Strong changes in RTC productive project area
I need to make strong changes in workitems, workflows, fields in a RTC project area that is in a production server. Which is the best way to implement a test project area before commiting the changes? And then, how can I implement these changes to the production server?
Thanks¡
Juan Manuel
Accepted answer
In this new project area, you can make all the necessary changes to your configuration. Once complete, you can then make the changes in the production project area.
You will need to synchronize the existing work items to ensure they are changed to reflect your new process.
Keep in mind that your workflow will need a logical state. For example:
If all work items are currently in state A, and you want to remove state A -> all work items need to be moved out of state A before you remove it. If you remove state A when work items are still in that state, they won't be able to move into a new state and will be stuck.
Comments
Ok, I get it. But is there a easier way to replicate the changes in the test project area to the production project are? Some kind of exportation?
Thanks in advance.
JM
You can't re-import the process template since this isn't a current feature.
You could copy over the XML, but this is not supported and we highly recommend against it.
The safest way is to make the changes one by one and save the project area - that way you can back out of each change by reverting the process template (should something go wrong).
Oops¡ Thanks Stephanie ¡
One other answer
Now for your existing project area that wasn't original created to share its process from a master project area:
- Export the existing process configuration into a process template, and create the master project area from that template. Now go into the source of your process configuration, and update the XML to be that of an Unconfigured Process (you can find that XML in the Process Configuration Source tab of the Unconfigured Process template), and then make your project area "share" the process from the master project area you just created. Verify that everything is working fine (if anything is acting strangely, you can just go into your Process Configuration Source tab and restore your original XML from the process source history).
Comments
questions:
I agree that "master project area" is the better phrase to use for conversations like this, so I'll revise my answer to use that term ("process area" is the superclass of "project area" and "team area", but it is currently primarily used by the Java API).
WRT existing work items, if you create a master project area from a template created from the existing project area, then all of the metadata and schema used by the work items would stay the same, so the existing work items would not be affected.