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how to define default assignee for a Filed Against?


jane zhou (106865) | asked Nov 03 '17, 4:17 p.m.

 

Hi Someone who may concern,

        Currently, we have requirement to create default assignee for Filed Against. Say Feature 1 should be assigned to xxx. We developed script code to read associated team area for this Filed Against, and make team area admin as default assignee. So, we can avoid hard code user name in script.
         However, we face the issue that if Team A is associated with several Filed Against.  Say, Team A will work on Feature 1, Feature 2, and Feature 3.
       They want to assign different default assignee from the team according to Filed Against name.  For Feature 1, Tom is the default assignee. For Feature 2, Grace is the default assignee. For Feature 3, Dan is the default assignee.
        So, to achieve the goal, I can figure out 2 ways:
1  hard code their name and condition in the script, which will make the script full of condition and hard to maintain in future.
        
2 create one team for one feature, and make default assignee for every team as admin for the new teams.
But it will create lots of virtual teams.

      Who can help me on this? whether other solutions to overcome above shortages? 
       
       Thanks!

Best Regards,
Jane Zhou
       

         

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Ralph Schoon (63.1k33646) | answered Nov 06 '17, 3:08 a.m.
FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER
edited Nov 15 '17, 12:56 p.m.

The request is to, set a "default" owner based on the category of the work item (Filed Against).

First of all, I don't think there is a point in wasting the time and effort to automate this. Setting the owner does not provide any value, actually it makes things more complicated.

The person responsible for managing the requests for a tam area can use a query such as incoming unassigned to find the work items they have to assign. This goes away once you set the owner. So setting the owner does not provide any benefits, actually it removes them. The role and responsibility of the team member is defined by the process and not an attribute. So i would reject the request as useless. RTC provides all means to work as it is and to be ale to query/see the unassigned work items by default. You can setup dashboards and other means.

Making the user an administrator of the project area is not a good idea either. This is the typical one bad request causes other bad stuff to happen case.

Automation, attribute customization

  • You can not use a default value provider as the filed against is not available when that executes.
  • You would have to use a calculated value - on an attribute that is needed to be modified by users.
  • The JavaScript API available does not support any API that has access to the team area structure, members and roles. If you want to avoid hard-coding, you would make the script configurable. https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Main/AttributeCustomization explains how.
  • The Java API would allow to access the information of the team area and the associated users https://rsjazz.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/a-custom-condition-to-make-attributes-required-or-read-only-by-role/ shows the API
  • Since Attribute customization does not work at all in certain contexts (e.g. work items created by  Java API), a server follow up action would be safer. It would also avoid the problem having a calculated value on a user input attribute
  • Using a special role would be better than making users a team area admin to determine the "Default Owner" if you want to stick to this request






jane zhou selected this answer as the correct answer

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jane zhou commented Nov 15 '17, 10:38 a.m.

 Hi Ralph,


      Thanks for your detailed reply!
       Our difficulty is we only use web client, i.e. users did not use eclipse client. So we can not deploy java plug in for eclipse client.  And we have no permission to deploy JAVA server script because IT has concern to give us JazzAdmin permission. So we have no choice but use calculated value with java script.
      Defining a special role is a possible solution, but it means as project admin, we will lose control who will be default assignee. Since Admin of the team area can give any user the role as default assignee.

     Thanks again for your great help!

Best Regards,
Jane Zhou
        


Ralph Schoon commented Nov 15 '17, 1:03 p.m. | edited Nov 15 '17, 3:43 p.m.
FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

You don’t have to be jazzdmin to deploy a server side extension. Server side extensions have to be deployed by IT server admins. Server extensions also work for the web UI and don’t require any client deployment.


The main point I wanted to emphasize though was, that this is not a good requirement and you should stay away from it and use the benefits of the existing process instead of implementing something with no benefit for a lot of money. Create queries and dashboards that show the work items that are filed against / assigned to a team area and have no owner to let the team area owner/responsible person and anyone else know which work items still need to be assigned.

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