Last week at the PLM World Conference I attended a round-table discussion about Organization structures in Teamcenter. It was a wide ranging discussion that touched on several related topics, Access Rules in particular. Something came up in that discussion which was a bit surprising to me that I don’t really understand. I’m hoping I can get some of you to educate me a bit.

A couple of the attendees made the comment that their Access Rule Trees are constantly being updated. One admin had updated the rule tree back home three times during the four days of the conference. This really surprised me because the Access Rule Tree where I work is rarely modified. To be honest, my first reaction to hearing that others need to make frequent changes was that they must have a flawed process or data model that they’re working with. But… these are smart, experienced, people. So maybe it’s something else — maybe they’re dealing with more complex use cases than what we deal with, for example, and that drives their need.

So, what I’m hoping is that some of you who manage “living” Access Rule Trees could take a minute or three to summarize what the main drivers are for you to make a change to the tree. I’m especially interested in hearing from anyone with experience dealing with both static and dynamic Access Rule Trees. If you share some insight as to what were the fundamental differences between the systems driving the need, or lack of a need, to frequently make changes, that would be really appreciated.