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Prerequisites

Before starting, ensure you have:
  • Risksheet installed and licensed in your Siemens Polarion ALM project
  • Administrative access to edit the sheet configuration
  • Custom work item types defined in Polarion for your FMEA structure (e.g., failure modes, risk items)
  • Severity, occurrence, and detection enumerations defined in Polarion (Administration > Enumerations)
  • Familiarity with the configuration editor
Do not build a Risksheet configuration from a blank file. Pick the closest solution template for your industry and methodology (Nextedy provides templates for FMEA, HARA, TARA, STRIDE, and CVSS), inspect its sheet configuration, then modify to match your process. The functional safety template is the simplest entry point for evaluation.

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FMEA Structure Overview

A typical FMEA Risksheet uses a multi-level visual hierarchy to organize failure modes, causes, effects, and mitigations. Note that Risksheet’s data model has exactly two entity types — risk items and task items — and the hierarchy you see in the grid is created visually by merging cells that share the same control-column value.
diagram
1

Define Data Types

Configure the risk and task work item types in the dataTypes section of the sheet configuration:
Replace failureMode and mitigationAction with your actual Polarion work item type IDs. The name property gives the task button a label in the toolbar, and zoomColumn specifies which column receives focus when a new task is created.
When using custom work item types (e.g., wit_failureMode, wit_measure), the type value must match the Polarion type ID precisely. A mismatch causes configuration errors such as For input string: nice_to_have when enum values cannot be resolved for the specified type.
2

Configure Levels

Define the visual hierarchy that controls cell merging and row grouping. Every level entry needs three properties: name (the display name in the navigation menu), controlColumn (the column whose value drives cell merging), and zoomColumn (zoomColumndefines in which column a highlighted cell will appear).
Columns with level: 1 merge with the first entry, columns with level: 2 merge with the second, and columns bound to task fields have no level. The visual hierarchy is purely a display effect — all rows remain individual Polarion work items of the same type.
The controlColumn and zoomColumn values must exactly match the id property of the corresponding column in your columns array. Mismatched IDs cause row duplication in the Risksheet display.
3

Set Up RPN Formulas

Define Risk Priority Number formulas in the formulas section. A standard FMEA uses Severity × Occurrence × Detection:
The commonRpn formula calculates the initial RPN before mitigations. The commonRpnNew formula calculates the revised RPN after mitigations are applied. Reference these formulas in your column definitions using the formula property.For complex risk-matrix logic, define thin wrapper formulas here and externalize the calculation into the top panel configuration (risksheetTopPanel.vm). This separation keeps the sheet configuration declarative and auditable — important for regulated industries where the structural configuration and the calculation logic have different review gates.
4

Define Rating Scales as Polarion Enumerations

Rating scales for severity, occurrence, and detection are NOT defined inside the sheet configuration. They live in Polarion as standard enumerations, and Risksheet loads their values automatically.To configure a rating scale:
  1. In Polarion, navigate to Administration > Enumerations and create an enumeration (for example, severityRating) with the values you need (e.g., 1 — No Effect, 2 — Very Minor, 5 — Moderate, 8 — Very High, 10 — Hazardous).
  2. Add a custom field of type Enum on your risk work item type (e.g., failureMode) that references the enumeration.
  3. In the sheet configuration, declare a column that binds to the custom field and uses the rating:<enumId> type:
The server resolves the enumeration values, presents them in the dropdown, and applies any numeric ordering defined in the enum. To restrict input to valid scale values (e.g., 1–10), simply maintain that constraint in the Polarion enumeration — Risksheet will enforce it through the binding.
Define separate Polarion enumerations for severity, occurrence, and detection. This keeps the values, descriptions, and ordering manageable in one place (Administration) and lets multiple Risksheet documents reuse the same scales.
5

Add Conditional Formatting for RPN

Apply color-coded risk thresholds using cellDecorators and styles. RPN thresholds vary per deployment — choose the bands that match your organization’s risk acceptance criteria. A common AIAG/VDA-aligned choice is 150 and 250:
This creates three risk bands:Use $(info.cell).toggleClass(...) rather than inline styles — Risksheet reuses cells when scrolling, and direct style mutation would leave stale styling behind.Apply the same decorator to the row header for at-a-glance risk visibility by setting headers.rowHeader.renderer to rowHeaderRpnNew:
6

Configure Before/After Mitigation Columns

FMEA methodology requires tracking risk before and after mitigation. Add a second set of rating columns with the New suffix for post-mitigation values. Note the bindings (plural) property — this is the Polarion field ID that the column reads from and writes to:

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DFMEA and SFMEA Variants

Risksheet is a generic risk analysis tool that supports any methodology. Common FMEA variants delivered as solution templates:
  • PFMEA (Process FMEA) — Level 1 is Process Step, Level 2 is Failure Mode
  • DFMEA (Design FMEA) — Level 1 is System Element or Function, Level 2 is Failure Mode / Potential Cause
  • SFMEA (Safety FMEA) — Adapted for safety-critical analysis with ISO 26262 alignment
Some DFMEA templates include built-in upstream linkages (e.g., Failure Mode to Potential Cause) that work automatically without explicit upstream-chain configuration. Test your specific template to determine which linkages require explicit configuration versus those handled automatically.
For upstream traceability to design requirements, see Configure Upstream Traceability Columns.

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Aggregating Data Across Rows

In FMEA workflows, you may need to aggregate values from child risk items into the parent process step row. Use the getMasterRowsByColumnValue formula function (available since v24.9.1):
This collects unique values from child failure mode items and displays them in the parent row.

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Best Practices

  • Title generation — use formulas to auto-generate risk item titles from related fields (e.g., hazardous situation + harm) to prevent linking errors with untitled items
  • Split large sheets — separate Design FMEA and Process FMEA into dedicated Risksheets rather than combining all columns in one sheet to improve performance
  • Limit multiItemLink columns — performance degrades primarily from the number of item-link columns, not row count
  • Externalize complex logic — keep risk-matrix and conditional-formatting logic in the top panel configuration so that changes to calculation strategy do not require revalidating the sheet structure
  • Template inheritance — store your FMEA configuration in a global template and override only per-document specifics
Items without titles cause linking errors in Risksheet. Use formula-based title auto-generation from related fields to avoid this issue. This was resolved in Risksheet v24.10.1, but the auto-title pattern remains a recommended best practice.

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Troubleshooting

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Verification

After saving your configuration:
  1. Reload the Risksheet document in your browser
  2. You should now see the multi-level FMEA structure with system elements at Level 1 and failure modes at Level 2
  3. RPN columns should display calculated values with color-coded risk bands (green for 1–150, yellow for 151–250, red above 250)
  4. Confirm you can create downstream mitigation tasks from the context menu

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See Also

Last modified on July 10, 2026