of course that rules out the communication model.

I have ended up using the navigator a lot as it lets me put the object and relationships I want, although it has limts to what the standard interpretation will do.

Ideally we need some more model types or variation on current ones, or to be able to link a custom link to a deliverable as per your origianl post. However any enhancement to do any of this could be years away even if it was rasied, well supported by both other users and staff, and accepted.

Also I don't think there is anything "new" in the Enteprise Architecture modelling language even in ProVision 9.0.0 that resolves this. I'm using 9.0.0 and I can't see anything that would help. As far as I can tell development on new model types, object types or any combination of the two hasn't happened in some years now. The last time it looked promising was back when they bought out the EAMPP which we had hoped would result in an update of the Enteprrise Architecutre modelling language. Its a bit of either or but not both.