New & Noteworthy for IBM Engineering Workflow Management 7.0.1

IBM Engineering Workflow Management now officially supports the Chromium-based Edge browser. Also, the Internet Explorer browser is no longer supported.

• New VSTest configuration is added to the Microsoft Visual Studio build definition template. You can configure to run VSTest command and provide some of the common options through the user interface.
• In the MSTest configuration, you can specify the path to a test container file (usually ending with .dll extension).

Jazz builds and EWM Jenkins builds that are configured with a build definition now support optimized incremental load. In a build configured with an optimized incremental load, only modified files are fetched from the repository; local changes are not reverted, and untracked files are not deleted. For a large workspace size, an optimized incremental load is much faster than a regular incremental load. To enable optimized incremental load, in the Eclipse client or the web client, in the Jazz Source Control tab of the Build Definition editor, select the Do an optimized incremental load option.

Note: Optimized incremental load is not supported when you use load rules to load the workspace.

Image of the Do an optimized incremental load option in the Eclipse client:


Image of the Do an optimized incremental load option in the web client:

The other two new options - Do a full load and Do an incremental load - replace the Delete the directory before loading option. When the Do a full load option is selected, the contents of the load directory are deleted and all the files from the workspace are fetched in every build. In older build definitions in which the Delete the directory before loading option was selected, now the Do a full load option is automatically selected. When the Do an incremental load option is selected, only modified files are fetched from the repository, local changes are reverted, and untracked files are deleted. In older build definitions in which the Delete the directory before loading option was not selected, now the Do an incremental load option is automatically selected.

You can now set up a sandbox using a stream URL from IBM EWM > Jazz source control > Setup sandbox from stream. This action will create a new workspace from the stream and load all components from the workspace in the sandbox.
 

The Work Items editor, Query editor, and Operation History view use an integrated web editor to interact with other views in EWM. The integrated web editor is based on the default browser engine embedded in the .NET framework, which is based on Internet Explorer.

When you move files or folders outside of Visual Studio or Eclipse, or without using the IBM EWM context menu for the Windows Explorer client, the history of the files or folders is lost. Refreshing the Pending Changes view for sandbox changes will show the deletion of the files or folders from the original location and addition to the new location corresponding to the move or rename action.
 

You can now use the Combine Changes option from the Pending Changes view to combine the two changes and retain the move or rename history.

Image of Combine Changes context menu in Pending Changes view:

Enterprise Extensions' Promotion feature has now been enhanced. The feature enables coordination of the delivery of source change sets to a production-level source stream in EWM when their built objects are deployed to production outside of EWM. This feature is enabled for z/OS work item packages and optimally used with IBM UrbanCode Deploy.

A REST API that is introduced for Package Promotion validates or promotes change sets to a target stream in EWM. You can configure a full DevOps process so that work item packaging generates a UCD version that contains the source change set metadata. The metadata can be used as an input parameter for this Package Promotion API. The deployment system can run customized deployment processes that issue calls to this API to synchronously (or asynchronously) deliver the change sets while their version is being deployed. To validate whether the change sets are not in conflict with the production's source state before deployment, Package Promotion might be called in the preview mode.

IBM Developer for z Systems supports the creation of zUnits, which allow organizations to capture and run unit tests easily. zUnits are programs that need to be compiled. Running the unit tests can be done through a runner during a build, without the need to run the programs that are being tested in an execution environment.

Engineering Workflow Management (EWM) now supports a workflow that allows building the test programs when they are created and changed. It also allows running the unit tests whenever the program to be tested changes, or whenever the test program or its data changes. The workflow is implemented by establishing dependencies based on the zUnit configuration file. In this release, EWM introduces a new scanner that creates these dependencies.

Note: This workflow is applicable only with the June release of IDz.

You can now create multiple change sets per component by using the new optional argument that is added to the zImport scm command-line tool.

To create multiple change sets per component:

• Specify the -m or --multiplechangesets option followed by an argument in the form of an integer to determine the maximum number of zFiles imported in each change set. By default, the zFiles are imported in one single change set. If you enter 0 as the argument, you do not change this default behavior.
• To specify a maximum number of zFiles in each change set, enter a number greater than 0. For example, if you enter 3, each change set will contain 3 zFiles maximum.
   

The translator output pattern rules now include the possibility to delete characters in output member names. Previously, translator output patterns supported pattern matching with asterisk (*) and equals (=) for preserving characters generated by build output. Now, exclamation marks (!) can be used to remove expected characters from an output.

For example, pattern '==!=====' applied against 'GABPROGA' would result in 'GAPROGA' as a final output name.

The following changes are made to z/OS Dependency build logging:

• The build log shows the TSO or ISPF command that is to be run based on the evaluation of the current translator.
• The z/OS build agent log is now configured for log management. A new log is created each time the build agent is restarted and by default, 5 previous logs are saved. This behavior can be customized in the build agent startup script.

Enterprise Extensions artifacts such as Language Definitions, Data set Definitions, Translators, and associated build definitions and results are updated to work with the newer z/OS software versions of the following products:
- Db2 z/OS 12.1
- IBM Developer for z/OS 14.1
- IBM Enterprise Cobol for z/OS 6.2
- IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS 5.5

Lotus Connections Integration (also known as EWM/RTC Social Connector) has been removed in this release.
Therefore, starting with release 7.0.1, the integration between EWM and Lotus Connections will no longer be supported.

For reporting purposes, a new issue Type list has been added to the issue editor. Additionally, the Resolved checkbox has been replaced with Resolutions list. Project administrators can optionally define these fields on the code review preferences page in the Project Area editor. When issue types are defined, and a default has been set, the issue type is set to this default type initially. When issue types are not defined, the issue type is set to <none>, by default. When resolutions are not defined for a project area, system default values unresolved and resolved are presented in the issue editor. When a new issue is created, the Resolution list is set to unresolved.

Image of the code review preferences page for the JUnit project with issue types defined:

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Image of the issue editor with the issue types that are defined for the JUnit project area:

‪Image of code review preferences page for the JUnit project with resolutions defined:


Image of resolution field in the issue editor displaying the resolutions defined for the JUnit project area:

 

A new preference is now available that permits some changes to issues after code review has been closed. When this preference is enabled, you can modify issues, change their type or resolution, add comments, and extract work items. However, you cannot reopen an issue. When this preference is disabled, which is the default, no changes are allowed to a closed code review and its associated issues.

Image of code review preference page:


Image of the Overview tab displaying the Actions on Closed Code Review for a project area that has the preference enabled:

 

When authors submit change sets for code review, they can optionally include a comment. Currently, the comment can be added from the submit for review workflow in the Eclipse client, and when the author resubmits during subsequent review cycles through the web client. These comments are displayed in the Overview tab of code review and are included in the email notification that is sent to the reviewers to notify them that they are being requested to perform a code review.
 

Image of comment section in the Submit for Review window (Eclipse):


Image of author's comment displayed in the Overview tab (web):


Image of Resubmit For Review wizard for adding a comment (web):


New prompt for reviewers to start code review
 

It is common for a reviewer to open the code review tab and start reviewing the content before clicking the start button. In this release, when the reviewer opens the review tab, a notification pop-up is displayed periodically to remind the reviewers to start their review. After the reviewer clicks anywhere on the notification pop-up or clicks the Start button, the review state changes to In-Review and the notification pop-up stops getting displayed.

Image of the notification pop-up:

 

After reviewers complete a review cycle, they can optionally provide a review comment and modify their review time when they submit their assessment. Review comments are visible on the overview page of the code review and in the email that notifies the author that a review cycle is complete. The review effort and comments are persisted and can be extracted for reporting purposes by using the existing export code review CLI command.
 

Image of Review Assessment dialog box:


Image of the review comment displayed in the Overview tab:

 

The Deliver (server) advisor called "Require Work Item Approval" is updated to have reviews of type 'Review' as code review approvals instead of work item approvals.

In the example shown, the advisor is configured such that all deliveries require a work item approval from a user with 'Team Lead' role. Apart from this, two users with 'Team Member' role must conduct and approve the associated code review for the delivered changes.

Image of the Deliver (server) advisor displaying the required approvals as described in the example:

In the History view, you can now view baselines with the change sets of a component. The change sets or baselines are displayed in the order in which they enter the workspace.

You can hide the baselines by using the Hide Baselines button in the History view toolbar. This action is also available from the History view menu.

Additionally, the History view now supports paging. When a component history contains more entries, you can click the Show More link that is displayed at the lower left to view more entries.

Image of the history view displaying the baselines with the change sets:

• Ignore: Publishes a deletion event. LQE and LDX remove the skipped resource from the store.
• Unignore: Publishes a creation event. LQE and LDX include the resource in the store.

This release adds two predefined process templates that support Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 5.0:

• Essential SAFe 5.0: Use this template to establish a Program/Team tooling environment.
• Full SAFe 5.0: Use this template to establish a Portfolio tooling environment with the Large Solution layer for the Full SAFe 5.0 configuration. This environment is associated with one or more Essential SAFe Program/Team tooling environments.

Note: To download the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 5.0 translated work item templates, see the All Downloads tab.
           For more information, see Enterprise Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) on Jazz.net.