IBM Rational Synergy for Rational Team Concert Bridge Connector – Part 2
In Part 1 of this article series you learned about the Rational Synergy for Rational Team Concert (RTC) Version 1.2 Bridge Connector integration, its benefits and features. Now let us see how to design your deployment of this integration by following some best practices and let us go through some of the use cases that this integration supports.
Best Practices
While designing and setting up the integration, by following some best practices, you can achieve better performance and easier maintenance. Consider these points to design your deployment:
- Points for Administrators
- Ensure that you have good network communication between the RTC and Synergy servers to have optimal performance levels.
- Identify the Synergy databases you want to configure to RTC
- Identify the project areas in RTC server which should be used for this integration and configure the right set of users with the permissions.
- One Synergy database can connect to only one RTC project area
- One RTC project area can connect to one or more Synergy databases.
- Admin can configure the list of attributes that need to be synchronized from RTC work item to Synergy proxy objects. By default some of the RTC attributes are already synchronized.
- Points for End users
- Users using Synergy Eclipse client, must install both Synergy client and RTC client on the same computer.
- Users using Synergy client, need to have only Synergy client and can access RTC through web client.
- A database can be integrated with either Rational Change or RTC or both. Default tool is set at the database level, but can be overridden by the clients.
Use cases
A development team which uses Rational Synergy for all source control and version management and uses RTC for planning and tracking would want to consider this integration.
Use case 1: Linking between tasks and work items.
A developer, Will has access to all RTC Contributor capabilities (not RTC SCM and RTC Build), as well as Developer access to Synergy capabilities.
- Will sees the Work Items assigned to him. He creates a Synergy task related to the work item, or he links an existing Synergy task to an assigned Work Item.
- When a task is related to a work item, consistency is ensured / automated between the Synergy release and the Work Item release.
- Will and his other team members can see the link Work Item -> Synergy task, and Synergy task -> RTC Work Item.
- The link can be used for navigation, from the WI to the Synergy task, and from the Synergy task to the Work Item
- The link can be removed as needed and recreated as needed.
Use case 2: Resolving a RTC work item ensures completeness of its associated Synergy tasks.
Tina, a developer, has access to all RTC Contributor capabilities (not RTC SCM and RTC Build), as well Developer access to Synergy capabilities.
- Tina uses all RTC collaboration capabilities on her assigned Work Items to help her perform her work
- Tina works in Synergy and completes the Synergy task
- At some point Tina updates the Work Item to inform it has been completed (the system ensure consistency and verifies that all related Synergy tasks are completed).
- If Synergy tasks are not completed, resolving the work item throws the error about not completed tasks.
- Tina can resolve the work item from RTC client or from synergy client.
Use case 3: Complete tractability from RTC.
The Team leader, Rick, is working in RTC and is tracking the work on the iteration.
- Using the RTC web client, Rick can view the work items assigned to his team members and their associated Synergy tasks
- He can open web URLs of the associated tasks and can download the objects associated to the task. He can also launch the Synergy rich client from here.
Use case 4: Rational Change for change management.
If you want to leverage Rational Change for Change management, RTC for release and iteration planning and Rational Synergy for configuration and version management, this is supported by bringing in Rational Synchronization Server 1.4.
Further References:
For further reference on where to get the integration, how to install, etc, you can refer to below links.
- Rational Synergy for Rational Team Concert Interface, Version 1.2 – Readme
- Synergy client’s user Guide
- IBM Rational Synergy for Eclipse Interface version 7.2.0.3 readme
- Rational Synchronization server v1.4
About the author
Neeraja Vishwanathapura is a senior developer for IBM and works in the development team of Rational Team Concert and Rational Synergy for RTC products. She can be contacted at nevishwa@in.ibm.com.
Copyright © 2014 IBM Corporation
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