Environment Configuration Management in an Altium 365 Workpace

Parent page: Altium 365 Workspace

Give the same design project to a variety of designers and the results are likely to differ, since each designer exhibits their own set of design traits, level of experience, and working preferences. While the extent of these different approaches may not be an issue across different companies and product disciplines, the visibility of such differences can become significant when they are working for the same design team within the same organization.

The Altium 365 Workspace, when activated by an Altium Designer Enterprise Subscription, allows enterprise-level enforcement of a designer's work environment – to ensure that they are following the required standards expected by that organization for design, documentation, and production – through its Team Configuration Center.

Team Configuration Center

The role of the Team Configuration Center is to give the organization centralized control over the environment its designers operate in. It achieves this through the definition and management of Environment Configurations. These are used to constrain each designer's Altium Designer working environment to only use company-ratified design elements, including schematic templates, output job configuration files, and workspace preferences. In other words, it facilitates Centralized Environment Configuration Management.

Any number of environment configurations may be defined through the Workspace Configurations page. The data used and enforced by each configuration on the design side – referred to as Configuration Data Items – are sourced from the Workspace. And by associating each environment configuration with a specific user role, and in turn assigning users to those roles, the correct working environment is loaded into Altium Designer as soon as the user connects to the Workspace. Using this role-based approach ensures that a designer always gets the setup they are entitled to, no matter whether they have their own PC, or are sharing a single PC with fellow designers.

The following image provides a graphical overview of the concept of Centralized Environment Configuration Management.

The concept of Centralized Environment Configuration Management. When a user connects to the Workspace the Team Configuration Center determines, through assigned roles, which configurations (and associated data items) are available to that user. The design client then uses the configuration data items in the relevant places.

Configuration Data Items

Before you can delve into the creation and definition of environment configurations, you need to first define the required configuration data items – the constituent elements of the configurations. These are the design elements that the user – whose assigned role(s) determine the configuration(s) available – is permitted to use. In other words, a configuration defines and enforces the set of configuration data items available to the user.

Currently, the following types of content can be used with environment configurations:

• Altium Designer Preferences
• Outputjob
• Schematic Template
• BOM Template
• Layerstack
• Project Template
• Draftsman Document Template
• Draftsman Sheet Template

Environment Configurations

Related article: Managing Environment Configurations

With revisions of configuration data items defined and released into an Altium 365 Workspace, you now have the fundamental blocks with which to define the environment configurations themselves. Environment configurations are defined from within the Team Configuration Center, accessed through the Workspace browser interface.

Access of the Team Configuration Center's browser-based user interface – through a preferred external Web Browser.

The interface allows for an administrator to craft one or more environment configurations, depending on the needs of the organization. Each configuration requires the definition of:

• Configuration Name – a meaningful name, perhaps reflective of the people whose working environment it is to govern.
• Configuration Data – the elemental constraints of the configuration. The revisions of supported data items that can be validly used by a user targeted by the configuration.
• Target Roles – specification of whom the environment configuration applies to. Roles themselves are simply groupings of users, defined and stored as part of the Workspace's Identity Service. These are the same roles that are defined and used by the Workspace to control access permissions.

An example of a defined environment configuration.

Connecting to the Altium NEXUS Workspace

Related page: Access from within the Design Software

In order to facilitate environment configuration management and to enforce environment configurations applicable to each and every user in an organization, based on their assigned role(s), each user needs to be signed in to the Workspace from Altium Designer. This is required to:

• Provide access to the Team Configuration Service.
• Provide access to the Workspace.
• Enable the Identity Service to recognize who you are and what role(s) you have been assigned to. The correct environment configuration(s) can then be applied. This becomes especially important in working environments where shared computers are the norm.

Application of Environment Configurations

Once a user is signed into the Workspace from Altium Designer, the configuration service determines the environment configuration to be used for that user, and changes the relevant areas of the design environment to enforce the permitted data elements of that configuration. If the user is assigned to several roles, and multiple environment configurations can apply, the user will be given the choice of which environment configuration to be applied when they sign-in. Choice is made from the Select a Configuration dialog.

If multiple environment configurations apply to a user, that user will be presented with the choice at the time of signing into the NEXUS Workspace.

If the user is also an Administrator for the Workspace, they have the option to Work as administrator. This allows them to work within Altium Designer, and with the Workspace, without any restrictions.

If no configuration is available for a user, then their working environment will simply be configured with the latest revision of all released Items that are supported by an environment configuration – as though a default configuration were being applied. If there is at least one released revision of a particular Data Item in the Workspace, then that Item Revision will be used – no local file-based entities (e.g. templates) will be available for use.

Ensuring Environment Configuration Compliance

Related page: Board Design Release

When it comes time to release a board design project, the process involved ensures the highest integrity for the design data and, more importantly, the generated manufacturing data which the Supply Chain will ultimately use to turn your design labor into physical reality. As part of the release process, validation checks can be inserted to ensure, for example, that electrical and design rules are checked and are being adhered to. After all, stringent validation can pick up any missed issues that can lead to costly re-spins.

As part of this validation stage in the release process, you can also include an Environment Configuration Compliance Check. This provides a means to conclusively test and enforce the use of company-authorized data elements in a design. Simply put, if you are not using data items permitted through the environment configuration available for use by your assigned role, the release will fail. This prevents a 'loose cannon' approach to design and ensures adherence to, and compliance with, the working design environments determined centrally at the enterprise level.

To include this compliance check, add an output generator of this type from the Validation Outputs section of the OutJob file used in the configuration. Specifying the conditions of the check is performed in the Environment configuration compliance setup dialog. These conditions determine:

• Which revisions of Schematic Template Items can be used by source schematic documents in the design. One or more Schematic Template Item Revisions may be added to the list.
• Which revisions of Outputjob Items can be used for the generation of outputs from the design. One or more Outputjob Item Revisions may be added to the list.
• Which revision of an Altium Designer Preferences Item must be used at release time. A single Altium Designer Preferences Item Revision may be specified.
• Whether or not all parts used in the design must be sourced from a Workspace.

In the Environment configuration compliance setup dialog, click (or the button for preferences) to access an explorer dialog with which to choose the required Item-Revision from the Workspace. To remove an entry, select it and then click the button. For Preferences, the entry cannot be deleted once made, but you can select a different Item Revision, or simply disable the option.

Add and configure an Environment configuration compliance check as part of your overall validation regime during board design release.