An asset type is the primary level of organization in Rational® Asset
Manager. Asset types facilitate governance and searching. When users
submit assets, the information and artifacts that users must include
display as constraints on the assets and these constraints depend
on the asset type.
Uses for asset types
Users
and administrators use asset types for many purposes, including the
following:
- To align with the internal structure of an organization.
- To allow users to filter a search by asset type.
- To place a constraint on an asset. For example, you can require
that an asset have a specific file type as an artifact or be related
to another asset in a certain way.
- To automatically assign categories to the asset based on the content
of XML artifacts.
- To create rules that allow XML artifacts to be indexed and found
by keyword searches.
- To view metrics of the number of assets that exist by type in
the repository.
- To trigger a custom review process that is assigned to specific
asset types in a community.
- To assign community roles to apply to assets of a specific type.
Considerations for creating asset types
Repository
administrators can create asset types for the repository and for specific
communities; community administrators can create asset types for use
in a specific community or make modifications to global asset types.
Asset types have an asset type name and a description.
When creating an asset type, consider
the following questions:
- Who will use the asset?
- How will the asset be used?
- What artifacts must the asset include?
- What descriptive information must the asset include?
- What information will users need to find and use the asset?
- What assets are related to the asset, and what are the relationships?
- Will the asset artifacts include XML content? If yes, do you want
to automatically assign categories based on that XML content?
Scoping asset types
If a community requires
an asset type that will not be applicable or useful to other communities,
Repository administrators can scope, or limit, asset types for use
in specific communities.
Repository and community administrators
can also choose to limit the available categories that can be assigned
to an asset type.
Governing assets with asset type constraints
Administrators
can customize the asset type to require the following constraints:
- Asset type
- Description
- Artifact
- Controls the number and types of artifact that users must include
to submit an asset. Can require an amount of artifacts that conform
to a format, label, or extension.
- Relationship
- Indicates one or more assets with a specific relationship that
users must include when they submit an asset.
- Attribute
- Add additional custom asset attributes that users can or must
include when they submit an asset. You can also limit who can edit
the value for an attribute.
Administrators can edit these constraints at
a later time.
Constraints do not allow you
to submit an asset to the repository
Although constraints
for asset types are a useful tool for controlling assets in your repository,
users cannot submit new assets until they resolve all constraints,
which can be frustrating, especially for new users.
Also, if
different communities on the repository have different requirements
for assets, you may find that over time you could end up and with
an overwhelming and difficult-to-manage list of asset types.
Because
you can modify assets after they have been submitted to the repository,
a different strategy may be to use a smaller amount of asset types
with few constraints, and then use custom lifecycles for a community
with policies for custom lifecycles to
enforce various requirements on assets in a community.
Example
A company creates a training program
for a group of employees. In the Rational Asset
Manager web client, the administrator creates an asset type called
education.
To ensure that the
education asset has the
necessary components and is easy to find within the repository, the
administrator specifies the following constraints:
- Exactly 1 artifact with the file extension .doc.
- Use only the following categories: business solutions,
training.
- At least 1 asset of type presentation with
the relationship child.
- At least 1 support contact is required.