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How does automatic linking of work item established when you type "work item type work item id " in the description/comment field of a work item.


Samir Patel (357) | asked May 11 '15, 11:40 a.m.
edited May 11 '15, 11:43 a.m.
We are using CLM 5.0 applications in our environment. I am looking for some help with clarification on Work item link creation.

I have two project areas, ProjA and ProjB. Both of the project areas have different types of work item types defined, i.e ProjA contains work item of type defect/enhancement, while ProjB contains Task/ExtTkt. I want to be able to create a link to work items between these project areas by simply typing "<work item type> <work item id>".

What I am finding is that auto link expansion only works within the context of ProjA when I type "defect 12345" it creates the link, similarly in ProjB as well. However, in ProjB, for work item "ExtTkt 67890" when I type "defect 12345" in description/comment field it should create a link to work item in ProjA that corresponds to "defect 12345". Also, reverse from ProjA to point to work item in ProjB should work but it does not work as expected.  Is this because of ProjA/ProjB are not aware of what those work item types are within the context of their own areas? Is this working as designed?  

I am aware that if I want to insert a link to work item I can simply right click in description/comments field and select "Insert Work item link", as well as option to press "CNTRL+SPACEBAR" to select a work item for inserting a link. I am also aware that we can create link by mentioning "work item <ID>", however I want to be able to just type "<work item type> <work item id>" and be able to have link, is that possible?

Can someone confirm the above process and or point to document that clearly explains how this particular feature works and all options associated with it?

Thanks,
Samir

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Lily Wang (4.9k714) | answered May 11 '15, 9:29 p.m.
There's an old document to explain the Link Detection https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Main/LinkDetection.
By my testing,
- if you use the work item type or alias which does not exist in the current project area, the link can not be detected
- you can use "work item <id>" which always works to create a link automatically
Hope it's helpful.
Samir Patel selected this answer as the correct answer

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Don Yang (7.7k21109138) | answered May 11 '15, 10:12 p.m.
The current link detection behavior was introduced since v4.0.4:Link detection will only trigger on the aliases and work item type names defined in a project area.

In the past(prior to v4.0.4) the tool used to do it on all types and aliases defined in all project areas, this basically led to two issues:
1) It caused memory issues because imagine there are 1000 project areas and each of them have defined some aliases. The old algorithm would go through all those aliases and provide links which led to the memory issues. The server was under a heavy performance load each time you sent a link detection request.
2) Due to the initial implementation, the algorithm was identifying aliases which were not intended. Say in a particular project area, you had some comments like Department 1 etc. Now if someone defines a Department alias in another project area, that would corrupt the view here because of link detection

there is already an enhancement request which proposes to allow the project admin to define which aliases are recognized as links and thus you could have your comments on that:
https://jazz.net/jazz/web/projects/Rational%20Team%20Concert#action=com.ibm.team.workitem.viewWorkItem&id=204058

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