Rational Team Concert 3.0 "New and Noteworthy"

This is a summary of the main new features and improvements in the 3.0 release of Rational Team Concert; these changes are over and above the ones introduced earlier in the 2.0.0.1 (Sep. 2009) and 2.0.0.2 (Dec. 2009) releases.

The summary lists only the top four items per component. A complete overview of the additions to 3.0 can be found in the series of individual new and noteworthy articles:

• 3.0 M4
• 3.0 M5
• 3.0 M6
• 3.0 M7 (Beta 1)
• 3.0 M8
• 3.0 RC0 (Beta 2)

The more noteworthy features in the Rational Team Concert 3.0 release are outlined in a series of blog posts:

• Part I: Overview and Planning Enhancement
• Part II: Source Control
• Part III: Packaging and Licensing
• Part IV: Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE
• Part V: Work Item Enhancements

Contents:

• Foundation Web UI
• Work Items
• Source Control
• Enterprise Extensions
• Planning
• ClearCase Bridge
• ClearCase Importer and Synchronizer
• Build
• User Assistance
• Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE

Foundation Web UI

Mini Dashboard

A new sidebar that contains a single-column dashboard has been added to the web UI. The contents of Mini Dashboard always remains consistent as you navigate between web UI contexts.

Improved Navigation: Capability Menus, Quick Search

Links on the navigation bar have been replaced with capability menus, which provide quicker access to create actions, top-level queries, recently viewed artifacts and unsaved work.

A new unified search box has been added to the navigation bar, replacing the individual search boxes in each section of the web UI.

Home Menu

The home menu consolidates links to projects and dashboards from all applications that your Jazz Team Server knows about into a single list for easy navigation between web UI contexts.

Work Items

Work Item Customizations - New Web Interface

Work Item Customizations can now be performed in the web. The web UI provides the capability to customize Types and Attributes, Enumerations, Editor Presentations, Workflows, and Change Management Type Binding. Editor Presentations can be customized using a near-WYSIWYG editor which allows you to preview your work item editors in the web UI and get instant feedback as you modify them. Presentations and sections can be positioned and arranged using drag and drop.

In addition, Work Item categories and releases can now be managed from the web UI in the same way as it is possible from the Eclipse client.

Powerful Attribute Customization

Work Item customization was improved with many new capabilities. Input fields can now be validated with regular expressions or number ranges and default values for any attribute can be provided. You can also configure enumerations whose value set depends on the value of another attribute. See the article Customizing attributes in Rational Team Concert 3.0 to learn about these capabilities.

Improved Screen Capture from Web UI

The screen capture tool is now able to draw arrows and text into the captured image. You can edit, delete, and move text boxes on top of the capture as needed. In addition to these new drawing capabilities, you can now copy a captured image to the clipboard and paste it into any other application that supports images. You can also easily undo changes made to the capture and revert back to the captured image if necessary.

The screen capture tool can now be used in the web UI with the same functionality as in the rich client. You can attach a screen capture to the work item you opened the capture tool from or choose to attach it to a new work item or a different one from the same project area.

Printing Support

Work Items can now be printed from the work item editor in the Eclipse UI and web UI. The presentation is optimized for printing and shows the read-only variant of all attribute presentations.

Source Control

Distributed Source Control

Do you have teams on different servers? You can now flow changes between workspaces and streams that belong to different repositories. You can also associate change sets with work items from a different server - e.g. a work item from another RTC server or from OSLC change management providers such as Clear Quest.

See the article Flow changes cross repositories with Rational Team Concert to learn about these new capabilities.

Web UI - Quickly browse through Source Control artifacts

You can easily find and explore Source Control artifacts with the Source Control menu - e.g. you have quick access to streams, workspaces and recently visited artifacts. use the new Advanced Search e.g. to pinpoint a particular change set, baseline or snapshot.

Set User Properties on files and folders

Versionables have special properties such as their content type, line delimiter or executable bit. Users and tools can now define their own properties. These properties can be seen by other contributors and used by third party tooling e.g. to govern some custom process advisor.

Enterprise Extensions

ISPF Client

Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF) is a development environment commonly used by z/OS users. Rational Team Concert now includes a client for this environment that allows a comprehensive set of SCM functions to be accessed via the ISPF 'green screen' environment. The client follows the common ISPF panel standards for all panels and actions and uses the standard ISPF editor to edit files resulting in the same look, feel and behavior that all mainframe developers are used to.

More information can be found on the Rational Team Concert Feature Page

Dependency Based Build

There is now a new, smarter way to build enterprise systems. Rational Team Concert is now aware of dependencies between buildable parts. For example, for z/OS applications, we now know what copybooks are included into a COBOL program. Armed with this information Dependency Based Build now knows what COBOL programs need to be rebuilt, or recompiled, when a copybook has been changed. The dependency information is obtained by scanning the source after it has been delivered into the repository. Rational Team Concert ships with a standard scanner that is able to understand COBOL and PLI. Similarly, in the case of IBM i applications, the Dependency Based Build understands RPG /COPY members, COBOL copybooks and dependencies on physical and logical files from RPG or COBOL source. The framework through which these scanners are registered is open to customers and so other scanners may be contributed for other languages.

More information can be found on the Rational Team Concert Feature Page

Promotion

A very common practice in enterprise development shops is to have conceptual hierarchical levels of code. For example a Development, Quality, and Production level of code. The actual physical implementation of these hierarchical levels can vary. In a System z shop a common implementation is to have a different set of Partitioned Data Sets (PDS) for each hierarchical level, each with a different high level qualifier. Rational Team Concert now includes tooling that supports promotion for code up these conceptual hierarchies. Rational Team Concert uses different streams for each hierarchical level. The tooling will automatically move source code from one stream to another and will also copy the build output on the target system from one data set to another data set. It will then tweak the Dependency Build metadata so that Dependency Based Build does not think it needs to rebuild anything.

More information can be found on the Rational Team Concert Feature Page

Deployment

Another common operation in enterprise development organizations is to deploy runtime code to different runtime platforms. Rational Team Concert now has support for this. This tooling allows you to define packages of build output that must be deployed and define a deployment definition that describes where to deploy a package to.

Planning

RTC's Planning component now provides tools to assist with the planning and execution of both agile and traditional projects. The support for Agile projects got further extended in RTC 3.0 (see highlights below). For traditional projects Rational Team Concert supports schedule dependencies and constraints and a Gantt chart editor. However the majority of the new planning features are available for both agile and traditional plans.

Schedule View

One enhancement that benefits both traditional and agile planning is the ability to visualize a plan based on a timeline. In agile projects we call these time projections a roadmap to make it more clear that we don't have schedule constraints and schedule dependencies but rather iterations to do the sequencing. In traditional processes the time projection is called a Gantt chart.

Snapshots

A plan snapshot captures the current state of the plan, including the work items and their schedules, the owning team area and the iteration the plan is created for. Besides creating snapshots, you can compare snapshots as well. Either compare two individual snapshots or compare a snapshot to the current version of a plan.

Links

Plans allow you to show links! Select any link and add it as a column - that can be a classic Rational Team Concert link or links that point to CLM artifacts. To disclose more information simply hover over a link. The hover shows detailed resource information or a summary of multiple linked artifacts.

Further, the Plan editor contains a Links tab which shows plan links. It supports these scenarios:

• Link development plans across project areas
• Link development plans with requirements collections in Rational DOORS Requirement Professional
• Link development plans with test plans in Rational Quality Manager

Column Headers

The planned items page now includes headers for columns. This makes reading the plan much easier. Additionally, you can now resize the columns using drag & drop.

Importing and exporting a Microsoft® Project plan

You can import and export a plan from/to Microsoft Project. To import a plan, save the Microsoft Project file as an .xml file and import the .xml file. You can map the task types from Microsoft Project to the work item types in your project, specify the date range for the plan, and map resources from the imported plan to the current plan.

Time tracking

A Time Tracking tab has been added to the work item editor. This allows you to track time towards different time codes. The time codes are configurable in the process specification. By default the time tracking function is available in the Formal Project Management process template, however it is not limited to it. The tab can be added to any work item type presentation.

Agile Planning

Taskboard

The Planning Web Client features a new taskbord. Inspired by real taskboards, we implemented a visual representation of work items as sticky notes. Sticky notes can be colorized using simple rules and also can be configured to show further work item information, e.g. estimate, priority, or tags.

The taskboard also works on your iPad. Simply use your fingers to move sticky notes from one column to another, no matter where you do your daily scrum.

Rank column

A new column is now available showing the Rank for every plan item. Dragging and dropping while sorting by ranking will update the ranks so that it is easier to see what's most important.

Traditional Planning

Resource allocation

You can use the Resources tab to view, add, and edit resource allocations. Before adding resources to the project, you can search their availability in the Add Resource dialog. To perform the availability search, you must specify one or more users, the start and end dates, and the allocation percentage. The resources tab is only available in the Formal Project Management process template.

ClearCase Bridge

ClearCase Bridge features for base ClearCase

We've added base ClearCase support to the ClearCase Bridge, allowing you to link work items with base ClearCase versions. This linkage allows ClearCase users to benefit from Rational Team Concert features such as Work Items, Agile Planning, and Build while using base ClearCase for SCM.

Please note: The features described in this section depend on ClearCase 7.1.2 or later.

The ClearCase Bridge integrates the Rational Team Concert current work item into the base ClearCase workflow. During checkout, checkin, add to source, and undo checkout operations in the ClearCase Remote Client, associations are automatically created (and removed) between ClearCase versions and the current work item. In this integration, the current work item effectively acts as a base ClearCase "change set" containing a collection of ClearCase versions.

Once associated, ClearCase versions appear in the Links area of a work item. Opening a version link from this context opens the ClearCase version in an appropriate editor.

(The current work item may also be used in the UCM workflow to automatically associate new activities with the current work item.)

In addition to automatic work item association, new menu items allow you to create and manage manual associations. In the ClearCase Explorer perspective of the ClearCase Remote Client, three new items appear on the context menu for files and folders. Associate Work Items and Remove Work Items allows the user to create and remove links between ClearCase versions and RTC work items. Open Work Items opens all the work items associated with the ClearCase version. These menu items are only enabled for items under source control in a base ClearCase view.

The menu items also appear in the Java perspective for files and folders under ClearCase source control, and in the ClearCase History view.

It is also possible to manually create the ClearCase bridge links that are automatically created by the UI using the OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration) Change Management ("rtc_cm") interface. This makes it possible to create and examine these links from ClearCase triggers. Here is a simple example using the "curl" command-line tool from a Windows command line to create a ClearCase Activities link and a ClearCase Versions link using a local Jazz Team server:

	set OPTS=-k -L -b c:/cookies.txt -c c:/cookies.txt
	set HOST="https://localhost:9443/jazz"
	curl %OPTS% "%HOST%/authenticated/identity"
	curl %OPTS% -d j_username=user1 -d j_password=user1 "%HOST%/j_security_check"

	curl %OPTS% -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"rdf:resource\":\"oid:696bdb26.03c648a5.9c32.e7:05:65:72:02:e8@vobuuid:0ef71c46.6b984fde.93dc.93:21:10:d6:87:1db\",\"oslc_cm:label\":\"test_act@/pvob\"}" "%HOST%/oslc/workitems/12345/rtc_cm:com.ibm.team.connector.ccbridge.common.act2wi.s"

	curl %OPTS% -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"rdf:resource\":\"oid:696bdb26.03c648a5.9c32.e7:05:65:72:02:e7@vobuuid:0ef71c46.6b984fde.93dc.93:21:10:d6:87:1db\",\"oslc_cm:label\":\"/test/dir/file/2\"}" "%HOST%/oslc/workitems/12345/rtc_cm:com.ibm.team.connector.ccbridge.common.ver2wi.s"
	

For more information about OSLC and "curl" see https://jazz.net/library/article/194. For more information on the rtc_cm OSLC interface, see https://jazz.net/library/article/352.

For more information about the ClearCase Bridge in general, see the ClearCase Bridge section in the online help.

ClearCase Bridge features in ClearCase SCM adapter for dynamic and snapshot view users

We've also extended the ClearCase SCM adapter to provide bridge capabilities. The SCM Adapter is an older ClearCase Eclipse plugin whose primary advantage is that it supports ClearCase dynamic and snapshot views, while the ClearCase Remote Client currently only supports ClearCase web views.

We've added both UCM and base ClearCase support for the SCM Adapter bridge. As in the CCRC bridge, the following use cases are supported:

• Association of UCM activities to work items
• Association of base ClearCase versions to the current work item: automatically during checkout, checkin, uncheckout, and mkelem operations; and manually via menu items on files and folders
• Examining and removal of associations

Once associated, UCM activities or base ClearCase versions appear as ClearCase Activities or ClearCase Versions link on the Links tab of a work item, as they do in the CCRC bridge. Opening a version from the context of a work item opens an Eclipse editor for that version; opening an activity opens the activity properties and change set in the native ClearCase UI.

A new SCM adpater view has been added to facilitate the association of activities to work items:

ClearCase Importer and Synchronizer

Significant import performance improvements

The performance of the ClearCase Importer has been significantly improved from 2.0.0.2, reducing the import time from 2-6 seconds/file to approximately .5 seconds/file. The changes also improve the performance of the initial import step of the ClearCase Synchronizer.

New command-line commands

New commands have been added to the CC Connector CLI. addSyncRoots allows a user to add synchronization roots to an existing synchronized stream stream:

Usage: scm addSyncRoots [options] <synchronized stream> <synchronization roots...>
  synchronized stream   - synchronized stream name
  synchronization roots - {SynchronizationRoot ...}

Options:
  -P [--password] arg        - Password for repository.
  -r [--repository-uri] arg  - URI specifying the location of repository.
  -u [--username] arg        - Username for repository.
  -v [--verbose]             - Increase verbosity of output.

list syncEngine allows a user to view the process ID of the sync engine for one or more named or all local synchronization streams on a Linux sync host:

Usage: ccc list syncEngine [options] [synchronized streams...]
  synchronized streams - {--locallySyncd | SynchronizedStream ...}

Options:
  -L [--locallySyncd]        - operate on the streams that are synchronized on this host
  -P [--password] arg        - Password for repository.
  -r [--repository-uri] arg  - URI specifying the location of repository.
  -u [--username] arg        - Username for repository.
  -v [--verbose]             - Increase verbosity of output.

Build

Integration with Rational Build Forge

Integration with Rational Build Forge and Build Forge Agents is now included in RTC, with simplified configuration:

• Connection details are captured in the build engine, and shared across build definitions.
• Multiple Build Forge engines may be configured, e.g. for different projects / teams.
• Jazz Source Control options can be configured directly in the build definition.
• Server settings are simplified.

When using Jazz SCM, the build result captures linkage information to related artifacts like the build workspace, snapshot, changes, and work items. The synchronization of properties with Build Forge has also been improved.

Web UI enhancements

In addition to the overall layout and navigation enhancements, the web UI for builds now groups build definitions and engines by team area, and allows you to filter by team area. Build results show more details such as the build activities, and links to the build workspace and snapshot. You can also compare changes between builds.

Email notifications

You can now enable email notifications for builds. Email notifications can be configured for each build definition, and also at project level, with several options for when to send notifications, and who to notify.

User Assistance

New interactive installation guide

The Rational Team Concert help includes a completely revised Installing and upgrading section, including a new interactive installation guide. The interactive installation guide now lets you select one of three deployment topologies, and provides instructions specific to the topology that you choose. As you hover over an installation topology selection, a diagram that illustrates the topology is displayed to the right.

Remote help

In this release of Rational Team Concert, only the context-sensitive help is installed with the product. By default, Rational Team Concert accesses the online help from http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/clmhelp/v3r0/index.jsp. If you will be working on a computer that will not have internet access, you can download the help to that computer or to an intranet server and configure the help system for local access. For an overview of how remote help works, see this tour. For details about configuring the help system, see Configuring remote help.

New tutorials and tour

This release includes the following new tutorials and tour:

• Manage builds with the Jazz Team Build in the Rational Team Concert Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE
• Create plans and work items in the Rational Team Concert Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE
• Share changes with your team in the Rational Team Concert Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE
• Preserve component and workspace configuration in the Rational Team Concert Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE
• Define and manage risks
• Plan a traditional project
• IBM Rational Team Concert Build

Product and capability Welcome experiences in Web client

The Web client now includes a product Welcome experience page and capability-specific Welcome experience pages to help new users get started with Rational Team Concert. The product Welcome experience page includes links to overview tours; getting started guidance by role and goal; tutorials and advanced learning materials; introductions to capabilities; and community resources.

From each of the capability menus, such as Plans, Work Items, and Source Control, you can access a Welcome experience page that lets you execute core tasks. In addition, each capability Welcome experience page contains links to help topics or videos where you can learn more about the capability.

Enterprise Extensions help

The Enterprise Extensions functions included in Rational Team Concert v3.0 work with servers or clients on IBM i or System z. To support these functions, the help topics for Rational Team Concert for IBM i and System z have been included in the Rational Team Concert product help. The help topics have either been merged into similar topics within the Rational Team Concert v3.0 product help or under nodes in the help table of contents whose names include Enterprise Extensions.

Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE

In 3.0, the RTC Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE has a host of new features centered around native integrations, richer SCM and work item support, closer integration with Microsoft builds, and team presence.

Sandbox Explorer

With 3.0, the RTC Client for Visual Studio supports flexible ways of sharing your sources and loading them into your sandbox. The new Sandbox Explorer View lets you work with files and folders that are outside of a solution hierarchy, but in your sandbox. If you have a folder containing design documents or test cases, you can now share it into the repository easily via the Sandbox Explorer.

The Sandbox Explorer also provides powerful options to move and rename your files and folders, preserving history.

The RTC Client maintains a list of the sandboxes that you have worked with recently, under the Sandboxes node in the Team Artifacts view.

Work Item Editor

In 3.0, the RTC Client for Visual Studio has a native, process-aware editor for work items. The editor supports custom fields. The editor lets you navigate easily to linked change sets, related work items or change requests, associated builds and so on.

New template for Microsoft builds

With 3.0, users can create a build definition using the "Jazz Build for Microsoft Visual Studio Solution" template. A build definition created using this template lets the users specify configuration details typical to an msbuild or devenv.exe based build. Users can also configure MSTests or NUnits to be run as a part of the build.

Running Static Analysis Tools

With 3.0, the RTC Client for Visual Studio provides the ability to run a Static Analysis tool before you deliver changes to an RTC source control repository. You can set up your team's process to not allow source code delivery if the static analysis fails.

Once this rule is set up, the RTC Client for Visual Studio will run the static analysis tool before change sets are delivered. Delivery will not be allowed if the run has errors.