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Work Item Custom Attributes and mandatory fields questions
Our team has started to use RTC for build, scrum, and defects.
I have two questions on work items.
1. Can I make Severity and custom attributes mandatory on the defect editor presentation? I see where some of the properties can be checked, but not Severity and not any new ones I may add.
2. I added an enumeration called 'Component' to the work items. Then I added a custom attribute with type 'component' to refer to the enumeration. I added this to the Work Item presentation and could see this in the work items.
Now when I did a query, I could see two 'component' in the list of columns to query. One returned nothing and one returned the various components.
So in an attempt to remove the second 'component', I (this was a mistake, I'm sure) removed the attribute.
Then when I created a new WI, the component enumeration was no longer on the presentation? I could still see it on existing WI though. So I tried to put the custom attribute back as it was but got an error that it already exists. So I created a new one called component_attribute and it worked. I added it to the presentation and I can see it in new WI, but not existing ones. I also was able to rename it to 'Component' (even though I couldn't add it this way)
So now I have 3 'component' columns in the query list and one works for older Work items, one works for new ones and one is always empty.
Seems there is a disassociation with the older work items and the current 'component'
I hope I can clean this up with your help?
Thanks,
Steve
I have two questions on work items.
1. Can I make Severity and custom attributes mandatory on the defect editor presentation? I see where some of the properties can be checked, but not Severity and not any new ones I may add.
2. I added an enumeration called 'Component' to the work items. Then I added a custom attribute with type 'component' to refer to the enumeration. I added this to the Work Item presentation and could see this in the work items.
Now when I did a query, I could see two 'component' in the list of columns to query. One returned nothing and one returned the various components.
So in an attempt to remove the second 'component', I (this was a mistake, I'm sure) removed the attribute.
Then when I created a new WI, the component enumeration was no longer on the presentation? I could still see it on existing WI though. So I tried to put the custom attribute back as it was but got an error that it already exists. So I created a new one called component_attribute and it worked. I added it to the presentation and I can see it in new WI, but not existing ones. I also was able to rename it to 'Component' (even though I couldn't add it this way)
So now I have 3 'component' columns in the query list and one works for older Work items, one works for new ones and one is always empty.
Seems there is a disassociation with the older work items and the current 'component'
I hope I can clean this up with your help?
Thanks,
Steve
4 answers
Hi Steve
1. This is possible with 2.0M1 but not with 1.0 or 1.0.1. An enumeration in 1.0 always has a value, as the default value is also a valid one.
2. Background: custom attributes are not removed from the repository when removing them from the project configuration (thus you still can access them on old work items).
The UI editor does not allow to add a custom attribute with the id of an attribute already present in the repository (this is to deny attribute type changes which are not possible). However, in 2.0M1, you can reuse existing attributes and should be able to add an attribute you removed before.
In both cases (1.0 and 2.0M1), you can textually add back a removed attribute on the Process Configuration Source tab in the Project Configuration editor - however you have to edit the underlying XML directly.
To clean this up, you could remove the additional custom attribute and add the old back (in the XML source), but the newer existing work items would then also have the additional attribute (which you can hide from the presentation). Anyway, to bring existing work items at least to the state of the process spec regarding custom attributes, you can use the 'Synchronize Attributes' action available form the type icons in the work items (query result) view. This adds the necessary custom attributes, but it does not remove any attributes.
Regards
Marcel
Jazz Work Item team
1. This is possible with 2.0M1 but not with 1.0 or 1.0.1. An enumeration in 1.0 always has a value, as the default value is also a valid one.
2. Background: custom attributes are not removed from the repository when removing them from the project configuration (thus you still can access them on old work items).
The UI editor does not allow to add a custom attribute with the id of an attribute already present in the repository (this is to deny attribute type changes which are not possible). However, in 2.0M1, you can reuse existing attributes and should be able to add an attribute you removed before.
In both cases (1.0 and 2.0M1), you can textually add back a removed attribute on the Process Configuration Source tab in the Project Configuration editor - however you have to edit the underlying XML directly.
To clean this up, you could remove the additional custom attribute and add the old back (in the XML source), but the newer existing work items would then also have the additional attribute (which you can hide from the presentation). Anyway, to bring existing work items at least to the state of the process spec regarding custom attributes, you can use the 'Synchronize Attributes' action available form the type icons in the work items (query result) view. This adds the necessary custom attributes, but it does not remove any attributes.
Regards
Marcel
Jazz Work Item team
Marcel,
The key to make this usable for me was;
"...to bring existing work items at least to the state of the process spec regarding custom attributes, you can use the 'Synchronize Attributes' action available form the type icons in the work items (query result) view."
This was very good to know! Thanks.
In the end, I synchronized and then I renamed the latest 'component' to 'Module' and then using queries reset all the old work item component values to match in the new attribute. So now all the work items are using the same 'module' attribute and have proper values.
Since the other two 'component' attributes that are still in the repository are no longer used anywhere, is there a way to remove them? They still show up in query and column selections.
I think a good enhancement is to pop a warning when the Custom Attribute 'Remove' button is pressed to inform that this can cause problems and that it is not removed everywhere.
Thanks again,
Steve
The key to make this usable for me was;
"...to bring existing work items at least to the state of the process spec regarding custom attributes, you can use the 'Synchronize Attributes' action available form the type icons in the work items (query result) view."
This was very good to know! Thanks.
In the end, I synchronized and then I renamed the latest 'component' to 'Module' and then using queries reset all the old work item component values to match in the new attribute. So now all the work items are using the same 'module' attribute and have proper values.
Since the other two 'component' attributes that are still in the repository are no longer used anywhere, is there a way to remove them? They still show up in query and column selections.
I think a good enhancement is to pop a warning when the Custom Attribute 'Remove' button is pressed to inform that this can cause problems and that it is not removed everywhere.
Thanks again,
Steve
Steve
There is currently no possibility to 'delete' an attribute, enhancement 59558 (https://jazz.net/jazz/resource/itemName/com.ibm.team.workitem.WorkItem/59558) tracks the according enhancement request.
More user guidance in the process editors is one of our topics for 2.0, this includes more warnings/errors and maybe query templates to find work items that do not match the current configuration.
Regards
Marcel
Jazz Work Item team
There is currently no possibility to 'delete' an attribute, enhancement 59558 (https://jazz.net/jazz/resource/itemName/com.ibm.team.workitem.WorkItem/59558) tracks the according enhancement request.
More user guidance in the process editors is one of our topics for 2.0, this includes more warnings/errors and maybe query templates to find work items that do not match the current configuration.
Regards
Marcel
Jazz Work Item team