What are the special features of external descriptions?

When you open external description files from ARIS, they are opened in the program, with which files in DOC or DOCX formats are linked, for example, Microsoft® Word. They are saved in a temporary directory on your hard disk, generally in your default temporary directory (with an installed client) or under Temporary Internet Files (if using the download client).

In order to edit the documents, you need the corresponding access privileges. If you want to describe an object externally you require, e. g., the Write access privilege for the group in which the object is saved in the database.

You can place the Documentation attribute in the model. The program icon of the assigned word processor is displayed. The menu items Insert, Edit, Preview, and Refresh are available for the placed attribute.

The external description files belong to the database, i. e., they are saved in the database. When you back up the database and restore it on another server, the external descriptions are also available to you there.

Due to technical restrictions external descriptions cannot be locked if they are open in the editor. Therefore, it is possible that a user deletes an external description in ARIS while it is being edited by another user in the editor. In this case, all changes of the description are deleted without the editing user being notified.

See also

Create an external description

Which items can be given external descriptions?