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How to Define Project Terms with Glossary?

System specification plays a significant role in projects which helps your team and you to understand the software system. However, there is a hidden risk in the specification document, that is, a single term can have different meaning under different conditions. To avoid having ambiguity, Visual Paradigm supports defining domain terms for your project as glossary. By defining glossary, team members can have a clear understanding on domain terms. In this tutorial, we will show you how to define domain terms as glossary, and to produced a document of glossary that facilitates information sharing.

Compatible edition(s): Enterprise, Professional, Standard

  • March 02, 2016
  • Views: 52,407
  • PDF

Creating Terms

There are two ways to create domain terms in Visual Paradigm.

From Glossary Grid

To create terms from glossary grid:

  1. Select Modeling > Glossary from the application toolbar to create a glossary grid.
    Create glossary grid
  2. Click on the New Term (Insert) button in toolbar to create a term.
    New glossary term
  3. Enter the name of the term and press Enter to confirm.
    Entering term name
  4. Right-click on the term and select Open Term Editor from the popup menu.
    Opening term editor
  5. Enter the definition of the term.
    Entering term definition

From project content

Besides creating the term one by one in glossary grid, you can also extract terms from project content. To do this:

  1. Highlight the textual content from the name and description of any model elements, or from the conversation, conversation and scenario of any user stories.
  2. Right-click on the highlighted text and select Add %TERM_NAME% to Glossary.
    Add term to glossary

After that, the highlighted text will become a term and you can define its definition in Term Editor.

Navigate from Model Content to Terms

You can easily navigate from the highlighted glossary terms in whatever part of your project back to the glossary grid by pressing Ctrl + Click on it.

Opening term

The definition of the term will also be shown when you place your mouse pointer over term in the conversation, confirmation and scenario of user story.

Term definition shown

Defining Alias for Domain Terms

Sometimes, you may have multiple terms meaning the same concept in your project. Instead of defining multiple terms on the same concept, you can pick one as the domain term and put the others as alias of the term. This imply all those terms share the same meaning of your business. To define alias for your terms:

  1. Double click on the term to open Term Editor.
  2. Click the Add button next to Aliases field.
    Add alias
  3. Fill in the name of the alias and click OK to confirm.
    Entering alias

After that, the aliased terms will also be highlighted in your project content and you can navigate back to the original term just in the same way as the standard terms.

Defining Variation for Domain Terms

In real life, a term could have certain variation, i.e. singular and plural forms, which have exactly the same meaning. In Visual Paradigm, you can define such variation as the other forms of the domain term. To define variation for your terms:

  1. Select the term in glossary grid.
  2. Click the Open Specification... button on top of the glossary grid.
    Opening term specification
  3. Click the Edit Other Forms button.
    Edit other forms
  4. Click the Add button below Other forms.
    Add other form
  5. Fill in the variation of the term and press Enter to confirm.
    Entering other form
  6. Click the OK button to close the specification window.

After that, the alternative form will also be highlighted in your project content and you can navigate back to the original term just in the same way as the standard terms.

Highlighted content

Generate Domain Terms Specification

Once you finished defining the domain terms for your project, you can then generate a document of glossary and distribute it to your teammates.

  1. Select Tools > Doc. Composer from the application toolbar.
  2. Choose Build from Scratch.
    Selecting Build from Scratch
  3. Select Glossary Grid from the Diagram Navigator.
    Selecting Glossary Grid
  4. Drag out the Grid Diagram template from Template Pane and drop it onto the document.
    Dragging template onto Doc. Composer
  5. Select Export > PDF Document... at the top right corner of Doc. Composer.
    Export PDF document
  6. Fill in the Title for the document and specify the Output Path.
    Export PDF Document Window
  7. Switch to Cover Page tab, keep Generate default cover page checked and fill in the Title.
    Entering cover page description
  8. Click Export at bottom right to generate a PDF document.

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