Managing Projects

Searching

Searching for projects is accomplished by using the filter box in the lower left of the hierarchy. The search filter will search project names and labels for matches and show the results in the hierarchy above.

Creating New Projects

To create a new project:

1. Open Analyze
2. Select “Projects” from the top menu bar
3. Click the “New Project” button
4. Complete the form information including the “Access Control” section
5. Click “Create”

The project is now ready for updating access permissions, adding owners, and creating workflows.

Note

By default, the project will be accessible by all members of the current workspace

Automatic Change Tracking

All changes to a project, including workflows, data editors, hierarchies, table structures, and UDFs are tracked and allow point-in-time recovery of the state. This allows for easy recovery from user introduced problems or simply copying a different point-in-time to another project for comparison.

In addition to overall tracking, projects and their elements also allow for versioning. Not only is creating a version easy, you can also merge changes from one version to another. This provides a simple way to keep track of snapshots or to create a version for development and then be able to merge those changes into the non-development version when you want.

Managing Project Access

Types of Access

Project security has been simplified into three types of access:

• All Workspace Members
• Specific Members Only
• Specific Security Groups Only

Setting the project security is easy to do:

1. Open Analyze
2. Select “Projects”
3. Click the edit icon of the project you want to restrict
4. Choose desired restriction under “Access Control”
5. Click “Update”

All Workspace Members

“All Workspace Members” access is the most simple option since it provides access to all members of the workspace and does not require any additional assignment of members.

Specific Members Only

“The Specific Members Only” access setting requires assignment of each member to the project.To assign members to a project:

1. Open Analyze
2. Select “Projects” from the top menu bar
3. Click the members icon
4. Grant access to members by selecting the check box next to their name in the “Access” column
5. Click “Update”

For clouds with large numbers of members, this approach can often require more effort than desired, which is where security groups become useful.

Note

To add members, you must be a member of the workspace.

Specific Security Groups Only

The “Specific Security Groups Only” option enables assigning specific security groups permission to access the account. With access restrictions relying on association with a security group or groups, the administration of account access for larger groups is much simpler. This is particularly useful when combined with single sign-on automatic group association. By using single sign-on to set member group assignments, these groups can also enable and disable access to projects implicitly.

To edit assigned groups:

1. Open Analyze
2. Select “Projects” from the top menu bar
3. Click the security groups icon
4. Grant access to security groups by selecting the check box next to their name in the “Access” column
5. Click “Update”

Setting Different Viewing Roles

Many times a project may require several transformations and tables to complete intermediate steps while the end result may end up only consisting of a few tables. Members do not always require viewing of all the elements of the project, sometimes just the final product. PlaidCloud offers you the ability to set different viewing roles to easily declutter and control the visibility of each member.

There are three built-in viewing roles: Architect, Manager, and Explorer

The Architect role is the most simple because it allows full visibility and control of projects, workflows, tables, variables, data editors, hierarchies, and user defined functions.

The Manager and Explorer roles have no specific access privileges but can be custom-defined. In other words, you can choose which items are visible to each group.

Note

Manager* *and Explorer are not security groups, they only provide a convenient way of segregating duties and visibility of information.

You can make everyone an Architect if you feel visibility of everything within the project is needed; otherwise, you can designate members as Manager and/or Explorer project members and control visibility that way.

To set the different role:

1. Open Analyze
2. Select “Projects”
3. Click the members icon
4. Select the member you whose role you would like to change
5. Double click their current role in the “Role” column
6. Select the desired role
7. Click “Update”

Managing Project Variables

When running a project or workflow it may be useful to set variables for recurring tasks in order to decrease clutter and save time. These variables operate just like a normal algebraic variable by allowing you to set what the variable represents and what operation should follow it. PlaidCloud allows you to set these variables at the project level, which will effect all the workflows within that project, or at the workflow level, which will only effect that specific workflow.

To set a project level variable:

1. Open Analyze
2. Select “Projects”
3. Click the Manage Project Variables icon

From the Variables Table you can view the variables and view/edit the current values. You can also add new or delete existing variables by clicking the “New Project Variable” button.

Copying a Project

Copy Project copies a project — all of it, or just the parts you pick — into a brand-new project or into a project that already exists.

To copy a project:

1. Open Analyze
2. Select “Projects”
3. Select the project you want to copy
4. Click the Actions button and choose Copy Project
5. Choose the target, pick what to bring across, and click Copy Project

Choosing What to Copy

The selection tree lists what the project holds, by type — workflows, steps, tables, dimensions, data editors, user-defined functions. Leave everything ticked to copy the whole project, or tick only the parts you want.

You do not have to work out what those parts depend on. Anything you tick brings its dependencies with it: the tables a step reads and writes, the dimensions it loads or allocates against, the user-defined functions it calls, and any sub-workflow or macro it invokes.

Copying Into a New Project

Give the new project a name and an ID. The ID becomes its schema name and cannot be changed later.

Copying Into an Existing Project

Pick the target from the project list. The copy adds to that project rather than replacing it.

You need to be able to change the target. A copy into a project you hold no role on is refused, as is a copy into a project that has been locked to prevent changes — checked before anything is read or written, so a refused copy leaves the target untouched. A project also cannot be copied into itself.

The target keeps its own settings. Its name, ID, data connection environment, storage defaults, document account, access type, access lists and row-access grants are all left as they are. Only the contents you selected are brought in.

Where an incoming item is the same item as one already in the target, you choose what happens:

• Overwrite duplicate items with incoming data — the incoming version replaces the one in the target.
• Create new copy of duplicate items — the target keeps what it has, and the incoming one is added alongside it with copy appended to its name, and a counter if that name is taken too.

Project and workflow variables are the exception to Create new copy: a variable is identified by its name, so there is no way to add a second copy of one without renaming it into something nothing refers to. Where the target already defines a variable the copy also carries, the target’s own value is kept and the copy tells you which variables it left alone. Overwrite treats variables like everything else and replaces them.

This matching is by identity, not by name — an item that came from the same project originally is recognised as the same item, while two items that merely happen to share a name are treated as different items and both will be present afterwards.

Update References

A project’s workflow steps refer to tables and other objects inside that project. Update References rewrites those references so they point at the copy rather than the original — which is almost always what you want, and is why it is on by default. Turning it off leaves the copied steps pointing back at the project they came from.

Note

Copying runs in the background. A progress dialog shows the copy advancing through its stages; you can click Run in Background to dismiss it and keep working — the project list updates automatically and you’re notified when the copy finishes.

Viewing the Project Report

When a project or workflow is dynamic, maintaining detailed documentation becomes a challenge. To help solve this problem, PlaidCloud provides the ability to generate a project-level report that gives detailed documentation of workflows, workflow steps, user defined transforms, variables, and tables. This report is generated on-demand and reflects the current state of the project.

To download the report:

1. Open Analyze
2. Select “Projects”
3. Click the report icon