Review Hub

A Review in codeBeamer is a snapshot of the items of a Tracker, Release or Report at a specific point in time. When a set of items (for example, tasks or requirements) is ready for approval, you can initiate a review in codeBeamer. You can invite contributors (reviewers and moderators) to decide if a review item can be approved or if it needs more work. If an item is updated while under review, you have the option to receive a notification about the change. You can then decide if the review needs to be restarted because of the item that was modified. You can restart the review for all the review items or for those items only that have been modified since the review started.

General Concepts

A review in codeBeamer is a set of items. A review always contains a specific version of the items (depending on when the review was created). The contributors of the review can discuss the items that are being reviewed. After the discussion, they have the following two options for each item:

• Approve the item: the item is fine and fully developed: the reviewer found no issues.
• Mark it as 'Needs More Work': the item is not fully developed or the reviewer found some issues with the item.

The Review page makes the discussion and the approval or rejection of an item easy.

There are two types of contributors for each review:

• Moderator: a moderator can review items, edit, close, and restart the review, and add or remove contributors to or from the review.
• Reviewer: a reviewer can approve or reject the items in the review and can add comments, but cannot edit the review.

A review can be closed and restarted by the moderator. A closed review is always read only, which means that none of the reviewers can accept or reject the items of the review any more. A moderator can restart a closed review. Depending on the options set when restarting the review, some items in the review can still be read only. The purpose of restarting the review is to incorporate any possible modifications (made after the original review was initiated) to the review. For this reason, the restarted review refers to the versions of the items at the time of the restart.

Starting a Review

You have the following options to initiate a review:

• In the Review Hub: for more information, see section Create a Review.
• From a tracker: you can initiate a review for a specific tracker using the menu of the tracker. Select one of the following options:
  • Send to Review: this option creates a review for all items of the selected tracker. When creating a review for all items of a tracker, the review reflects the child-parent hierarchy of the original items. However, this hierarchy is not updated in case the review is restarted.
  • Send Selection to Review: this option creates a review for the selected items in the tracker (you need to select the items before initiating the review). This option is available in Table View and Document View).
• From a report: you can initiate a review for all the items returned by a specific report by opening the report and selecting the option in the action bar.
• From a release: you can initiate a review for all the items which are currently assigned to a specific sprint or release. To do that, go to the Dashboard or Kanban Board of the release/sprint and select Send to Review from the menu. Using the Kanban Board, you also have the option to filter the items before initiating a review.

The Review Hub

The Review Hub contains all the reviews to which the current user has access, that is, all reviews where the user is included as a reviewer or moderator:

In the Reviews field, you can select if you want codeBeamer to display all reviews in the system or only the open reviews. You also have the option to group reviews by project or by project and tracker.

The Review Page

The Review page contains the following sections:

The Items tab on the left-hand side panel contains a list of all items that are part of the review. The items are displayed in a tree view indicating parent-child relationships between the items.

In the main review area, you can see all the review items:

This area displays the review version of each item, that is, the version that is involved in the selected review. If you click the version number icon (), you can check the history information of the item.

On this pane, you can also see information about whether a certain review item or an item's reference has been updated since the review was initiated. It is also indicated if an item has associations or upstream/downstream references.

The main area also contains the icons to approve () or reject () an item and to add a comment () to an item.

On the right-hand side panel, you can see the review statistics and details of the selected review item.

The action bar contains the following icons:

• : using this icon, you can edit the review (see Edit a Review). This icon is only available to moderators.
• : using this icon, you can approve all review items at the same time (see Review Items). You can only approve or reject those review items to which you have at least Read or View permission.
• : using this icon, you can reject all review items at the same time (see Review Items). You can only approve or reject those review items to which you have at least Read or View permission.
• : using this icon, you can sign (see Sign a Review) or finish (see Finish a Review) the review. If you are a reviewer, you only have the option to sign the review when yo open the Finish Review window. (Whether a signature is required from reviewers depends on the settings of the review.) If you are a moderator, you can both sign and finish the review using this icon.
• : using this icon, you can export the review to MS Word or Excel (see Export a Review).
• : using this icon, you can restart the review (see Restart a Review). This option is only available to moderators (for finished reviews).

The navigation bar contains the following icons:

• : opens the Review page.
• : opens the review Feedback page.
• : opens the review Statistics page.
• : opens the History of the review.

Filters Tab

The Filters tab on the left-hand side panel contains filtering options for the review items:

The following filtering options are available:

• All items: displays all review items on the center panel.
• [Number of] items I have approved: displays the items that have been approved by the current user.
• [Number of] items need more work: displays the items that have been marked as Needs More Work by the current user.
• [Number of] items I have reviewed: displays the items that have been reviewed (approved or rejected) by the current user.
• [Number of] items I have not reviewed: displays the items that have not been reviewed by the current user yet.
• [Number of] items with my comments: displays the items to which the current user has added a comment.
• [Number of] items with comments: displays the items to which any of the reviewers has added a comment.
• [Number of] items updated since the review was created: displays the items that have been updated (either the item itself or any of its references) since the current review started.

The Review Feedback Page

You can access the Feedback page by clicking the icon in the navigation bar:

The Feedback page lists all the comments that have been added to the review items on the Review page and those that were added to the items before the review started (for example, if the same items are part of another review or if a finished review was restarted). On the Feedback page, you can add new comments to the review or reply to previous comments.

The following types of comments can be added to the review:

• Comment
• Question
• Problem
• Proposed change

Comments and their replies are listed in a hierarchical order with the latest comment appearing at the top.

The Review Statistics Page

You can access the review Statistics page by clicking the icon in the navigation bar:

The top section of the Statistics page provides general information about the review (who started the review and when, the deadline, if the review is signed/finished already, and the baseline from which the review was created). The Overall Reviewer Statistics chart provides an overview of all the votes of all reviewers. In this example, an already finished review was restarted, thus, the Statistics page contains an overview of the different votes before the review was restarted.

The Review Result section shows the progress of each reviewer:

From codebeamer 21.04 you can see the comments of the reviewers and the answer comments by clicking on the row or the comment icon on the right. The comment icon shows the number of the comments of the current reviewer and the number of the answers.

The Items section provides a summary of how many reviewers have approved, rejected or not yet reviewed each item:

From codebeamer 21.04 you can see the review comments and answers which were added to the items by clicking on the row or the comment icon on the right. The comment icon shows the number of the top-level comments and the number of the answers. Also in this section you can see the approvals and rejections by reviewers.

The History Page

You can access the History page by clicking the icon in the navigation bar:

The History page provides a summary of the review's life cycle: when the review started, who were the reviewers/moderators, and when the review was closed.

Permissions and Licensing

To be able to use the Review feature, you need the following:

• You need a Reviews license.
• You need to be the member of a group that has the Enable Review permission (by default, all groups have this permission, but the system administrator can disable it).

To be able to see the items in a review, you need the following:

• You need to be either a moderator or a reviewer of the review (otherwise, you will not see the review at all).
• You need to have Read or View permission to the items being reviewed. Although you can see the review without Read/View permission to the reviewed items, you will not be able to see the item content and you will not be able to review the items.

You can access the Review Hub in restricted mode if you have a Review Hub license. In this case you will have the following restrictions:

• You cannot open the right-hand side panel on the Review page.
• You cannot be assigned to a review as a moderator.
• You cannot edit, restart or finish a review.
• You are not able to check the differences from the Head version using the badges.
• You cannot export a review in MS Word or Excel.
• You cannot check the review Statistics page.