Managing Projects

Watch a video on the project browser here.

Project Browser

The Project Browser is a visual interface for viewing and navigating between projects and for managing project groups. The sub-menus under the Projects menu point to this page.

Note that it is possible to restore the old project list format (used before codeBeamer 7.4.0) and disable the new Project Browser. You can do this by adding the following line to the Application Configuration:

<interactive showProjectBrowser="true"></interactive>

Structure of the Project Browser

The Project Browser is divided into two panels. On the right side you can find the projects. There are four tabs on this panel:

• Projects List: on this tab all projects visible to the user are displayed grouped by categories. If a project has no category, it is moved to the Uncategorized group.
  
  
  
  
• Projects Tree: This tab shows the projects that are visible to the user in a tree structure defined by the assigned categories.
  
  
  
  
• Available to Join: All the projects that are public (the user can join them) are listed on this tab. You can easily join projects or send join requests on this tab.
  
  
  
  
• Compact List: A simple list of all projects that are visible to the user (same as the original project list page).
  
  
  
  
  
• Project Groups: All project groups of the user are listed here. Only the projects that are part of at least one project group are shown.
  
  
  
  
• Removed: the list of removed projects. This tab is not visible if there are no removed projects at all.

Managing Project Categories

Administrators with proper permissions can create project categories on the left side of the page. They can use these categories to represent a hierarchy of concepts.

Required Permission

The user must be member of a User Group that has the Project Category Admin permission.

Managing Project Categories

Click on the plus sign to create a category with a default name, or type a name in the text box and press Enter. It is not possible to create multiple categories with the same name.

It is possible to rename or delete a category using the drop-down menu. Note that deleting a category, which has child categories, deletes the whole sub-tree.

Drag the category to a new position to build a tree hierarchy. Dragging the category slightly to the left / right moves it to a lower or upper level in the tree.

Example 1. : Moving a category to the root level

Example 2. : Moving a category to a lower level

Example 3. : Moving a category to an upper level

Assigning Projects to Project Categories

There are three different options:

1. Drag and drop a project from the Project Browser to the Projects List or Projects Tree view:
   
   
2. Use the drop-down menu on the Project Settings page:
   
   
   
   
3. Use the drop-down menu while creating a project:
   
   

Managing Project Category Views

Administrators can select multiple categories and save this selection as a standalone view. These views are public, any user can access them. When activated, users only see the projects which are assigned to a category contained within the view.

Required Permission

Same as in the previous section.

Creating Project Category Views

Select the project categories first:

After that open the drop-down next to the Current View label:

Finally type a unique name in the text box and save the view:

Activating a Project Category View

Click on the small folder icon:

Then click on the view in the popup:

Deleting and modifying Project Category Views

When a non-default view is active, then the drop-down menu has an additional menu option to delete the view:

When you modify the view, then the Save button becomes active in the toolbar.

Filtering on the Project Browser

On the left panel, there are several filters. First of all, you can filter the project cards by name. Just start typing in the text box, and the cards that do not match the text will disappear.

Another filtering option is by color. You can switch between the coloring modes (see later) and then use the checkboxes to hide/show project cards with the given color:

You can also find on the left panel the New Project link and the export to excel icon. The export will save to an excel file the details of the projects visible on the Projects tab.

Anatomy of a card

In the Project Browser each project is represented as a card:

Cards have the following parts:

• project name
• project icon: this can be configured, see later
• if the card is movable, then it has a grip (three points) on the left edge
• clicking on the project name will open the project in a new tab
• the context menu icon (visible only when the mouse is above the card) is in the bottom-right corner

The arrow icon in the top-right corner (visible only when the mouse is above the card) opens an overlay showing some details (issues created, releases, recent activity, and so on) about the project:

Color, size and project icon

Each card has a color and a size. By default, all cards are blue and small sized. You can change this using the context menu:

You can choose from three predefined sizes and a couple of colors. These dimensions and colors have no predefined meaning: you can set them based on your preferences. The colors and sizes set on one tab are the same on all other tabs, but are only visible for the user who set them - other users can set other colors and sizes.

There is another way of changing the status color of a project card: through the project status field. This is only editable by project admins and can be set on the Admin page:

Here you can select only from three predefined colors. This color setting is the same for all users who can access the project.

It is possible to color the cards based on two properties: user defined colors and project status. You can switch between these two modes using the color switch on the left panel:

When you click on Project Status, the card colors will be set based on the project status. When you click on My Colors, you will see the colors defined by you.

The icon displayed on the card is also configurable. It can be set by project admins on the Admin page of the project:

Here you can select one from the many predefined icons and you can also upload your own 32x32 icon.

The context menu of a card

The context menu of a card contains the following items:

• the sizes: an item for each possible card size
• Color: you can change the color of the card here
• Set status: you can change the status color of the project using this menu item
• Edit: opens the Admin page of the project. Only available if the user has the necessary permissions to edit the project.
• Remove from set: removes the project from the project group. This is only available on the Project Groups tab.

Organizing Project Groups

To keep the project organized you can change the order inside a category or a project group. You can simply reorder the project with Drag n' Drop (moving the cards with the mouse cursor). This order is only visible for you - other users probably will set some other order.

You can also update the category of a project or you can move it to an other project group. Just drop the card to an item in the category/project group list on the left panel:

And finally you can update the order of the project groups. By default they're sorted by name. You can change this by moving an item up or down in the list:

Managing Project Groups

On the Project groups tab you may want to manage your project groups. There are three basic operations you can do here.

You can create a new Project group. For this, you have to either click on the + icon before the project gropus:

This will create a new project group at the beginning of the list.

Or you can click between any two project groups to create a new set between them:

The second thing you can do on this page is adding a new project to a set. This can be done by clicking the + icon in behind the name of the project group. This will open a new overlay where you can select the projects you want to add to the set:

To remove a project from the project group click on Remove from set in the context menu of the card.

Finally, you can remove a project group comletely. To do this click on the x icon after the name of the project group.

Since project groups are completely private the above operations won't affect the other users.

Creating New Projects

To create a project you should be logged on the server and you must have Create Project group permissions (see Managing Groups).

To create a project:

1. Click on Projects,
2. Click on New Project in the top-left corner of the project browser,
3. A wizard will guide you through several pages and options of creating a new project.

The first page of this wizard is where you choose if you want to create a new default project, or copy or inherit many options from other existing template projects. This dialog looks like:

Figure: Create New Project wizard starting Dialog.

Creating Blank Projects

If you select the "Create a new project" without selection a template then the next dialog will appear where you can name your project.

Creating Projects by Using Template Projects

Alternatively on the 1st page of the wizard you can choose to copy great many options from an already existing template project. If you have choosen that option and picked the otherproject to copy from then this wizard page will appear next:

This page contains the many options and artifacts (Tasks, Bugs, Requirements etc...) which can be copied or inherited from the selected template project.

By carefully choosing between options you can save great amount of configuration work by copying or inheriting artifacts from the template project. Please read the explanations on this page about the detailed meaning of each option.

Creating Projects from Smart Templates

A Smart Template is a project template that contains predefined trackers, workflows and documents. Codebeamer comes with several Smart Templates that you can use to set up an environment for evaluation purposes quickly:

You can also create your own Smart Templates by exporting existing projects. This way you can reuse your artifacts several times, even between different codeBeamer instances. To export a project go to the Admin page of the project and click on Export under the General tab.

Final Steps: Adding Repositories to New Projects

As next step(s) of the wizard you have the option to create a new SCM (git/mercurial/subversion) repository in the new project. This is the same process as creating a new SCM repository, and it is optional during the project creation, because you can freely add new repositories at any time later.

Managing Project Members

When you create a project you will probably want to add other users to it in order to set up your team. Users added to your project become project members. To organize members into your team structure, you have to assign the right roles to each member.

Assign Roles to Members

A good practice is to set up the project roles (or custom roles) in advance when your project has been created by enabling the appropriate role access rights. Later on, when your team is finalized members can be assigned roles.

To Edit the Members List

1. Click on a project,
2. Click on Members,
3. Click on the AddNew Member link or, for an existing member, click on the Edit icon in the context menu of the user (or simply drop the user to a role),
4. For a new member fill in the desired information,
5. Click on Save.

Figure: Accounts and Roles dialog

Figure: dropping a user to a role

Exporting members

Project Admins can export to the members and the groups of the project to Excel. To do this just click on the Export Members quick link on the members page. This will download an Excel file with two sheets. The first sheet lists all the users of the project, while the second one lists the groups.

Assign Groups with Roles

You can assign a group with a role instead of assigning individual members. A group - which is a collection of users - can map to your organizational structure. For example, if you want to assign people from the sales or marketing departments to your project, you can create a guest group for them, and assign the guest group to the My guest role in the project. The My guestrole should have sufficient privileges to access the document manager, the Wiki and the forums, but you can prevent them from using the Trackers and from accessing the source code in your SCM system.

Groups can be administered only by the System Administrator. See Managing Groups.

You can add groups to roles by clicking on the New Member link, where you can select a group instead of a role:

Figure: Roles and Groups Dialog.

Administering Projects

Please see Administering Projects

Assigning SCM Repositories to Projects

To assign an internal, managed SCM system to the project, see Administering Projects.

To assign an external SCM system to the project, see Administering Projects.