Type visibility allows you to control access to information throughout your organization. Through Windchill RV&S, you can manage the types that reflect your product development. You can use type visibility to ensure that sensitive information from one group is not viewed or modified by another group. All items and e-mail notification are subject to type visibility rules.

When you create a type, you can select which user groups can see the type and all items assigned to the project. You can also define which user groups can see all types in the database and which ones are restricted to see only certain types. If a user is not a member of at least one group allowed to view the type, that user cannot view any items of that type.

Based on type visibility, users are allowed to query the database only for items of the types that are visible to them. Items of types not visible to users are not displayed in the query results. If users try to view an item of a type that is not visible to them, an error message displays.

If an item in one project is related to an item in a project not visible to the user, the related item does not display in the Relationship view. In the History view, the user can see only that an edit occurred (Modified by <user> on <modified date>). Users do not see the related item ID, and cannot see if the edit was an addition or removal of a related item.

If an item, previously invisible to users, is reassigned to a type that is visible to users, they do not see the previous type name in the History view. Instead, a symbolic “Restricted Type” value displays.