Communicate Software Design using PostMania

PostMania is a tool that helps your team communicate with each other. By using PostMania, team members can post messages or questions on diagrams, or even on a specific shape in a diagram. Other team members will be notified and can reply accordingly.

The use of PostMania offers several benefits. First, the conversation between team members is all centered around the diagram, or even a specific shape, which ensures that communication is unambiguous. Second, the post messages are kept with the project, which provides a way for team members to trace back important discussions. Finally, team members can post and reply not only in Visual Paradigm but also in any web browser, allowing them to respond to questions anytime and anywhere.

Preparation

To avoid messing up your production data, we have prepared a project file for you to walk through this tutorial. Please download the project file Content Management System.vpp and ask your server administrator to import it into the server. At the end of this tutorial, you can ask the administrator to delete the project file from the server.

This tutorial will show you how two team members can communicate with each other using PostMania. Therefore, some steps will be performed by another team member who also has read and commit permissions for the Content Management System project. We suggest you ask a teammate to work with you to complete this tutorial.

Enabling PostMania on a Project

To use PostMania on a project, an administrator must enable the 'PostMania' option for that project in Visual Paradigm Online ("VP Online") or Teamwork Server, depending on your team's hosting option.

1. Log in to VP Online/Teamwork Server as an administrator in a web browser.
2. Open the Projects tab at the top of the page.
3. From the project list, select the Content Management System project. We assume that you have already imported the sample project to the server as instructed in the previous section. If not, please read the previous section again.
4. On the right-hand side, click on the PostMania tab.
5. Check Enable PostMania. If it has already been checked, just keep it as is.
   
6. Click Save.

Posting a Discussion Topic

Developers who want to raise a design issue can post a discussion topic in PostMania. Posts can be made about a specific diagram or shape. Typically, a post is made to clarify design issues ("Are you sure?"), request a change ("Please revise this part"), or ask for an action ("Please implement this."), etc.

In this section, you will create a post in PostMania asking your teammate to revise the database design.

1. Start Visual Paradigm.
2. Open the Content Management System project from the server. You can open a project by selecting Project > Open from the application toolbar.
   
3. Open the Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) named CMS. Assume you are a developer programming a function and you find that the "Post" entity is missing a column required for storing the post's content. You will need to request that the database designer revise the design and the database schema.
   
4. Open the action bar by clicking the tiny button on the right-hand side of the diagram.
   
5. Click on PostMania Topic Pane on the action bar. On the right-hand side of the diagram, you will see the PostMania Topic Pane, where discussion topics and content are listed.
   
6. Select the Post entity.
   
7. Click on New Topic at the bottom of the pane.
   
8. At the top of the PostMania Topic Pane, select your teammate to notify in the To field.
   
9. Change the subject from Post to Column missing in the Post table.
   
10. Enter the post message: There should be an attribute for storing the post content. Please correct the design and the schema.
    
11. Click Post at the bottom of the PostMania Topic Pane.
    

Replying to a Post

When someone makes a post, you can reply if you have any comments about what they said. In this section, your teammate will correct the database design and reply to the post.

1. Ask your teammate to open the Content Management System project from the server. You should see the number 1 appear at the top right of the project thumbnail in the Open Project window. This represents the number of unread posts in PostMania.
   
2. You should also see a notification. Click on the Notification icon at the bottom right of the status bar.
   
3. You will be brought to the PostMania page. The posts created for you are listed on the left.
   
4. Click on the post to open it.
   
5. The post will be shown on the right. You can reply at the bottom of the screen, but let's open the diagram to check the problem in detail. Click Open at the top right corner.
   
6. The ERD will open with the Post entity automatically selected, and the post message will be displayed.
   
7. Let's correct the design. Add a column named content: text to the Post entity.
   
8. Commit the changes by selecting Team > Commit from the application toolbar.
9. Let's inform the post creator about the design correction. Click on the Click here to reply field at the bottom of the PostMania Topic Pane and enter: Design corrected. Database schema will be updated shortly.
   
10. Click Post. If you switch back to the original working environment, you should see the reply under the post, as shown in the screen below.