Information Scoping

Information scoping or delta's is an integral and powerful Metaflow feature. It allows the user to treat the same assets in a project totally differently for individual channels that are to be delivered from the project as a whole.

Any actions performed on bundles in the plan view will potentially affect all assigned plan/channel bundles. However, any actions performed on bundles directly from a plan/channel editor window will only affect that plan/channel and shall have no inherited effects outside of that scope.

In principle, this covers all potential bundle actions from overriding bundle attributes to device conflict resolution. For pure convenience and understanding; if you are ever editing a bundle at the plan/channel level a hyperlink is displayable in editor panes that jump the user to the global editor for this information. Hence, if this link is visible in a bundle editor then the editor definitely represents the plan/channel scope and any manipulations/actions will be persisted in the delta.xml for that bundle in that scope. Hence, the opposite applies; if you do NOT link in an bundle then any changes to the bundle will be applied and inherited globally to all plan/channel scopes if the data changed has meaning to that channel context. Please note that this is a finely tuned process. For instance; an additional language or device is added to the global bundle the IS NOT supported by an associated plan/channel then that channel will NOT show out of date as the date has no affect on deployments to that channel.

One very important thing to note however, is that for usability, any tasks in a plan that result in the user double clicking on a bundle from within the plan editor is AUTOMATICALLY opened at the channel scope. This may not in fact be the most optimal scope to apply changes in all use cases. For instance if the project had not yet been given a short description and the user clicked on a task relating to short descriptions, then filling in the default editor opened would only apply the data to the channel and hence it will not automatically be inherited to other plan/channels that might also require exactly the same value.

In cases such as this it may be more efficient to open the project properties by double clicking on the hyperlink in the editor pane and filling in the values there for all subsequent auto inheritance to other plan/channels should they mandate this value. This could then be overridden at plan/channel levels should the default value not be suitable for that particular channel's rules.

To summarize and assist the user in identifying the level at which they are currently editing the following indicators are provided:

• If the user is currently looking at an editor that is collecting information that will be persisted at a plan/channel delta the editor in question will show a hyperlink in the top right side of the editor pane, clicking this link will open up the equivalent editor at the global level where any data submitted will be reusable in other plan/channel scopes.
  
  
  

(Note: The user may also use the : Preferences > Main Preferences > display settings to pick a suitable colour to use for all title bars of scope channel/plan panes to ensure a clear indication of current level of scope to avoid misunderstanding.