Rational Team Concert 2.0.0.1

September 22, 2009 | Learn about the project

This is not the most recent version. We recommend Rational Team Concert 2.0.0.2 iFix 3

Rational Team Concert 2.0.0.1 News

Rational Team Concert 2.0.0.1 - New and Noteworthy

Here are some of the more noteworthy things in the Rational Team Concert 2.0.0.1 release added since the 2.0 release (June 2009).

Licensing
New capabilities for Express-C edition	The Express-C edition of Rational Team Concert now includes 10 developer licenses, making this edition truly free. The Express-C edition also supports all the databases that are supported by the other editions of Team Concert. Additionally, the Express-C edition supports the following free database editions: DB-2 Express-C 9.7 SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SQL Server 2008 Express Edition Note that while Oracle Database 10g Express Edition may work with Team Concert, it is not supported nor recommended due to its 4 GB user data limit.

New capabilities for contributors	Contributor licenses have been given additional work item and planning capabilities that were previously only available with developer licenses. Contributors can now configure projects, customize work items and create plans.

Websphere Application Server 7.0 entitlement	Each valid license of a Standard or Enterprise edition of Team Concert now includes a license to run one instance of WebSphere Application Server 7.0. Additionally, each valid license of an Enterprise edition of Team Concert includes a license to run an additional instance of WebSphere Application Server 7.0 in a high availability configuration. See the release notes for information about obtaining the software.
Work Items
Initial support for electronic signatures	In projects which must meet American FDA 21 CFR Part 11 requirements, certain changes to key records must be protected and require a reconfirmation of the user doing the change. In RTC 2.0.0.1 we've added an initial basic implementation that allows reconfirmation for work item approval accepts or rejects. In upcoming releases we will extend this to support more types of work item changes, such as state transitions and attribute modifications. To configure a work item type for electronic signatures, the following three configuration steps are necessary: Add an attribute of type 'E-Signature' to the desired Work Item type Configure the editor presentation to show the E-Signature attribute in the Approvals section Enable the 'E-Signature' precondition for the 'Save Work Item' operation and configure it for the desired Approval and Work Item type. After these configurations, saving a work item with a newly approved or rejected approval will prompt the user to re-enter the password of the logged-in user. The following screen shot shows a situation where a wrong password has been entered into the E-Signature attribute on the Approval page while giving an approval:

New C/ALM query functionality	The C/ALM cross-repository queries can now be used in the Statistics viewlet like any other query. This allows testing-related information to be represented clearly in a dashboard. There are also two new C/ALM queries: Plan items with no tests Plan items ready for testing

Group filters	The Work Item Statistics viewlet now lets you define filters that group results under custom group labels. Filters may be specified as normal text or regular expressions. Filter groups have drill-in support.

Display all groups	The Work Item Statistics viewlet now lets you specify when to display all results in the content area. By default, results that exceed the available content area are grouped under the 'Other' bucket.
Source Control
Support for external compare tools	You can now use your favorite external compare tool. Go to the preferences page under Team > Jazz Source Control > External Compare Tools. You can choose from the predefined list of third party compare tools such as Scooter Software's Beyond Compare or you can specify your own custom setup. The external compare tool will then be invoked in place of the default Eclipse compare editor. For example, in the screen shot below, the user double clicked on a conflicted item in the Pending Changes view, which brought up the configured external compare tool. The user can then edit the file and perform a three-way content merge from within that tool.

Improved command line tool	The SCM command line tool now offers a lightweight mode which reduces the startup time for subsequent command by keeping part of the command line process running as a daemon on the user's machine. The performance of the status, diff, and history commands have been improved. Please refer to the Windows `lscm.bat` file (or `lscm` on Linux) in the directory where you normally find the `scm` executable.

Content caching proxy support	All Jazz Source Control clients now can use proxy servers to significantly improve the performance of loading and updating developer and build workspaces over a WAN. Both forward and reverse accelerator proxies for both HTTP and HTTPS are supported. Check out this article for information on using content caching proxies with with Jazz Source Control.

Git Bridge	The recently updated jazz.net article Integrating other SCM Systems with Rational Team Concert 2.0 contains a detailed example describing how Git change sets can be linked to Jazz Work Items via OSLC CM REST APIs. These instructions should also be helpful for building bridges to other version control systems.
Agile Planning
Display estimates in hours and minutes only	Agile Planning now displays duration values in hours and minutes instead of converting them to days and weeks if they exceed the working time per day. This functionality has to be enabled in the process specification using the configuration under Planning > Estimate Attributes. Note that you can still enter a duration in a format using days and weeks, but the value will be converted automatically into hours.
Reports
New agile reports	We have continued our efforts to improve our out-of-the-box reports suite to better support users of Scrum and other agile methodologies. We have introduced three new reports in 2.0.0.1: Burnup. Whereas the existing Burndown report measures the remaining work to be done in an iteration, the new Burnup report measures the completed work, comparing it to the total amount of planned work. Actual as Percentage of Estimated Work. As a retrospective task, it may be helpful to understand how close work item estimates were to the actual amount of time required. This new report groups completed work into a bar chart that indicates the distribution of work items according to how close they came to their initial estimates. Estimate Changes. One possible reason that an iteration may not have had a successful completion is that initial estimates given to work items were adjusted later. This report will list any work items whose estimate was changed. We hope these new reports will help improve your project's transparency and traceability.

Cross-project support	The Trend Reports viewlet now has the ability to host reports from different project areas within the same dashboard.
Build
Associate existing work item with build result	You can associate an existing work item with a build result as well as being able to create a new one.

Tag build results in web UI	The Overview tab of the Build web UI for a build result now lets you change tags and the Deletion allowed property.

Time in Queue show in web hover	Hovering over a pending build result in the web UI now tells you how long it's been languishing in the build queue.

New properties for build engine and Ant tasks	When using Jazz Source Control, the build engine now sets the id of a snapshot using the team.scm.snapshotUUID property. Several Ant tasks in the Build Toolkit have had new features added: teamAccept has an attribute snapshotUUIDProperty for accessing the UUID of the created snapshot used in the build buildResultPublisher can now set the tags for a build using the tags attribute waitForTeamBuild has an attribute buildStatusProperty to get the status of the build result startTeamBuild task now also propagates the properties of the build engine as well as the build definition
Process
Project linking improvements	The project linking UI has been simplified. In addition, nested service provider catalogs are now supported (such as those used by ClearQuest).

Web UI hovers	Rich hovers are now implemented in the web UI for users, project areas, and team areas (using their Jazz compact rendering documents).

Timeline and iteration management in web UI	Timelines and iterations can now be managed in the web UI. Check out the Timelines tab in the project area editor.

Non-admin access to project area and process template management admin pages	Access to the project area and process template management pages using the https://host:port/jazz/admin URL is now available to all users. Previously, only members of the JazzAdmins repository group could access the pages.

Permissions tab redesign	The project area Permissions tab in the web UI has been redesigned to show the configuration tree and the permissions side by side on the same tab. The configuration nodes are now also decorated with the same icons and text as the Eclipse client.

Configurable start/end times of timelines and iterations	You can now set the start and end time of a timeline or iteration. The date and time is displayed and edited in the client's time zone, but the iteration ends at the same moment in time in all time zones. For example, if an iteration ends at 5PM Pacific time, then it ends at 8PM Eastern time.
Web Dashboards
Cross-server dashboards	Dashboards can now contain viewlets from any number of other Jazz servers, allowing you to track activity from several servers on a single dashboard. The viewlet chooser will allow you to select viewlets on other servers (ones your server administrator has configured as friends of your server).
Repository
Create database tables from setup wizard	The Jazz Team Server setup wizard now provides administrators a simple way to detect and create the Jazz database tables from the Web UI. Once you have setup a valid database connection, the server checks to see if the tables exist. If they don't, you can choose to create them directly from the setup wizard without the need to run `repotools`. Click for full-size image

OAuth Consumer Management web UI	The OAuth Consumer Management page of the Admin web UI has been enhanced to show a list of all the active OAuth consumer keys authorized by the server. Keys can be tagged with a consumer name for better organization, and authorized keys can be deactivated.

OAuth consumer keys for pre-authorized users	Associating a pre-authorized user with a consumer key allows requests to be made by this user without additional authorization. Applications use this capability to run background administrative tasks, such as send e-mail notifications, without user intervention. Pre-authorized users can be associated with a consumer key programmatically. The OAuth Consumer Management page in the Admin UI also supports the management of consumer key properties by allowing the name, secret, pre-authorized user, and trusted values to be edited. Click for full-size image

Time-limited Client Access Licenses	It's now possible to build Client Access License keys with expiration dates that are independent of the server expiration. These time-limited Client Access License keys can be used to make extra product features available on a trial basis, even on a purchased (non-expiring) server. Any new Client Access License keys created can include an expiration date (existing product keys are unaffected). Click for full-size image

Public URL configuration in setup wizard	The Jazz Team Server setup wizard now includes a step to configure a public URL for the server. The server generates absolute URLs, typically known as "Public URLs", to resources used in mail notifications, feeds, for copying to the system clipboard, for Web access, and for stable resource identification across Rational products. These generated URLs may be referenced in contexts that are outside of the local network in which clients typically access the server (say, outside of your corporate firewall). This configuration property provides an alternate or "public" hostname/authority for use in these type of situations. Click for full-size image

C/ALM administration enhancements	Support for setup and configuration of Collaborative ALM products is enhanced in the Admin UI, allowing administrators to easily manage cross-server communication between Jazz-based products. Enhancements include approving a provisional consumer key between servers, updating the secret associated with an OAuth consumer key, and improved discovery from the root services resource. Click for full-size image

New repotool commands for user management	The following commands have been added or enhanced in the repotools utility: `-createUser` Create a user and/or assign a license. If a user with the specified id exists, it will be updated. `-createUsers` Create or update a batch of users from a file. `-listLicenses` List the known client access licenses for the specified server. `-archiveUser` Archives an existing user. `-exportUsers` Exports the list of users. The user records are exported into a csv file. The user id, name, email address, group membership and licenses assigned to the user are exported into the csv file. `-importUsers` Imports the list of users into the database. If the user already exists in the database, the user record is updated with the information provided in the import file. `-syncUsers` Syncs the user records with the user information in the LDAP directory. This command performs the same operation as the LDAP nightly sync task.

Default license assignments	Administrators can choose a default license to be assigned to new users. The assignments will apply to users imported from an external LDAP directory. It will also be assigned to users imported or created via the Eclipse UI, Web UI and LDAP nightly sync task. The default license ID can be set in the property "Default License ID" in the Advanced Properties page of the admin Web UI.

Case insensitive logins	Case insensitive logins can now optionally be allowed. Some users of jazz have login ID's that are in mixed case form but prefer to login in all lower case. If the application server's authentication method allows case insensitive logins then it's now possible to make the Jazz application accept them as well. Allowing case insensitive logins can be enabled through the "Use case insensitive user ID matching" property on the Advanced Properties page of the admin Web UI. The default is unchanged; administrators must explicitly override this property to enable case insensitive login.

JazzProjectAdmins repository group	A new repository group is available to grant project area and process template management privileges. Using this group lets an administrator reduce the number of users who must be granted scary JazzAdmins privileges. JazzProjectAdmins are allowed create and manipulate project areas, and create and deploy process templates. JazzProjectAdmins are not allowed to manage users or edit the server configuration. Migration note: configurations that do not contain any settings for JazzProjectAdmins will continue to work as normal. No migration or modification of configuration settings is required. If you are using LDAP, define a new LDAP group that maps to this role. If you are using custom LDAP group mappings, also edit the property "Jazz to LDAP Group Mapping " in the Advanced Properties page of the Admin Web UI. If you are using tomcat-users, the role should be available to you for edit in the user editor.

Cross-Server Communication web UI	The Server-to-Server Communication step that was previously included in the Server Setup Wizard has been removed and replaced by a new page in the Admin web UI, the Cross-Server Communication page. This is used to establish communication with another Jazz server. This is to allow for trusted, authenticated communication between two JFS-based servers in support of the C/ALM scenarios.
Web UI Frameworks
Support for web UI themes	There is a new "Themes" configuration page under the "Server" tab of the Admin Web UI. This page allows a Jazz Administrator to upload a .zip file to the server that contains custom CSS rules, HTML code, and/or JavaScript modules. The Jazz Administrator can also use this page to preview uploaded themes and to apply them to the whole site. Any .css files included in a theme .zip will be loaded with each page. The theme can create new CSS definitions, and it can override existing CSS definitions. There are also four hot spots where custom HTML and/or JavaScript widgets can be inserted: above the banner, and to the left, center, and right of the footer.
Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE
Plans now supported	The Team Artifacts view of the Visual Studio client now has a Plans node which gives you access to the plans associated with the project area:

Error List integration	The Pending Changes view in the Visual Studio client now shows error decorations for compilation errors listed in the Error List view, and will prompt for confirmation before allowing you to deliver change sets containing files flagged with errors. The Error List view makes it easy to create a Jazz work item directly from the selected error:

File locking	The Visual Studio client now lets you lock a file in a Jazz stream so that no one else will deliver a change before you. You can lock/unlock files either from Pending Changes or Solution Explorer views. You can search for locked files in your workspace via a new toolbar button in the Pending Changes view:

Feed support	The new Feeds folder under the Team Artifacts view in the Visual Studio client shows you various event feeds of interest, and refreshes automatically as new events coming in. Double click on a feed to open a feed reader; select Properties on the feed's right button context menu to configure the feed's properties. To read all items like a newspaper, click the Expand All link in the right top corner. The various filters on the page let you to customize which items are displayed. Click for full-size image For work item-related events, the button provides an easy way to add a comment while reading news without having to leave the feeds page.
User Assistance
ClearQuest Connector tutorial	The Jazz.net information center includes a new ClearQuest connector tutorial, which walks you through the process of configuring your ClearQuest and Rational Team Concert environments to use the ClearQuest Connector to synchronize Jazz work items with ClearQuest records.