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Engineering Workflow Management New & Noteworthy

IBM Engineering Workflow Management 7.0 New & Noteworthy

Engineering Workflow Management is an integral part of the IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) solution.

New in Engineering Workflow Management 7.0

For a complete list of new and noteworthy items in this release, see the New & Noteworthy Details.

For a summary of items in this release, see the following highlights:

Tracking and planning: Consistent attachment and work item access control

This release supports use of work item access control context for attachments uploaded to the work item. In this feature, the access context of the attachment is the same as the access context of the work item. A user with read access to a work item can access attachments associated with that work item. Users without access to the work item do not have access to the attachment. A direct URL link to an attachment is denied access if the user does not have read access to the work item that the attachment is attached to.

A new advanced server property, Use work item access control context for attachments, is available to enable this feature. The new security model applies only to new attachments created after enabling this property; it does not change the access context of existing attachments. This property is enabled by default.

Git integration: Integration with Bitbucket server

You can now link Git commits in an Atlassian Bitbucket server (on premise) to EWM work items. You can also apply EWM process permissions and preconditions to Git push operations for Git repositories hosted in a Bitbucket server.

Jazz source control: Improved code review approval work flow

The code review feature has been enhanced to provide a more structured interaction between reviewers and the code author (work item owner). The code review work flow and reviewer states are managed inside code review. Reviewer approvals are now distinct from work item approvals.The author must explicitly submit code for review, and reviewers must indicate when they have started and completed a review cycle. Controls are in place to prevent the code under review from being changed until the review enters a revision cycle so that reviewers always review the latest content. Preferences allow you to modify the experience by specifying when issues can be raised and by whom; whether a user should be added as a reviewer; and the conditions that need to be satisfied before a reviewer can approve. Authors have the ability to close a review once it is approved and ready for delivery. When a review is closed, no further changes can be made including adding or removing change sets, updating issues, or changing reviewer states.

The code review web interface has been redesigned to include two tabbed pages. The Review tab contains the familiar compare editor and navigation panel. The navigation panel now has reviewer action buttons to start a review cycle and signal when it is done. Authors have buttons to resubmit or close a review. A new Overview tab provides summary information about the review such as status, review cycle, reviewer states, issues, and links to issues that have been extracted to work items. On this tab, you can add and remove reviewers, update the target stream, and edit issues.

The code review presentation in the work item has been updated to fit with the new approval work flow. The author can submit for review from the work item where they can select the reviewer and target stream. Users can open a code review from the work item as usual. The code review presentation is now visible in the client for Eclipse IDE.

A new process advisor is available that prevents delivery if code review has not been closed for work items that have code review enabled.

The command-line export code-review command is more flexible. You can now specify one or more work items. The content has been expanded to include time stamps associated with all reviewer and author actions so you can have more detailed insight into your code review process.

Tracking and planning: Organize work item queries by using tags in the web client

In this release, you can organize work item queries by using tags in the web client. With this feature, you can group queries by tags on the My Queries and Shared Queries tabs. The tags can represent a hierarchy of folders. For example, the tag 7.0 / iFix001 / verification (release / iFix / type) displays a root of 7.0, a child iFix001, and a nested child of verification. You can organize your queries by new tags or existing tags.

Tracking and planning: SAFe 4.6 process templates are available

This release adds two predefined process templates that support Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 4.6:

Essential SAFe 4.6: Use this template to establish a Program/Team tooling environment.
Full SAFe 4.6: Use this template to establish a Portfolio tooling environment with the Large Solution layer for the Full SAFe 4.6 configuration. This environment is associated with one or more Essential SAFe Program/Team tooling environments.

Client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE: EWM extensions now load asynchronously in the background during Visual Studio startup

In this release, the Engineering Workflow Management (EWM) client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE extensions load asynchronously in the background. To avoid performance degradation, Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 discourages the practice of automatically loading extensions synchronously. Asynchronous loading is supported starting in Microsoft Visual Studio 2015; therefore, the EWM client for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE is not supported with releases of Microsoft Visual Studio earlier than 2015.

Enterprise Extensions: Support for running z/OS dependency builds using Build Manager on ZD&T

EWM Enterprise Extensions now provides an optional mechanism to improve z/OS dependency build performance on IBM Z Systems Development and Test Environment (ZD&T). This mechanism is based on the Build Manager functionality provided by the IBM Dependency Based Build product. The Build Manager works by maintaining multiple long-running, persistent Java processes to avoid JVM startup when running builds. EWM Enterprise Extensions can be configured to use the Build Manager.

Use the socket server daemon to manage processes, and use the socket client to issue build commands.

Jazz source control: Duplicate change sets

You can now duplicate a change set to create a new, active change set. This feature is available in the IBM Engineering Workflow Management client for Eclipse IDE and Microsoft Visual Studio IDE in addition to the command-line interface.

Build: Ability to compare properties between two states of a build definition or a build engine

In the EWM client for Eclipse IDE, you can now compare properties between two states of a build engine or a build definition. You can launch the compare operation from the build definition History view or the build engine History view.

Jazz source control: Ability to untrack repository workspaces in the Pending Changes view of the Eclipse client

In the client for Eclipse IDE, you can now specify that one or more workspaces that are shown in the Pending Changes view are not tracked. An untracked workspace does not show components, change sets, baselines, or flow targets. A benefit of using an untracked workspace is that the client does not incur the overhead of fetching information to populate the Pending Changes view.

If the untracked workspace was previously loaded (as opposed to just shown in the Pending Changes view), the files for the workspace remain in the sandbox. If you then choose to track the workspace, the files do not have to be downloaded again to the sandbox.

Enterprise Extensions: IBM Dependency Based Build included in ELM z/OS SMP/E package

The z/OS SMP/E package for ELM now includes IBM Dependency Based Build (DBB) installation materials, which can be installed.

EWM uses the Build Manager implemented by DBB to optionally manage JVMs on ZD&T for z/OS Dependency Builds. EWM maintains a common service stream and documentation across all DBB offerings with this approach.

The DBB package provides supplemental functionality to z/OS build engineers by including the DBB Java APIs and Groovy support on z/OS that can be used to extend EWM build capabilities and flexibility. For example, you can use this functionality as part of pre- or post-build scripts.

New in other applications

For new and noteworthy information about other applications, see these pages:

For a list of changes to the installation and upgrade process, see the ELM 7.0 Installation and Upgrade Notes.

New in previous versions of Engineering Workflow Management

For details about new features and functionality in previous releases, see these pages:

IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Task tracking � Source control � Agile planning

IBM Engineering Workflow Management 7.0