tasks, menus & versions inquiry

[Michael L.]

Hi List,

We’re currently having an internal discussion on the best way to maintain menus and version. We have six languages and creating menus along with their translations (of which we do a lot and because of our limited resources) is a daunting exercise. When we do PY environment refreshes (we have ten PY environments, we often lose our menus (yes, we know why) and have to redo same. Some say 100% of menu and version creation should be done in DV and then promoted via OMW while others say menu’s and versions should be done in PY only never in DV and leave it to the CNC (which we can certainly do) to make sure it gets everywhere else. As best I understand the reason is timing and the need to test immediately being that we have offices with vastly different time zones.

I know there’s probably no best practice but I’d appreciate it if you would share how you look after this with OMW / activity rules etc. (or anything else) to make this process as full proof as possible with the least amount of administration. Don’t suppose there’s a vendor solution for task/menu’s as there is for security?

Thanks in advance for any assistance,

Michael
9.0, 8.98.4.7, IBM i 6.1, OAS

 

[jdel6654]

I think biggest hurdle to get over is how it gets promoted to the various environments, right? My experience has been the OMW is the right tool for promoting menus. However, that is under the right circumstances and as long as the menus are promoted as an all-inclusive task view as opposed to individual menu changes.

Here's a couple of questions:
1. How many task views do you have?
2. Are you dependent on menus security for security -or- is your F00950 defined adequately? You don't want to have to security for ease of promotion.

JDE made it very difficult to manage individual menu changes using OMW because everything is pretty cryptic. And, there is no simple interface between the menu maintenance and OMW. To the best of my knowlege there aren't any tools that make it any easier (from QSoft, Allout, etc.). There's also the task of menu caching that throws users off.

As far as what environment to start the OMW promotion with, that is mostly irrelevant. Most developers don't even use the menus and bypass them when they can. You could easily create OMW promotion rules to promote (or demote) menus to your DV environment at the same time as promoting to your QA environment. I would say let who ever is setting up the menus decide where to set them --- as long as it isn't production.

All-inclusive menus might be something you already have experience with, if not, check into it.

 

[Luke Phillips]

Hi,

We have a solution for promoting security and menus. Would you like a technical chat in the first instance?

Thanks

Luke

 

[mattvanderkooy]

As has been mentioned, I believe OMW is the right place for menu promotions. As was suggested Transfer Activity rules can be setup so that the work can start in any environment and get pushed up or down with a simple change in project status in OMW.
Q Software does have a tool that helps out with menu management that sounds like it could be of large benefit in your setup. Drop me a note if you would like to learn more about it.
Thanks,

 

[James Drake - ERP-One]

Michael,

I have sent you an email, feel free to contact me directly.

Thank you
James