Document Manager

Watch a video on the documents management here.

To enable the Document Management module additional licensing is required, as of codebeamer 21.09 (Emma). For more information on how to obtain the license, contact the Intland Sales Team. See also: Document tracker configuration instructions.

Introduction

The Document Manager provides a secure, role-based document access where you can share, upload, download, browse, version, approve and track documents.

Please note that you can access the documents directly from WebDAV enabled desktops and applications, such as MS Office. See WebDAV related information later in this document.

An important new feature in codeBeamer 5.5, Document Baselines, is described in detail in Baselines

The following main features are provided:

• Electronic signature with Baselining - When you create a new baseline, a snapshot of your documents is saved for audit and traceability purposes
• Role-based Access Control - Control which documents can be read or written by users having various roles or custom roles.
• Version Control - Track document versions and prevent accidental document deletion or overwriting
• Document Delivery and Notification - Users can create and download folders for software delivery as well as organize secure document distribution with access notification and access audit trail.
• User Access Audit Trail - Tracks how and when documents are accessed by users. Regulatory compliance may require a permanent record of document acccess such as: read, modify or delete.
• Search and Indexing - Full text search and indexing on Microsoft Word, RTF, PDF, HTML, Wiki and Text documents.
• Folders and Sub-folders - Users can create folders and sub-folders and store and organize documents.
• Comments and Attachments - Users can comment documents and add related attachments.
• WebDAV access - With the WebDAV Web based Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol, users can access documents directly from Microsoft Office and other WebDAV compliant applications.

Access the Document Manager from the CodeBeamer main page by selecting a Project. Then click on the Documents Tab, across the top. Document versions are separately stored and can be restored. Attributes, permissions and email notifications can be set, and indexes and tags added. The documents can be accessed from a browser or from a WebDAV enabled application.

Figure: Document Manager

Adding a Document and Bulk Uploads with Zip files

You can add (upload) single or multiple documents to the document manager. To add up to 3 documents, click the 'New File' button and use the Browse button to find your first document. Use the More button to create fields to browse up to 2 more documents to batch upload. The click the blue Add button.

You can add more than 3 documents at the same time by packing the documents into a Zip (or Gzip or Tar) file, and then automatically unpacking the contents of the uploaded Zip, Tar or Gzip documents. To unpack at upload, check the Unpack ZIP/TAR button. Then click the blue Add button to upload. When the Unpack ZIP/TAR button is set, the server will unpack the document from the Zip archive after uploading, preserving the directory structure.

CodeBeamer enables WebDAV access to add, copy, paste and delete documents from the desktop, into the Document Manager.

Figure: Add (upload) multiple documents from a ZIP file

Upload Limit - Maximum File Size

The default maximum size of a document upload in codeBeamer is 5Gb. If you need to change this limit, please ask your system administrator, or see Post-installation Configuration

Live Editing Documents

CodeBeamer provides support for live editing CodeBeamer documents directly from the user's desktop. LiveEdit is found in the tool-tip pull-down menu to the right of the document name. The live edit feature locks and downloads the document to the user's computer. After a successful download, CodeBeamer starts the application that is associated with the document extension. If no association is found, CodeBeamer will provide a notification dialog and the document will be opened using the system's default text editor (e.g. Notepadon Microsoft Windows).

When the user closes the document editing application, CodeBeamer will check if the document has been altered and, if so, will proceed to upload and unlock the changed document.

The live edit feature is available for all Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org documents as well as for plain text documents.

To provide the live edit functionality, CodeBeamer uses the Java Web Start technology. This requires a Java runtime in your system path. If you don't have a Java Runtime Environment installed you can download it freely from http://java.com/.

The CodeBeamer LiveEdit plug-in is downloaded from the codeBeamer server by the cbapplet.jnlp Java Web Start loader file. Download the file and open it with the Java(TM) Web Start Launcher application. If using Microsoft Internet Explorer, the file will be started automatically. The plug-in is locally stored and is only downloaded when there's a new version.

The first time the plug-in is executed a warning dialog will appear complaining about an invalid digital signature with the Name field being CodeBeamer LiveEdit plug-in, the publisher being * and the From field containing the CodeBeamer server URL. Select the Always trust content from this publisher checkbox and press the Run button. Proceeding this way the dialog will not show up in the future.

When the live edit plug-in starts, it proceeds to download the document from the CodeBeamer server using the CodeBeamer Web Services API. The progress is displayed in a window. When finished, the plug-in starts the application associated with the document. After closing the application, the plug-in uploads the changes and unlocks the document.

To live edit a document:

1. Click on Live Edit from the tool-tip drop-down menu to the right of the document name.
2. In case the warning dialog is displayed, select the Always trust content from this publisher checkbox and Press the Run button. Wait for the associated application to be opened.
3. Make the required changes in the document using the associated application.You can do multiple saves of your document and exit the application when finished. Wait for the document to be uploaded.
4. When the upload is finished, refresh the browser window containing the CodeBeamer document manager and notice that the document version has been incremented. In the document's edit history a new entry will appear with the following note: Updated by document applet.#

Figure: Live Edit selection available from tool-tip drop-down menu

This feature is fully implemented and works only on computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. For other operating systems and other file types or in case the Java Web Start technology does not work on your computer, there is a manual way to accomplish the same task.

To manually edit a document:

1. Click the Lock icon next to your document, or select Lock from the tool-tip drop-down menu.
2. Save the document locally and start working on it. When finished, you will need to upload and unlock the document;
3. Click the Properties from the tool-tip pull-down menu next to your document,
4. Click New Version ,
5. Set the values for the File field to point to your modified local copy and add an optional text to the Modification Comment field, and Save,
6. Press the Unlock icon, or select Unlock from the document's tool-tip pull-down menu to unlock the document.

Office Editing Documents

Since release 7.4 codebeamer supports office editing.

For more information please read the following Wiki: Office Edit

Copying, Moving, Deleting and Renaming Documents

Copy or Move Document

To Copy or Move a document into a different folder:

1. Enter the directory/folder whose documents you wish to copy.
2. Select the check-box(es) for the document(s) you wish to copy or move.
3. Under the 'Actions' drop-down menu at the top of the file-list, select 'Copy' or 'Cut'
4. Go to the target directory/folder and, under the 'Actions' drop-down menu at the top of the file-list, select 'Paste'

The file has now been copied or moved to the target directory.

Rename Document

To rename a document:

1. Click on Properties in the document's tool-tip pull-down menu
2. Click on Edit Properties,
3. Edit your document's name,
4. Click on Save.

Delete Document

To delete a document:

1. select Delete from the Tool-tip pull-down menu
2. confirm the deletion in the pop up window

or:

1. Select the document using the checkbox to the left of the document name
2. From the More Actions pull-down box at the top, select Delete...

Editing Directory Structure

Sub-directories can be created in the current directory by selecting 'New Directory' as seen in the figure above. Directories can be deleted by selecting the directory in the checkbox to the left of the directory name, then selecting 'Delete...' in the tool-tip drop-down menu. Then CodeBeamer will ask for a confirmation that you wish to delete the directory. If you wish to re-create the directory, you will first need to empty the trash: under Document Manager, select View Trash, and then select Empty Trash. Then you will be able to recreate the directory.

Search Documents

Full text search is provided on Microsoft Word, RTF, PDF, HTML, PPT Wiki and Text documents. More information on Searching

Adding New Wiki Notes

Wiki Notes are Wiki documents stored and referenced under the Document Manager. You can use Wiki notes as a notebook to record ideas, memoranda, to-do lists, etc. Writing notes is quick and easy. To create a new note click on the New Note button. You can use the Wiki formatting, link and macro features. See the on-line Wiki Markup and Plugins for details.

Figure: Add a new Wiki Note.

Adding New Diagram

You can create new diagrams under documents. Just click on the create diagram menu item:

This will show the diagram editor:

Diagrams created under documents can be inserted to tracker item descriptions, comments etc. using the insert button of the wysiwyg editor.

Working with Documents

You can organize documents within a directory by Status, Description, Name, Version, Modified At, Modified By and Size by simply clicking on their respective headings. You can also organize by Tag.

Properties

To the right of the file-name in a document-containing directory of the file manager, you will see a symbol for a pull-down menu. Select 'Properties' from the tool-tip pull-down menu:

Figure: Properties selection available from tool-tip drop-down menu

After you select Properties the following screen will appear.

Figure: Document Properties.

If you select Edit Properties you will then see the following:

Figure: Edit Document properties.

Versioning and Access History

All document accesses and changes are tracked. Each change is assigned a different version number for auditing.

If you wish to restore an older version of a document, select Properties (from Tool-tip pull-down menu) and then select Edit Properties, and then select the History tab, near the bottom of the screen. This shows all the versions to date. Select Restore this version beside the document version that you wish to restore. CodeBeamer leaves all more recent versions alone: it increments the most recent version (makes a new version) and restores the old version to this new version number. For example, if your most recent document version is 13, and you wish to restore version 11, CodeBeamer makes a new version, version 14, and puts the version 11 into the new version 14.

You can track changes when a document is edited, reviewed or deleted.

Figure: Document Versioning with History.

Permissions

You can set who has Read (for open and download) as well as Edit (for write and upload) permissions on a document.

To set document permission:

1. From the tool-tip pull-down menu select Properties
2. Click on the Permissions tab,
3. Edit your changes,
4. Click on Save.

Figure: Project members are granted with Read and Edit permissions.

Document Access Notification

Subscribe to e-mail notifications of document accesses or edits using the Notifications tab.

To set document access notifications:

1. Select Properties from the tool-tip pull-down menu
2. Click on the Notifications tab,
3. Add or remove users to read or edit notification group. (The 'Notify on Read' is available only for files)
4. Click on Save.

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Document Access History, Trends and Statistics

For document access visualization, customizable Wiki plugins are are provided. You can use combination of these plugins in different wiki pages to to visualize document access history.

See Data Set Plugin in Wiki Markup and Plugins NOTE: this plugin is deprecated!

The Wiki plugin example

[{LineChart title='Document Accesses in the past 30 days'

[{DataSet data='documentAccessTrend' documentId='11102' type='readWrite' since='30' format='lineChart'}]}]

will result the chart:

Directory Access Notification

With Notifications you can subscribe to directories, which means you will be notified when there are accesses or changes to documents within the directory. You subscribe to receive e-mail notifications when a document in a directory has been opened (by reading or downloading) or edited (written or uploaded).

Adding Comments and Attachments

You can leave your questions or comments with attachments regarding a document by opening the Comments & Attachmentstab:

Figure: Add Comments and Attachments to a document.

Discussions related to the document are an essential part of the document reviewing process.

Associate Document with other Artifacts

You can also easily associate artifacts to other documents, issues (bug,task, requiroment) , wiki pages, by opening the Associations tab. Associations function in both directions: if a document is associated with a tracker issue, the tracker issue will also gain an association with the document.

Figure: Add Associations to a Document.

Tagging Documents

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Accessing Documents from MS Office And Windows with WebDAV (Webfolder)

A complete set of document management functionality is accessible directly from the Microsoft Office toolbar and the Microsoft Windows Explorer using the WebDAV protocol. From the Windows desktop you can use copy/paste to access documents.

MS Office And Windows Integration With WebDAV

Restore Deleted Document from Trash

When a document is deleted it is archived in the document trash. The project administrator can restore deleted documents from the trash. Only the system administrator can empty the document trash.