Trackers

Since codeBeamer 8.2.0 Test Run and Test Case tracker configuration is more restrictive - it is not possible to define Guards or modify necessary fields anymore for Test Runner but this is configurable in general.xml. To enable the configuration of these properties add/edit this option in general.xml: <testManagement disableEditingBuiltInFieldsName="false"/>

Trackers in CodeBeamer are used for

• Managing IT processes,
• Managing Requirements,
• Managing Changes,
• Managing People, relationships,
• Managing Innovation,
• Escalations, SLA
• Agile (Software) Development,
• Bug tracking

and for other purposes.

Trackers are the equivalent of Tables in a Relational Database or Classes in object oriented programming.

Tracker items are the equivalent of Rows in a Relational Database or Objects in object oriented programming.

Trackers define the

• Structure (fields),
• Relations to other items (in other trackers) (via reference fields, similar to Foreign Keys),
• Behavior (permissions, aggregation/distribution rules, state transitions, events, actions, escalations, notifications, etc.),

Tracker items represent the State (field/attribute values, including history) of a specific bug, task, requirement, etc.

In addition to the configured Relations, you can also create ad-hoc Associations between tracker items and other CodeBeamer entities like other items or documents, even with external URLs.


Each Tracker has a Stereotype, which defines:

• The basic classificationfor trackers and items of this type
  • Work item
    all things, that represent work, that needs to be planned, accomplished and monitored, e.g. a task to execute, a risk to track, a bug to fix
  • Configuration item
    all things needed to do the work, e.g. tools, software, models, and plans, etc., and that need to be managed (CMDB or ITIL).
  • Source code
    the result/output of accomplished work (Software Development only), that needs to be managed by SCM
• The basic/core Structure and Behavior (only relevant for top-level/base Trackers, derived Trackers inherit that from their template Tracker)
• The icon/symbol for trackers and items of this type
• The available Views for trackers of this type

See here for an overview of defined tracker stereotypes.

Trackers (similar to Classes in object oriented programming) can be derived from/extend base/template Trackers:

• Structure and Behavior of the base/template Tracker are inherited by derived Trackers.
• Inherited settings can be overloaded/overridden in derived Trackers.
• Derived Trackers can add own/additional Structure and Behavior.
• The depth of the inheritance tree is unrestricted.

Trackers are type definitions and item containers at the same time (similar to database tables).

• Therefore Trackers are a special type of Folder/Directory.
• By default, all Trackers reside at the top-level of their Project's Documents hierarchy.
• But you can also create Trackers in any sub-directory/folder of the document hierarchy (currently disabled via GUI).
• Trackers provide fine-grained access control for items, item fields and state transitions, based on user roles and item state.
• Work and Configuration Item trackers only hold work/configuration items, no files or folders.
• Source Code Repositories (which are an extended type of Tracker) are both:
  • they are Folder/Directory for the source code files
  • they are Tracker for source code changes (commits and pushs)
• Tracker items (in the same tracker) can build a parent-/child-hierarchy of unlimited depth.
• Tracker items can hold any number of files (in form of attachments)
• Trackers (including items) can be copied/moved as any other regular document (currently disabled via GUI).

Please note:

• Work and Configuration Item Trackers at the top-level of the document tree, are only shown on the Trackers page of the project.
• Source Code Trackers (Repositories) at the top-level of the document tree, are only shown on the SCM Repository page of the project.
• Trackers (of any type) in sub-directories/folders are only accessible via their directory/folder under Documents, not via the Trackers or SCM Repository page.

Work and Configuration Items can be copied/moved from one tracker to another (compatible) tracker, but because structure and behavior are bound to the tracker and not the item, this always implies a type conversion (attribute mapping), and can therefore inflict data/information loss.

Tracker Summary

On the Tracker Summarypage, a summary of the number and status of all issues is displayed. When you click on a Tracker Name a list of tracker issues will be shown. This list gives a detailed overview of all issues in the tracker.

Different users can see different statistics depending on their roles.

Figure: Project Tracker Summary List

Tracker Tree

From codeBeamer 8.1.0 you are able to make Tracker structure using drag&drop functionality within the left side tree on Tracke Homepage.

By default you can see the Work items / Config items folders with the containing trackers. With Project Admin permission you are able to change this structure: creating/removing/renaming folder, drag&drop trackers/folders, make tracker hierarchy. Once you make some changes, the structure will be saved.

The trackers within the tree contains some additional information:

• Number of tracker items (Open items / All items)
• Last modified date
• Tracker key

You can open the trackers from the tree the following ways:

• If you double click on a tracker, the tracker page opens in the same tab.
• If you use the middle button of the mouse, the tracker page opens in a new tab.
• Right click context menu Open option: click opens tracker in the same tab, middle button click opens tracker in a new tab.

The right click context menu of the tracker tree nodes gives you some useful functionality: Customize, New Item, Rename, Workflow Diagram, Configuration Diagram etc.

Please note, that the tracker tree structure/hierarchy does not define any tracker inheritance!

Tracker Tree configuration

Clicking on the gear icon on the top of the tree opens the tree configuration overlay. Currently there is one setting option: Show Hidden Trackers. If set, the tree will contain a Hidden Trackers folder.

Permissions and license types

See license information in:

• Permissions by License Types

Issue List

The tracker issues list provides detailed information about a tracker.

The heading P refers to Priority. The meaning of the color-coded dots is not editable. The Legend: red is for highest priority issues; orange for high; yellow for normal; green for low; and blue for lowest priority issues.

Figure: Tracker Issue List

Filter Widget

See: https://codebeamer.com/cb/wiki/11105

In-place edit

From codeBeamer 9.1 you can edit the field values of the items in Table View. After double clicking on the value, if you have sufficient permission, an in-place editor will appear, and you can modify easily the value. In-place editor is supported for the following field types:

• Text fields
• Number (Integer, Decimal) fields
• Duration fields
• Date fields
• Choice fields (including member and reference fields)
• Boolean fields
• Color fields
• Wikitext fields

Table fields and the fields which are always read-only (e.g. Submitted at, Assigned at, Modified at, Modified by, etc.) are not supported and also, you cannot change the value of the Status field (you can use the transition action menu for status change).

If you in-place edit a wikitext field, the toolbar of the editor will appear on the top (below the Filter Widget). You will have a Save and Cancel button in the toolbar, or you can use the Ctrl+S hotkey to save the changes.

If you edit any other kind of fields, you can use Enter to Save or Esc button to Cancel the changes. Also, if you click outside the input editor, the changes will be saved.

Please note, that you can in-place edit only one field value of one item at the same time.

Searching for Working Items

Use full text search in the Search field to find tracker issues. Enter the search text pattern and click on GO. From codeBeamer 9.0.0 you can combine full text search with the selected filters, group by/order by options.

Submitting a New Work item

To submit a new issue:

1. Click on New,
2. Provide a one line summary for the Issue in the mandatory Summary field
3. Enter a more detailed explanation in the mandatory Description field,
4. Set the values of the other non-mandatory fields, as required,
5. Click on Save.

The required fields are marked by red color, fields with view-only permissions are grayed (marked by gray color). After submitting the new issue, you can follow up using attachments, associations or in other ways using the options described below.


Figure: Submit a New Issue.

Adding Details, such as Comments, Attachments, Associations and Reminders

For each Issue you can assign attachments, comments and associations, and more, using the tabs under Details, near the bottom of the Issue display.

Figure: Issue Details: such as Comments, Attachments, History

Breadcrumb navigation

From 8.0.1. there is a new functionality on Tracker Item details page. Below the header where the Summary is displaying, there is a breadcrumb navigation stripe. You can see here the upstream references of the current isseu in 3 levels. You see 3 items per level, if there are more reference items, the other items are visible under the context menu.

Adding Comments

You can add comments to a work item by clicking the Add Comment/Attachment link on the Comments & Attachments tab, under Details. From codeBeamer 8.0.1, the comment editor will be visible on page inline, otherwise, this results in a normal wiki edit pop-up window. When you have finished entering the comment, click Save.

Including References to Users in a Comment

When you add a comment to a work item, it is possible to include references to users in the comment. For example:

When adding a user to a comment, you can search for the user based on the name, username, or email address. If you include an @ symbol in the comment field and start typing, the system will automatically display a list of users whose name, username, or email address includes the letters that you inserted:

When a user is included in a comment of a work item, the user receives a notification indicating that they were mentioned in a work item.

From codeBeamer 9.3.0, when you include a user in a description, the "Follow" option is automatically set for the user for the work item. This means that the user gets a notification each time another user edits the work item.

Note: To set the "Follow" option for the selected user, the user who updates the description requires the "Issue - Subscribe for Others" permission to the tracker that contains the work item. The "Follow" option can only be set for the selected user if the user has at least "Read" permission to the tracker.

For more information on permissions, contact your Project Administrator. If you are the Project Administrator, see Creating and Customizing Trackers for more information on how to set permissions for trackers.

Including References to Teams in a Comment

When you add a comment to a work item, it is possible to include references to teams in the comment. For example:

When adding a team to a comment, you can search for the team based on the team's name. If you include an @ symbol in the comment field and start typing, the system will automatically display a list of teams whose name includes the letters that you inserted:

When a team is added to a comment in a work item, a notification will be sent to the team's email address if an email address is specified for the team in the Team tracker. If no email address is specified for the team, a notification will be sent to the team members (if members are specified for the team), indicating that they were mentioned in a work item.

For more information on the fields of the Team tracker, see Tracker Types.

Adding Private Comments

You can add comments to an issue by clicking on the Add Comment/Attachment link. You can select a specific role from the Visible for pop-up so that your comment is visible only for the members in the selected role. This feature allows you to designate information as suitable for external or internal users. For example, when a customer submits an issue, developers can discuss an issue internally with private comments and reply to the customer when they come to a common understanding.

Figure: Private Comments

Delete or Edit Comments

Delete or Edit comments by selecting Delete or Edit from the tool-tip menu at the far right of the comment's line. You will be asked to confirm a delete.

Figure: Delete and Edit in Issue Details Comment-Tab Tool-tip

Adding Attachments

Attach screenshots, images and binary documents to an issue using the Comments&Attachments tab. You can attach any number of files to an item as an attachment at the same time.

Adding Associations and Dependencies

You can associate tracker issues with other tracker issues, forum topics, documents, source files, commits or external URLs. For example, an association enables you to define relationships between project plan documents and requirements, tasks or bugs.

Figure: Associate Tracker Issues with Other Artifacts

If an association is made, a comment can be added for the association in the comment field below the association definition, and above the attachment selection. Note that this is a comment for the association, not the whole issue, and the text is only stored and redisplayed if an association is made.

Find artifacts to associate using the tabs:

• history artifacts from your recent activities,
• search results from the search tab or
• URLs.

The following artifact types can be associated:

• Tracker Issues,
• Source Files,
• Documents,
• Dashboard / Wiki pages
• URLs (CodeBeamer internal or external; maximum 4.000 characters).

The association type can be:

• depends on
• superordinate to
• subordinate to
• related to
• derived from
• violates
• excludes
• invalidates
• copied from

You can select Current HEAD from Baseline selector, if you want that the association should belongs to the last version of the item. You can use also Propagate suspects with normal or reverse direction.

Select the check box of a document, Tracker Issue, URL, Forum topic or Source File to be associated. Add a comment. Then click the blue Add button to add the new association. If a related-type issue association has been made, it will appear under the Related Issues tab in the details of the issue.

However, selecting a association-type of parent, child or depends will not change any of the Children tab contents in any of the associated issues. Instead, please use the Children tab to define dependencies.

History

Since release 6.0, codeBeamer issues are versioned. Every change (editing, commenting, workflow transition) results in a new issue version, identified by a unique version number.

The History tab now does not longer show the change history, but the version history of the issue.
By clicking on a version number, you can display this historic version.




Only the current version (head revision) of an issue is editable (depending on issue status and user permissions).
Concurrent editing operations are now detected, only the first user to commit his changes will succeed, all other users editing the same revision will be rejected ("Attempt to update non-head revision").

Reminders

When viewing an issue, the more menu tooltip makes it easier to add comments, attachments, associations, tags and children, but you can also create a 'Reminder' of the issue, using the tooltip's link.

Figure: more Tooltip Menu with Reminder Selection

When Reminder is selected, the following pop-up window appears:

Figure: Reminder Window

In the pop-up, you select the amount of delay before you receive an email reminder of the issue. The Reminder function is dependent on having the Escalation Module. Other types of notifications can be sent based on complex conditions of the issue: see Escalation Management: Service Level Agreements (SLA) for more details. A Reminder is also dependent on how your project calendar is defined in the project's Admin area. For example, if your Project Calendar's Default Business hours end on Friday at 17:00, and you make a Reminder with a delay of 1 hour, you won't see the reminder until the Default Business Hours start again, typically on Monday morning. See Administering Projects for more information.

Editing Issues

Issues are typically updated during the project's lifetime. Users with different roles like project manager, architect, developer or contractor can change the status, priority and severity of issues based on their roles and permissions. For example a customer can submit a bug, but he or she can view only the bugs that were submitted by him or her. A support engineer can view and edit all bug submissions, then assign them to one or more developers, and later a test engineer can close the Issue.

Figure: Edit an Issue.

Since CB-9.3.0 issues can be edited using in-place edit on the issue details page, so double click on a field starts the in-place editor of the field. The Description field has a pencil icon which can be used for opening the in-place editor.

If you assign an issue to members, they will be notified about the assignment action as well as about all the changes that will be made to the issue in the future by other users.

You are not notified about your own changes.

When a user starts editing an issue it automatically gets locked so the other users cannot edit it. The other users will see a notification in the issue breadcrumb.

The item is automatically unlocked when the locking user stops the editing.

Using Cut, Copy, and Paste (Move and Duplicate)

With cut, copy and paste you can easily duplicate and move issues across trackers and projects.

Copying Issues With Copy/Paste

Copy existing issues into a different tracker in either the same project or in a different project. When the source and the destination tracker have different fields, a field mapping wizard helps associate the different fields. When the copy or paste commands are used, the duplicate issues are dependent upon the source issue. The Mass Edit feature enables deleting this dependency.

Copy and Move Issues Between Trackers

Reorganizing projects may require moving issues into different trackers. For example, move a change request entry into a task tracker. When the source and the destination trackers are different, the field-mapping wizard allows easy mapping of the source and destination fields.

The actions Copy to and Move to allow the selected issues to be copied or moved from one tracker to another tracker. Under the Children tab of an issue, children of an issue can be selected and similarly copied or moved, using the more pull down menu.

Figure: Tracker Actions Copy, Paste and Move

The destination chooser dialog only shows those trackers into which the user is permitted to add issues.

The possible target trackers are grouped by project and can be optionally filtered by type.

During Move To and Copy To operations you have to option to select an item in the target tracker in the Parent field. After copying the items the selected item will be their parent.

Field Mapping for Copy/Move Between Trackers

When you copy/move items from one Tracker to another it may happen that the source and target Tracker has different types or has different fields.

The copy/move operation tries to resolve the field mapping between Trackers automatically by finding the matching trackers. The rules are:

• The source and target fields are matched if they have same label and same type. For example if the source contains a "Pre-Action" Wiki field that is automatically mapped to the "Pre-Action" Wiki field in the target tracker. But this mapping won't happen if their types are different: for example if the source field is a "reference" field but the target field is a "Wiki".
• Alternatively the target Tracker contains a field which is configured as same Shared Field (therefore also has same type) as the source field: then the value will be copied into matching Shared Field !

If there are still fields can not be mapped automatically then the user has the option to do this mapping on the following dialog:

Copy or Move Issue Children

By default, in status Closed an issue's children and associations cannot be changed.

Parent permission and status are both used to decide whether a descendant (child) issue can be moved.

The actions Cut and Move to ... for issues are only enabled if the user has Edit permission for the issue's Parent in the current issue status. If the issue is the child of a parent issue, then "Edit" permission for the parent's Children (according to the parent's status) is also required.

Issues can be copied and moved using Cut, Copy and Paste and Copy to... or Move to ... functions.

This will also copy/move the descendants of the issues recursively.

Issues can not only be moved between trackers but can also be copied or moved within the issue's hierarchy. Descendants of an issue can be copied or moved to a tracker or to another issue.

In issue lists you can see the children of an issue in the Summary column. The child is shown as a folder, with another child-issue number and summary shown beside the folder, in the parent issue's Summary column. Navigate directly to the "Children" tab of the current (parent) issue by clicking on the directory icon, or navigate to the child issue, by clicking on its link.

Creating issues from templates (only requirements)

You can easily create new requirement based on an other one. Just click on Use as template under the more menu you'd like to use as a template. This will bring up the create issue page where all the fields are copied from the selected template (including the summary and the description).

Mass Editing

Mass editing can change multiple issues in a tracker, e.g. close all selected issues or change the value of the Target Release field from V1 to V2.

Deleting Issues

You can select one or more issues and then delete them all at once.

Workflows

Workflows provide better control for critical tasks or requirements where the change has strong impact on resources or deliverables. CodeBeamer trackers integrate a simple and flexible process engine to model business process workflows.

Trackers can be used with or without workflows. Trackers can "inherit" a workflow from other trackers or use their own workflows. Workflows can be customized. See State Transitions.

Hierarchical Issues' Field Value Dependencies

If you have parent/child hierarchies of configuration items or issues, you can now define dependencies between parent field values and the appropriate child field values recursively. If, for example, you wish to ensure that a parent issue is not closed until all the child-issues (children) are closed, then this dependency can be managed using one of the distribution rules defined in the following linked document. Similarly if you wish to define the parent issue's "Spent Hours" as the sum of the children's "Spent Hours" you can define this aggregation rule, too. For more information, please see Dynamic pick-list fields .

Tagging Issues

Issues can be categorized using tags, see Taxonomy: Categorizing Content with Tags.

Tracker Dashboards

CodeBeamer provides visibility and control on project status and progress. Since actions such as task completions, bug submissions, program downloads and SCM check-in actions are all captured in the CodeBeamer repository, accurate and real-time project status reports are provided at any time and from anywhere. Reports are provided on a single-project or on a multi-project level for project managers, developers and stakeholders.

The dashboard is visible only to users that have the Tracker - Report permission activated. Use the Members Tab, Roles, tool tip edit to change Tracker Report permissions for a member.

Visualization Trends and Statistics

For visualization purposes different customizable Wiki plugins are provided. You can use combinations of these plugins in different Wiki pages to build project specific or user specific dashboards. The following Wiki plugin

[{PieChart title='Open Tracker Issues by Severity' legend='false'

[{DataSet data='trackerItemsByLabel' label='severities' projectId='37' format='pieChart'}]
}]

will result in the chart:

See Data Set Plugin in Wiki Markup and Plugins There must be a blank line between the chart definition and the dataset definition, otherwise a JSPWiki 'no body text' error will result

Create or Customize Trackers

The project administrator or a user with sufficient permissions can create, delete and customize trackers. To give the entire set of users in the Project Admin role the permission required to customize a tracker, the Project Administrator can select the Member tab, then the Accounts and Roles Tab, then under the Project Admin role, select the tool-tip edit function. In the resulting chart, click the check-box for the Tracker-Admin function. This enables all users in the Project Admin role to customize the tracker. See Creating and Customizing Trackersfor information on tracker administration and customization.

Subscribe Notifications

Tracker Subscriptions

Email notification subscriptions to the whole tracker result in e-mail notification when any issue is submitted to or modified in the tracker. Select email notifications for the whole tracker by clicking on the Follow in the more context menu.

If this doesn't work, it is because the appropriate permissions are not set up. Contact your Project Administrator for help, or if you are the Project Administrator, see Creating and Customizing Trackers

Issue Subscriptions

Go to the Issue details page and click on Follow option of the more menu.

Unsubscribe Notifications

Click on the Unfollow option of the more menu. If you cannot unsubscribe, it is because your role in the project is set as subscribed. Several people may be in the same role as you, and unsubscribing all of the members in the role may not be desireable. Contact your Project Administrator for more help.

Import Data into a Tracker

See different import options in:

• Importing Data from CSV Files to codebeamer
• You must login to see this link. Register now, if you have no user account yet.
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Customize Tracker

See customization on Creating and Customizing TrackersWatch a video on the tracker customization here.

related information You must login to see this link. Register now, if you have no user account yet.,
State Transitions,
Creating and Customizing Trackers,
Escalation Management: Service Level Agreements (SLA)

Navigating to Work Items

You can open the details of a work item in a tracker by clicking on the link in the summary field.

The row of the clicked work item will be marked by a light grey background and the browser will be navigated away to the item details page. This marking will be permanent through the browser session to help finding the work item you dealt with the last time.

When you navigate back to the tracker by any of the following methods, the row selected previously remains marked.

• Clicking the browser's back button
• Using breadcrumb navigation by clicking the name of the tracker
• Selecting the same tracker from the menu of the Trackers tab
• Going back to the tracker anytime later until changing the filtering by clicking the button, or changing the view by clicking the button.
• Navigating back to the page by paging where the item was selected (until another work item is clicked)

The marking will be cleared in any of the following cases:

• User logs out
• New view selected on the current tracker through the view manager ( button)
• Changing the filtering of the current tracker ( button)

Remarking for the Table View result table to the last position

This feature is configurable, switch on / off this functionality on User preferences overlay (default: off)

This feature based on the Navigation to Work Items, we could say that is an extended version of it:

• provide paging to the marked item after page reloading,
• highlighting the marked item after reloading: with orange color if the position (line) is not changed, with grey color if the position (line) is changed.
  
  
• store the Show All value:
  
• for Intelligent Table View this functionality supported only on initial level.
  

Notify: This feature works only on Table View, Intelligent Table View and Report page.

Selecting Work Items

For mass operations multiple work items can be selected by checking the checkbox shown at the left side of the rows of the work items.

• In case of at least one item is selected, the work item marking described above will be turned off.

The selection of the work items survive paging, so there is an information bar above the table indicating the total number of selected items.

• The information with the number of selected items and the clear button only appears if there is at least one item selected on any page.
• The total number of selected items shows the selection count of all the pages
• By clicking the clear button selection is going to be ceased on all other pages too
• The selected work items are highlighted by a light grey colour

The operations marked on the following screenshot respect the selection from all pages:

The selection remains permanent through the browser session, but will be cleared in the following cases:

• User logs out
• New view selected on the current tracker through the view manager ( button)
• Changing the filtering of the current tracker ( button)
• Clicking the (clear) button
• Applying Move To... or Delete... operation

Grouping

There might be a case if grouping is enabled when the same item appears multiple times due to being part of multiple groups. In this case if the item is selected/unselected all other occurrences of it will also be selected/unselected. Although it could appear multiple times as selected it will be counted only once in the item(s) selected section above the table.