An example of preference hierarchy

Everything in this example is based on a single preference, one which registers a style sheet to a business object for the summary view. It could be any preference as all preferences behave the same way. Since this preference definition's protection scope is User, you can create instances at the Site, Group, Role, and User location. This means you can control its value based on your users' current group, role, or even user name. Example: I want the summary view's property layout for item revisions to depend on my users' login information Following are the details of this example. You have three groups: Engineering, Manufacturing, and Testing. Each group has three roles: Manager, Designer, and Viewer. You want a default style sheet that everyone will use unless otherwise specified. Your technical users need an extended set of properties. Your managers need a page of workflow information. Your designers need classification information. You have users that just need a simplified layout for viewing. You have Conner. Conner is a power-user. Conner needs a special layout regardless of which group or role he's in. Style sheet datasets Five style sheet datasets are considered. ItemRevSummary Configured to be the default style sheet for the Item Revision summary page. This applies to everyone unless overridden. IRSumTech Configured to provide the extra properties for the Engineering and Manufacturing groups, but not for any other groups. IRSumMgr Configured to display workflow information for the Manager role, regardless of group. IRSumDes Configured to show the classification trace for the Designer role, regardless of group. ConnersIRSum Configured for Conner. Conner has his own requirements Preference instances Assign the style sheets to the various groups and roles, and even users if desired, by creating each preference instance with the value pointing to the respective style sheet. In this example, there are 6 preference instances created. Preference type Instance location User Conner: ConnersIRSum Role Manager: IRSumMgr Role Designer: IRSumDes Group Engineering: IRSumTech Group Manufacturing: IRSumTech Site site: ItemRevSum The Viewer role and the Tester group have no preference instances created for their location. How does Teamcenter choose which preference to use? In this example, Alice selects a DocumentRevision business object and uses the Summary tab. When she does this, Teamcenter performs a few steps to determine which style sheet to use. Based on the object type and the view location, the system knows the name of the preference instances to retrieve. In this example, DocumentRevision.SUMMARYRENDERING. There are two instances: one at the Site location, and one at the Manager Role location. Based on the user's current session information, Teamcenter chooses the appropriate preference instance. Less specific locations are overridden by more specific locations. The value of the chosen preference instance is read, providing the name of the style sheet to retrieve. Teamcenter uses the style sheet to render the view. Result Your users see a different set of information based on what group or role they are in because the client uses different style sheets. User - Group / Role Preference instance build-up Resulting style sheet Alice — Engineering / Manager Alice: none Manager: IRSumMgr Engineering: IRSumTech Site: ItemRevSum IRSumMgr Ted — Manufacturing / Manager Ted: none Manager: IRSumMgr Manufacturing: IRSumTech Site: ItemRevSum IRSumMgr Sue — Testing / Manager Sue: none Manager: IRSumMgr Testing: none Site: ItemRevSum IRSumMgr Bob — Engineering / Designer Bob: none Designer: IRSumDes Engineering: IRSumTech Site: ItemRevSum IRSumDes Carol — Engineering / Viewer Carol: none Viewer: none Engineering: IRSumTech Site: ItemRevSum IRSumTech Pat — Testing / Viewer Pat: none Viewer: none Testing: none Site: ItemRevSum ItemRevSum Conner — Engineering / Manager Conner: ConnersIRSum Manager: IRSumMgr Engineering: IRSumTech Site: ItemRevSum ConnersIRSum Conner — Testing / Viewer Conner: ConnersIRSum Viewer: none Testing: none Site: ItemRevSum ConnersIRSum Alice sees the style sheet for Managers because she does not have a user preference set to supersede it. The site preference is overridden by the Engineering group preference, which is overridden by the Manager role preference. Ted has the same result; the Manufacturing group preference is overridden by the Manager preference. Sue doesn't have a group preference, but she still gets the Manager role preference. Bob sees the style sheet for Designers because of his role, similar to the preceding example. Carol sees the tech style sheet because there is no role preference for Viewers. Pat's group and role do not have preferences associated with them, and neither does she have a user preference, so she gets the default style sheet defined by the site preference. Conner gets Conner's style sheet regardless of which group or role he's in, since a user preference supersedes all others.