Creating Your First Powersheet Document

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What you will achieve

• A nextedySheetConfig custom field configured on documents
• A LiveDoc assigned to your sheet configuration
• A working powersheet document accessible from the Powersheet Drive

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Prerequisites

• Powersheet installed and licensed (see Installing Powersheet)
• Navigation topic enabled (see Setting Up Navigation)
• A data model created (see Creating Your First Data Model)
• A sheet configuration created (see Creating Your First Sheet Configuration)

1

Create the nextedySheetConfig custom field

If you set up your project from the RTM Demo template (the template the install flow configures), the Sheet Config document custom field is likely already present — check Administration > Documents & Pages > Custom Fields before adding it. Step 1 is for projects that don’t have the field yet.

A sheet configuration is assigned to a document through a dedicated document-scope custom field. In Polarion this is configured under Administration > Documents & Pages > Custom Fields (the document custom fields — not the work-item custom fields, which live under a separate admin section).This admin page does not present a point-and-click form. Instead, it shows an XML editor for the project’s custom-fields.xml definition, where each field is declared as a <field> element. Add (or upload) a field definition with the following attributes:

Attribute	Value
id	nextedySheetConfig
name	Sheet Config
type	enum:Nextedy - Sheet Config

In other words, the field Type is Enum, and the enum it points to is the Nextedy - Sheet Config enumeration — a Powersheet-provided enum that dynamically discovers the available sheet configuration files in the repository. A minimal entry looks like:

<field id="nextedySheetConfig" name="Sheet Config" type="enum:Nextedy - Sheet Config"/>

Save the custom-fields.xml content to apply the definition.

You should see: After saving, the new custom field is available on documents in the project, backed by the Nextedy - Sheet Config enum that dynamically discovers available sheet configuration files from the repository.

The field ID and name can be customized. If you use a different ID, you must declare it in Administration > Nextedy Powersheet > Configuration Properties with: com.nextedy.powersheet.sheetConfigFieldId=yourFieldId (only needed when you deviate from the default nextedySheetConfig id).

2

Create a LiveDoc

Create a new LiveDoc in your project. The creation wizard exposes several fields; the ones that matter here are:

Field	Notes
Name	A descriptive document name (e.g., “User Needs Specification”).
Type	The document type. It defaults to System Requirements Specification, but can be any document type that exposes the Sheet Config field (Step 1).

After the document is created, open its Properties and set the Sheet Config field to your sheet configuration name (e.g., rtm-sheet).

You should see: The Sheet Config field shows a dropdown with the available sheet configurations discovered from both project and global locations.

If no configurations appear in the dropdown, verify that your sheet configuration was saved correctly in Administration > Nextedy Powersheet > Sheet Configurations. The enum provider scans the repository for available YAML files.

3

Add the Open with Powersheet button (optional)

To allow users to easily switch from the LiveDoc view to the Powersheet view, add the following Velocity snippet directly into the document body — the LiveDoc’s homePageContent (the rich-text content area you edit in the document itself), not a separate sidebar or panel:

$openPowersheetButton.renderOpenPowersheetButton($document)

You should see: An “Open with Nextedy Powersheet” button appears in the LiveDoc, allowing users to jump directly to the sheet view.

4

Open the document from Powersheet Drive

Navigate to the Powersheet Drive in the left sidebar. Your new document should appear in the list.

The Drive doesn’t always list a freshly created document right away. If it doesn’t appear, reload the Drive (or do a hard refresh of the browser) to force the list to update.

Click the document name to open it in the Powersheet view.You should see: The sheet loads with the columns defined in your sheet configuration. If the project contains work items matching the UserNeed type, they appear as rows with their related SystemRequirement items expandable beneath them.

If the sheet appears empty, it means there are no work items matching your data model’s entity types yet. You can add rows directly in the sheet using the add button in the toolbar. New entities are created with default values from the entity factory configuration — the part of your sheet configuration that determines the initial field values applied to a work item (row) when it is first created from the sheet.

5

Test basic operations

With the sheet open, try the following operations:

1. Add a row — click the add button to create a new UserNeed work item. If the sheet has more than one hierarchy level, each level has its own (+) control; use the one at the level you want the row at. For a top-level entity like UserNeed, use the root-level add button.
2. Edit a cell — click on the title cell and type a name
3. Save — click the save button to persist your changes to Polarion

You should see: New work items are created in Polarion, editable directly in the sheet. The save button becomes enabled when you make changes and is disabled after a successful save.

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Next steps

• Incremental Configuration Approach — learn how to extend your configuration step by step
• How-To Guides — task-oriented guides for common operations
• Reference — complete YAML property reference

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Related guides

• Creating Your First Sheet Configuration — define the columns and views referenced by this document
• Creating Your First Data Model — define the entity types that appear as rows
• Setting Up Navigation — enable the Powersheet Drive topic in the sidebar