Workspace#

Overview#

Manufacturing teams use Critical Manufacturing MES for different responsibilities, from production operations to quality control and maintenance. Each team needs access to information and actions relevant to its work, presented in a way that makes daily tasks easy to follow.

Each user regularly works with only part of its functionality: operators need Resource status and work information, quality engineers review inspection data, and supervisors monitor production indicators.

On the shop floor, both the information presented and the effort needed to reach it affect daily work. Unrelated data, unnecessary actions, and repeated navigation can make routine tasks harder to follow.

Workspaces address this need by bringing relevant views and actions together in a configurable interface tailored to the role of each user. Page designers can adapt the layout and content to support production, quality, or maintenance activities.

On the other hand, Workgroups define the operational scope of those views. Two operators may perform the same function while being responsible for different Resources or production Areas. By receiving a Workgroup as context, the same Workspace can display information relevant to each assignment.

In this tutorial, you will build Workspaces using widget templates and connect their content to the Workgroup assigned to each team. You will navigate from an assigned Resource to its operational view, connect widgets for Quality Control actions, and give one user access to all three Workspaces to record maintenance data and complete a Checklist.

Target Audience#

This tutorial is intended for MES administrators and UI Page designers configuring operational interfaces in Critical Manufacturing MES. Familiarity with basic MES navigation and user and role management is recommended.

How Workspaces and Workgroups Work Together#

A Workspace is a UI Page with Workspace scope. Its widgets determine how information is presented and which interactions are available. Some System Widgets support templates that simplify the setup of common views by automatically configuring widget settings, data sources, and links.

A Workgroup groups Resources, Steps, and Areas that define a scope of work. The Workspace receives this context to display the relevant information. One Workspace can therefore be reused for different Workgroups.

On the other hand, Roles connect users to their available Workspaces. The Workgroup assignment for a user identifies the associated Role, while the Role defines the available Workspaces. These relationships connect the interface to the operational responsibilities of the user.

Configuration and Lifecycle#

The Workspace interface and its Workgroup context are managed separately. The UI Page is a versioned entity managed through change control. The Workgroup defines the operational scope used by the page. User and Role assignments determine which page and Workgroup combinations are available to each user.

Workspace UI Page#

A UI Page is a versioned object managed through a Change Set. After designing and saving the page, complete the approval process and ensure that its version is Effective before using it as a Workspace. Depending on the Change Set configuration, approval can make its items Effective automatically. Otherwise, set the approved version Effective manually.

Terminating the UI Page deletes the Role Workspace records that reference it. Restoring an object does not automatically recover deleted Generic or Smart Table records, so access configuration must be checked when bringing a page back into use.

Workgroup#

A standalone Workgroup provides the Resources, Steps, and Areas used as context by the Workspace. It can be edited while Active, terminated when no longer needed, and unterminated if it still exists in the system. Its lifecycle is separate from the approval and effectiveness of the UI Page.

From Configuration to Use#

The configuration connects these objects through the following flow:

1. Define the Workgroup and the operational scope it represents.
2. Build the Workspace UI Page and configure its widgets to use that context.
3. Complete the UI Page approval process and make its version Effective.
4. Configure the Role Workspace and User Workgroup assignments, then verify the available view and context as the intended user.

Learning Path#

Complete Prerequisites, then follow the scenarios in the order shown below.