Change Comparison 

Use

After a configuration change the operative network is compared with a temporary network, which contains the current configuration. As a result the necessary change steps are determined. During this process, the manual changes to the operative network are taken into account whenever possible.

Integration

A change comparison is started automatically if the characteristic value assignment is changed in the sales document (assembly processing) or in the network (network was the object originally configured)

If the value assignment is changed in a sales document that the network has been manually assigned to, you can trigger the change comparison in the network header by choosing Extras ® Configuration ® Change management and then Change management ® Create change comparison.

Features

You can use configuration to select activities, activity elements, material components and production resources/tools via object dependencies. During a change comparison the following changes steps are executed for these objects:

Delete: The system tries to delete all objects that exist in the operative network and have a reference to a standard network, but do not exist in temporary network. Activities that have the status Created are deleted physically, from status Released on a deletion flag is set. Objects that were created manually without reference to standard networks remain in the operative network according to the settings in the change profile.

Add: The system tries to add all the objects in the temporary network that do not have a counterpart in the operative network. If activities are to be added, all the subordinate objects (activity elements, milestones, component allocation) are also added from the temporary network.

Change: The field values of objects that exist in both the operative and the temporary network are copied from the temporary network to the operative network. This affects data fields that can be changed by the configuration via object dependencies as well as dependent fields. Scheduled dates and actual dates are not changed on principle. Deletion flags for activities in the operative network are reset.

If a conflict occurs during a change step, and this has error or warning character, the change step is not automatically executed in the background together with the change comparison.

All change steps are logged with their processing status and information about the cause of the conflict (error, warning or information message) in a change step overview. Here you can manually trigger change steps in which conflicts with warnings have occurred, in the case of conflicts with errors, you have to resolve the cause of the error first.

Constraints

Manually deleted objects and manual changes to fields are not recognized and are not upheld after a change to the configuration.

Subnetworks cannot be deleted automatically. A subnetwork has to be deleted manually or have a deletion flag set manually before the corresponding activity can be deleted or have a deletion flag set. Subnetworks are also not compared automatically during change comparison for a network.