Rational Asset Manager 7.5 New & Noteworthy

Check out the What's new in Rational Asset Manager 7.5 video.

The following features are a few of the more noteworthy items that are new in IBM® Rational® Asset Manager version 7.5.

Integration with Jazz-based Products

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OAuth

The server supports OAuth authentication when accessing the REST services or compact renderings.

Asset Hovers (Compact Renderings)

On Jazz™ resources, you can hover your cursor over asset links to see details about the assets.

Rational Team Concert, Rational Quality Manager and Rational Requirements Composer

You can now create links to resources in IBM® Rational Quality Manager and IBM® Rational Requirements Composer, in addition to IBM® Rational Team Concert™.

After you add a link, hover your cursor over the link and click the plus icon to expand the link and see details about the resource.

You can also create links to resources in the Eclipse client.

Hover your cursor over the links to preview the resource.

Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management Approval API

Rational Asset Manager now supports the required portion of the proposed Collaborative ALM Approval specification as described here. With this support, you can see your requested approvals across servers.

Integration with Rational System Architect

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Rational Asset Manager now supports integration with IBM Rational System Architect so that a user of Rational System Architect can publish diagrams and definitions as assets to Rational Asset Manager. In Rational System Architect, users can search and retrieve the diagrams and definitions.

Integration with Rational Insight

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You can now create reports from the IBM Rational Insight reporting server.

Integration with Lotus Connections v2.5

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Business Cards

When a repository administrator configures Rational Asset Manager to connect with an IBM Lotus® Connections server, data from the Lotus Connections profiles server is available in the Rational Asset Manager web and Eclipse clients. Wherever users are displayed in Rational Asset Manager, the Lotus Connections icon is displayed.

Activities and To Do's for Reviews

When an asset has collaborators who must review, or vote on, the asset, a To Do for each collaborator and a Voting Activity for the review is created in Lotus Connections. When a collaborator reviews the asset and submits a vote, the To Do for that collaborator is marked complete. The Activity is marked complete when all the collaborators have reviewed and voted on the asset.

Asset iWidgets

iWidgets are self-contained, HTML-based representations of software components. Rational Asset Manager provides a custom Asset iWidget that can be added to the home page of a community in a Lotus Connections server. A Lotus Connections administrator can enable the use of the iWidget. This iWidget is displayed in the content palette with the available Lotus Connections iWidgets. The Asset iWidget displays assets from a repository. This iWidget displays different assets depending on the search criteria that the administrator of the Lotus Connections community specifies.

Users can add the Asset iWidget to a dashboard in Rational Team Concert 3.0.

OpenSocial Gadgets

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You can embed OpenSocial gadgets on the General Details page of an asset or place Rational Asset Manager gadgets in other containers.

Libraries

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Shared Elements

Administrators can enable a library that contains the same elements (asset types, category schemas, relationship types, asset attributes, and assets) as other libraries. The system overwrites common elements and marks the overwritten elements and libraries as modified. If you disable a library, elements that are still associated with enabled libraries are not removed.

Element Traceability to Libraries

For each element, you can view all the libraries that the element belongs to.

New Policies

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Asset Cleanup Policy

This policy automatically retires or deletes older versions of an asset.

Discovery Library Adapter (DLA) Generation Policy

This policy generates DLA output for an asset, notifies the collaborators, and uploads the DLA to an FTP server.

IDE Links to Asset Artifacts

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Linked Artifacts across Versions

You can change the version of an asset that has linked content in the workspace. If the artifact of the resource is not on the newly selected version, a window opens in which you can choose what to link. In version 7.5, existing entries are updated, but are not destroyed, as they were in previous versions. For example, if you have a link to AssetA, version 1 with two linked artifacts and you change one of the artifacts, the other link from AssetA version 1 is preserved and a new entry to AssetA version 2 is created.

In addition, if a linked resource is missing dependent content, a warning is displayed. For example, if AssetB is a dependency of AssetA and you only have links from AssetA to Asset B, a warning is displayed. The warning will include a quick fix that you can use to select related content.

Linked Resources as Artifacts

When a linked resource in the Eclipse workspace is added as an artifact, its addition is converted into a URL artifact. This linking preserves the intent to reuse the artifact, which you can use to identify usage patterns among assets.

In addition, the asset to which the linked resource belongs is added as a dependency for the asset that is being edited.

Customized Email Messages

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Repository administrators can now modify the messages that are sent to users when various events occur. Repository administrators can also use predefined variables that are populated when they send a message.

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Community Forums

You can share forums between communities and between assets and communities.

A new community viewlet displays the active forum topics.

Improved Category Facets

On the search page, category facets are now displayed as a tree so that you can easily maintain context within the schema.

Asset and User Hovers

You can hover your cursor over assets on the home and submit pages, related assets, and search results to see details about those assets.

Likewise, you can hover your cursor over user links to see additional profile information.

Automatic Asset Subscriptions Preference

By default, users are automatically subscribed to assets they submit. Users have the option to disable this option. This option is useful for repository administrators who submit many assets programmatically and who do not want to subscribe to every asset that they submit.

Override Modify Permissions for a Lifecycle State

You can override modify permissions for an asset in a particular lifecycle state to allow only asset owners, collaborators with edit permissions, and administrators to modify the asset.

Duplicate Community Lifecycles

Create lifecycles more efficiently by duplicating similar lifecycles.

Download Unlimited Activities

Administrators can download the full activity details of an activity audit in a .csv file. The total amount of activities is displayed in the web client.

Convenient Access to Page Buttons

By using the new buttons at the top of pages, users can quickly submit or cancel page changes without scrolling to the bottom of the web page.

Programmatic Asset Subscriptions

Manage asset subscriptions by using the Java client API.

//Retrieve Asset Subscriptions
RAMSubscription[] subs = asset.getSubscriptions();

//Create a new Asset Subscription
RAMSubscription newSub = new RAMSubscription(subscriptionName, session.getUser());
newSub.setFrequency(Frequency.WEEKLY);
asset.addSubscription(newSub);
session.put(asset, new RAMStatusMonitor());

//Update an existing subscription
existingSub.setName("Change the subscription title");
existingSub.setFrequency(Frequency.WEEKLY);
session.put(asset, new RAMStatusMonitor());

//Delete an existing subscription
existingSub.setAction(RAMAction.DELETE);
session.put(asset, new RAMStatusMonitor());

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