Traceability Browser

What is Traceability Browser?

In Codebeamer, a Traceability Browser is essentially a table that correlates any number of sets of any trackers or tracker types in a desired order and visualizes the dependencies (downstream and/or upstream associations and/or references) between the items corresponding the neighboring selected trackers and/or tracker types. From 8.0.0 you can add multiple trackers/tracker types (and also all depended items without any tracker/tracker type filter) to each traceability level.

Structure and Usage of the Traceability Browser

You can navigate to the Traceability Browser from any tracker item list page using the view context menu on the top right of the tracker header or the more▼ menu on the action bar below the header. Or you can reach Traceability Browser directly from Trackers page, in this case firstly you have to choose initial tracker.

From Codebeamer 9.0.0 you have the ability to filter the initial level as you can do in the Report page. If you select filters on the filter selector and click on GO, the initial filter will be what you selected here. You can add here optional Order by condition or AND/OR Logic (just the same way as you do on the Report page) E.g. you can filter Bug items by status the following way:

If you reach the Traceability Browser from a specific tracker, this tracker (and its selected view) will be the first Initial Tracker (and its selected view configuration will be loaded into the configuration). The first Initial tracker will provide the project and the tracker context of the Traceability Browser. The tracker context is important because of the Suggestions (the possible references of the current), the project context provides the specific trackers of the current project if you would like to add trackers to the traceability levels. You are able to add more trackers also as Initial Tracker, but if the first Initial Tracker changes, the page reloads after a confirm warning to provide the proper contexts.

There is also Branch support, a branch selector appears under its relevant selected tracker if present.

Traceability Browser Current Selection

This is the most important part of the screen, you can set here the traceability levels and the kinds of relations between the levels.

Initial Level

Inside the Initial Tracker(s) section you can:

• add only specific trackers, from the current project, and also from other projects.
• define filters, set and/or logic between filters and predefined order by causes (not possible if show ancestor, descendant is ticked).
• set visibility settings:
  • show ancestor.
  • show descendant.
• add fields to the traceability view.

Other Level(s)

Inside the Level 1 section you can:

• add only specific trackers, from the current project, and also from other projects.
• define filters, set and/or logic between filters and predefined order by causes.
• set visibility settings:
  • Associations: Downstream, Upstream
  • References: Downstream, Upstream
  • Show Folders and Information
• add fields to the traceability view.

All of the settings above are stored in the saved preset (see below).

The Result Table

After setting the desired trackers/tracker types/all of each level, you have to click on GO to see the result table. The first columns of the result table will belong to the selected initial tracker(s), the other columns will represent the other Levels.

The tracker item icons show the tracker item type and the status color, after that you can see the tracker key and item id and the summary of the tracker item.

Between the levels there are 5 relation types shows, which are:

• A> Upstream association
• <A Downstream association
• R> Upstream reference
• <R Downstream reference

Filtering by Dependency Types Between Levels

You are able to filter the result table by kind of dependencies between each level. Set the required visibility settings from Level 1 on.

Suspected Links

The Traceability Browser also shows the suspected links, displaying the suspected badge behind the summary. If the propagate suspect is set to the association or reference, the gray background badge appear, and if the association or reference is suspected than it became a red background (just like anywhere else within the Codebeamer, e.g. Table View, Reports pages etc.). You can also see the diff if clicking a suspected badge and clear the suspection by clicking the remove X icon.

Permanent Link

Once you select some trackers or tracker types into the Current selection section, and the dependencies are shown in the result table, you can make a permanent link of the result table. Click on the Permanent Link text on the action bar, the page will be reloaded with the previous result, the URL will be changed, so you can copy and use the URL which will contain the configurations you set.

Load or Store Presets

Project users are able to store configuration presets in project level. The presets stores all preset traceability browser configuration.

Click Save a new Preset on the action bar to store current configuration as a preset. You have to type a unique name of the preset. Description and permission settings (By default, preset is private to the user) are optional.

After all set click Save. You will be notified about the preset is managed to store or not.

Click Load/Manage Presets on the action bar to see the already stored Traceability Browser presets:

User will only see accessible presets that are created by him or shared with him. If user has write access to a given preset, then edit (pencil - edit name, description, permissions) and delete ('x') icons are being shown at the end of the line, in other cases user can only load them by clicking the name of it.

After a preset is loaded it is possible to modify configurations by updating filters of different levels. After editing it is possible to update old preset (Save current Preset) or save as new (Save new Preset).

Export to Office

There is ability to export the displayed table into MS Office by clicking the Export to Office link above and under the traceability table, so you can work with the traceability data further on.

• Excel export: Export the result table into Excel (xls format). untick "Merge interconnected cells (long-running operation)." option to speed up huge excels export.
• Word export: Export the result into Word (docx format), building a tree inside the document containing the tracker items of the traceability result with detailed item information. You can specify also templates for the import, so you can configure which data of the tracker item should display. You can find more details about Word templates here: Word Templates in CB 7.2 - 9.2.

Work Item Traceability

From Codebeamer 8.2 on the Work Item page there is a Traceability section instead of the Relations box. This section is always closed by default. After opening the section, the downstream and the upstream traceability of the single work item will be loaded in 3 levels by default. You have some options to set in Traceability section (once you change one of the option, the Traceability loads automatically), which are:

• Whether to show Associations (not just References), default true
• Number of Levels up to 10 levels
• Whether to show descriptions of the items, default false
• Whether to show SCM commits also as items, default false
• Do not show redundant Items (just like in Traceability Browser), the default value is configurable in general.xml (see below)

Global Configuration

From Codebeamer 8.2 to avoid performance issues System Admin are able to configure some limitations using the traceability tag in the general.xml. These are the default values:

<traceability maxFirstLevelElements="25000" maxAdditionalLevelElements="25000" maxFirstLevelElementsPerItem="500" maxAdditionalLevelElementsPerItem="200" pageSize="50" ignoreRedundantsInBrowser="true" ignoreRedundantsInTab="true"></traceability>

Attributes:

• maxFirstLevelElements - Maximum number of Tracker Items in Level 1
• maxAdditionalLevelElements - Maximum number of Tracker Items in the other levels (Level 2 and deeper)
• maxFirstLevelElementsPerItem - Maximum number of Tracker Items per previous Item in Level 1
• maxAdditionalLevelElementsPerItem - Maximum number of Tracker Items per previous Item the other Levels (Level 2 and deeper)
• maxTestRunItemsPerItem - Maximum number of Test run items per previous item. (Level 1 and deeper)
• pageSize - Default page size, number of Tracker Items of the Initial Level will be loaded first, the other elements will be loaded by incremental scroll
• ignoreRedundantsInBrowser - True or false, if the Traceability Browser should ignore redundant nodes.
• ignoreRedundantsInTab - True or false, if the Work Item page Traceability Tab should ignore redundant nodes.
• maxNumberOfLevels - The maximum number of reference levels displayed. For further information on this parameter, see page Application configuration. It is possible to add any number of reference levels, however, if too many levels are configured, managing your view may become difficult.

The limitation options have maximum values. In case the provided value is higher than the maximum value, then the maximum value will be used:

• maxFirstLevelElements = 100000
• maxAdditionalLevelElements = 100000
• maxFirstLevelElementsPerItem = 500
• maxAdditionalLevelElementsPerItem = 200
• maxTestRunItemsPerItem = 100
• pageSize = 250
• maxNumberOfLevels = 5

The Traceability Browser Wiki plugin will use the set number of maxFirstLevelElements in the Initial Level too!

If you reach one of the limitations, a warning icon will appear in the proper place of the result table, to show that there are other elements which are not displayed because of the limitation.

Example application configurations settings:

"traceability" : {
  "ignoreRedundantsInBrowser" : true,
  "ignoreRedundantsInTab" : true,
  "maxAdditionalLevelElements" : 25000,
  "maxAdditionalLevelElementsPerItem" : 200,
  "maxFirstLevelElements" : 25000,
  "maxFirstLevelElementsPerItem" : 500,
  "pageSize" : 50,
  "maxNumberOfLevels" : 5
},