Enterprise Architect, extending properties

I am evaluating EA and there is one thing that really puzzles me, there doesn't seem to be any way to extend the properties of elements in EA. Is this true?. It sounds too ridiculous to be true though. Havent seen any way to create entirely new elements either.

For example, I add an Issue element to my diagra开发者_开发问答m, this element has a property called Difficulty. This property has 3 defined values: Low, Medium, High. Let's say I need to extend this property to be able to be "Very high" as well. This is not possible , right?. Sounds just to ridiculous to be true. Such thing would force me to stay working with Excel, for all it's faults. The dream would be to be able to create an entirely new element with my own properties, that would make EA really useful.

Enterprise Architect supports standard properties and tagged values.

The standard properties can sometimes be configured through the settings - the difficulty is a good example for a property which can't be configured.

The tagged values are what you are looking for. You can specify tagged value fields in several ways. You can configure elements to have a default set of tagged values etc.

New elements can be created through stereotypes and profiles. Take a look at the BPMN diagram - this is created entirely as configuration in EA. You'll find gthe definition stored in an xml file in the "MDG technologies" folder. These xml definitions are created as diagrams and then exported as "profile".

HTH

Difficulty values are configurable in EA repository as one of Reference Data set.

Particularly, in EA 13.5 this is accessible via: Configure (ribbon) > Reference Data (group panel) > Project Types (menu button) > General Types (menu option) > Difficulty (value set)

Other Reference Data sets, used for "standard EA" element properties (e.g. Priority or Scenario kind), can be configured that way too. On the other hand, stereotypes and tagged values are more capable features, but they comes with extra cost, if to be used widely and in consistent manner (i.e. need to define UML profile and to apply stereotypes to model elements).