Project Map & Timeline

The Project Map is a single screen that shows everything happening on a project across all three suites. It answers two different questions with two different views:

• Lifecycle Map - what exists in this project right now, how the pieces connect, and which ones need attention.
• Timeline - what changed and when, across every record type, on one horizontal axis.

Open it from any project: sidebar -> Project Map, or visit /projects//graph.

---

Lifecycle Map

The Lifecycle Map lays the project out as three suite columns - Engineering, Manufacturing, Operations - each with a coloured root card on top, and category cards (Variants, BOMs, Firmware, Documents, Schematics, Lots, Devices, RMAs, Tickets, KB, etc.) hanging below.

Reading the canvas

• Tree edges (solid grey lines) connect each suite root down to its categories. Always visible. Background structure.
• Relationship edges (dotted, coloured) cross between cards when records relate to each other - e.g. a BOM is for a Variant, a Firmware allocated to a Lot, a Document attached to a Variant. They only render when you click into a card so the canvas stays uncluttered.
• Health dots on each category card show whether anything in that bucket needs attention:

• Mandatory but empty categories (e.g. a Hardware variant whose Gerber Files slot is empty) surface as an orange dashed card with a "required" badge. The Project Map tells you what's missing, not just what's there.

Clicking a card

Click any category card to:

1. Highlight the card and its outgoing relationship edges (lime).
2. Open the Records Panel on the right with a searchable list of every record in that category.
3. Each record row -> click to open the Inspector below the panel (per-record detail + linked items + actions).

The "Click to view" cue with a small pointer icon appears on every clickable card.

Tabs at the top

• Lifecycle Map (default)
• Timeline (see below)

---

Timeline

The Timeline plots every recent change as a dot on a horizontal time axis. Latest events sit at the right edge; scroll left to see older history.

Two layouts

Pick the layout from the toolbar:

Note: Lanes view shows the five key workflow streams only. Switch to Line to see every event type (BOMs, firmware, schematics, docs, files, KB).

Controls

• Range chips - 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, all time. Re-scales the time axis.
• Needs attention - filter to orange + red events only.
• Now / left arrow / right arrow - jump to today, scroll a week back, scroll a week forward.
• Refresh - re-fetch from the backend.

Reading a dot

Click any dot for a detail panel: resource type, label, description, actor, exact timestamp, archived flag, and an Open source link to the record (only shown if your role can reach the record's detail page).

Date ticks

The top axis shows date labels. The first-of-month tick is bolder. Stride auto-adjusts with the selected range.

What you'll see on the Timeline

Backend emits events for: Variants, BOMs, Firmware, Schematics, Documents (split by category into Schematic / Firmware / Document / File buckets), Lots, Devices, RMAs, Tickets, KB entries. Each capped at 60 recent rows per type, then merged + sorted newest-first.

Note: Document-collection uploads route by category, not by storage table. A PCB layout uploaded under Hardware shows on the Timeline with the Schematic label and wrench icon; a firmware binary uploaded under Documentation shows as Firmware. The classification follows the module that owns the upload, not the file extension.

---

BOM Analysis (anchored on each BOM)

BOM Analysis used to live as a tab on the Project Map. It now lives on each BOM's detail page so the analysis is scoped to the BOM you're already looking at.

1. Open any BOM (Engineering -> Bill of Materials -> click a BOM)
2. Click Analyze in the header
3. A modal opens with three health clusters: High risk, Needs attention, Healthy
4. Each component is a chip inside its cluster; click a chip to see the per-dimension breakdown:

Search across all three clusters at once. Escape or the X closes the modal; clicking outside does not close (cluster grid is interactive - prevents accidental dismissals mid-search).

---

Role gating

The Project Map respects the same role gates as the rest of S3Suite:

• Lifecycle Map and Timeline are visible to any role with engineering, manufacturing, or operations area access.
• BOM Analysis requires engineering access (the underlying /bom endpoint is engineering-only).
• Records visible on the canvas are filtered to your accessible areas - e.g. an operations-only user does not see BOMs as a separate card.
• "Open source" links on Timeline dots and the Records Panel are hidden when your role cannot reach that record's detail page (no more 403 clicks).

---

Common questions

• "I clicked a card and the relationship arrows look messy." Tree edges (solid grey) stay quiet at the back; relationship edges (lime, dotted) only appear when a card is active. If you still see overlap, switch to the Timeline for the same data plotted across a time axis instead of a graph.
• "My BOM Analysis doesn't list a part." Check the search box at the top of the cluster grid - it filters across all three clusters. Clear it to see everything.
• "The Timeline says +N at a position - what is that?" When more than 5 events happen at the same time on the same lane or line, the top 4 newest render as staggered dots and the rest collapse into a +N pill. Click the pill to see the full list.
• "I see an orange dot on the Timeline for a firmware that's released." Production-critical artefacts (firmware binaries, PCB / gerber / step files, mech BOM, etc.) surface orange until they're allocated to manufacturing. The status is "released" in engineering but not yet pinned into the vault for production. Allocate from Engineering to turn it green.

---

Related docs

• Engineering Suite - the source of most records the map plots
• Manufacturing Vault - the allocation flow that drives orange-vs-green on production-critical files
• Operations Suite - where RMAs, tickets, and device events come from
• RMA & Troubleshooting - context for the device-RMA-ticket-KB relationship chain you see on the canvas