The main part of the panel consists of a list of all recorded Specs in numerical order, showing
· Spec number
· Title
· TSG/WG with prime responsibility
· Active/withdrawn flag
The text of records for withdrawn (or abandoned) Specs is in fainter font than those for active Specs. The title field for draft Specs appears in blue font until the precise text of the document itself and the database have been checked to be identical.
Pressing the "specs" button to the left of the Spec number opens a form set showing all information relating to the Spec concerned. (See §2.4.)
To quickly find the record for a particular spec, a search button at the top of the panel gives a rapid search facility.
1.1.2
Useful functions panel
This (turquoise) panel is opened by pressing the "useful things" button at the top of the main panel (§1.1.1).
The "help" button gives access to this user guide. The "what's new" button gives a list of important enhancemenets to the database, in reverse chronological order.
Most other buttons are self explanatory, and provide lists of information. A few are worth mentioning specifically …
The button "Titles for references" provides the full text of the reference entry, correctly formatted for direct copying-and-pasting into the References clause of TSs (and TRs).
The button "specs by Rapporteur" lists the specs for which each rapporteur is responsible. The button "Rapporteurs – all" lists all rapporteurs, with the number of Specs for which they are responsible.
The button "Specs by WG (for web)" lists all active Specs on a per-group basis. (The mention "for web" indicates that the underlying query is also used to produce the equivalent information on the corresponding web pages.)
A set of buttons "41.101 specs" and its neighbours generate the lists of specs in TS 41.101 etc maintained by the 3GPP Support Team (Specs Manager).
At lower right on the panel are buttons which give access to the New CRs panel and to the Statistics panel.
A button at the bottom right of this panel gives access to the Admin control panel.
1.2.3
CR database view
This (purple) panel is opened
via a button on the main form (§1.1.1) and permits various views of the CR
database, and also the associated list of CR implementation errors, which is
maintained for statistical purposes.
1.2.4
New CRs
This (green) panel is used before,
during and following TSG plenary meetings to manage the process of new CR
record generation, status update, and ultimate reflection in new versions of
Specs. These procedures are detailed in
§2.11.
1.2.5
Meetings
The "meetings" button on the main panel opens a list of meetings of all 3GPP groups with all details. Most data is imported from the ETSI DS meetings tables, but certain fields are unique to 3GPP. Some fields, in particular:
- FTP server folder for meeting and for the Tdocs subfolder
- the first and last Tdoc identities
are calculated automatically (as long as the folders and tdoc obey the usual rules for relative location and names).
Other information – for example, spec availability dates for TSG plenaries, satisfaction survey URL, … – have to be added manually.
A set of buttons at the foot of the meetings list allows the running of a number of stock queries.
1.2.6
Tdocs
The TDocs button on the main panel opens up the tdocs form (dark green). This offers a search for any tdoc (and to open it with a button click) and to list the tdocs from a particular meeting.
A sub-panel at the foot of the page allows new tdocs to be catalogued.
Administrative funtions (§2.2, 2.11) allow the application to search the TSG/WG document areas of the FTP server to discover new TDocs and to catalogue them under the appropriate meeting. A further function allows the automatic discovery of document title and source organization; this discovery function only works for TDocs in Word format, and makes some assumptions about the Word file layout. Other document types and Word files which do not conform to the usual layout cannot be processed.
1.2.7
Work Plan
A button on the main panel opens the Work Plan form. This is imported (manually) from the master work plan maintained in MS Project. The form shows all details, with records colour coded to show their hierarchical level.
A variety of buttons at the bottom of this form allow the running of certain queries, described under §2.11.
1.2.8
Statistics
The dark blue statistics panel is accessble via a button on the right of the "useful things" panel. It contains buttons for running queries which present some of the most commonly used statistics which can be extracted from the database.
1.2.9
Admin
functions
The pale red administrative functions panel is opened via a button on the lower right of the "useful things" panel.
The most commonly used area of this panel is the subpanel with buttons allowing the contents of certain database tables to be refreshed by synchronization with the ETSI DS and WPM databases.
A set of buttons lower left of this panel produce output from the database to be fed to ITU-T and ITU-R to update certain ITU Recommendations relating to IMT-2000 and IMT-Advanced.
A further subpanel can be used to run a standard set of quality checks on new, incoming specifications (following approval at TSG or the incorporation of newly approved CRs at TSG level).
Yet another subpanel generates the static web pages based on
the database contents, and exports them to the subweb at http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/html-info/
.