Following information is for codeBeamer 9.3.x and above!

Security of the export Templates

Important: System Administrators must carefully review export Excel Templates before uploading to the System !!!

The Word or Excel Templates contain powerful scripts (Groovy or other script languages), which makes these export Templates a very powerful tool, and as such "great power comes great responsibility". System Administrators must carefully review the Excel Templates and their scripts, so they don't cause any malfunctions, malicious attacks or security problems in codebeamer!

To enforce the security reviews the execution and location of Templates has been revised in codeBeamer 9.4. From codebeamer 10.0, the following aplies to Templates uploaded:

• The Excel Templates uploaded into the Document Management will only be usable during the exports if these templates are uploaded or last modified by a System Administrator.
• The Templates from the file system (from one of the subdirectories of the "exporttemplates" directory) are always available for export: but it is the responsibility of the System Administrators to review the content of those Templates! This rule is enforced by the fact that only System Administrators can access the file system directories.
• Word Templates can be uploaded by any user and are available for export.

Storing Word/Excel report Templates

You can create and add new and customized Word and Excel Templates for codebeamer, and the Word or Excel export GUI will show such custom templates. These templates can be stored in two locations:

• The Document Management: each project has several folders under the .codeBeamer/Templates directory in the Document Management.
• From a directory in the file system: under $CB_HOME/tomcat/webapps/cb/exporttemplates this can contain templates.

Each kind of export needs different export templates: for example a TestRun export needs a different template than a simple Tracker Item export.

To separate the templates tailored for certain kinds of export (a TestRun export for example) each type of export has their own subfolder in the main template directory. For example, when exporting TestRuns the templates are shown from the ../exporttemplates/TestRuns directory in the file system and similarly from the .codeBeamer/Templates/TestRuns directory in the Document Management.

The template directories for different kinds of exports are:

Where should I store the new templates then?

If your template is specific to a certain project then you can add your template to the Document Management directory, note however that this template will be only shown for the project where the template is.

However if the template needs to appear in all projects, the template should be put into the file system. The limitations are that you need to be System Administrator to access the file system. Also these templates cannot be limited: they will appear for all users who can do exports.

Merging the global templates from file system and Document Management

When performing the export the GUI will show templates from both the file system and Document Management. This screenshot illustrates how it works: the list contains templates from both places (file system, Document Management):

Adding templates to Document Management

Adding new templates to Document Management is simple: when executing a certain kind of export click on the "Manage custom templates" link: the directory, where the templates can be stored, is opened.

If you add a new template (or delete an existing) then this template will appear next time in the appropriate export dialog.

If you add some Wiki description to the template file, this will appear on the UI, instead of the file name. The files are appearing in alphabetical order of their names on the UI.

Adding Global Templates to file system

You can also add Global Templates to the file system. For this you need to be System Administrator with access to the file system of your codebeamer server.

To add a new TestRun export file, called customTestRunExport.docx, navigate to the file system of codebeamer and find the $CB_HOME/tomcat/webapps/cb/exporttemplates/TestRuns directory. This folder contains the Word and Excel export files for TestRuns.

If you upload your customTestRunExport.docx file here: the export UI of TestRuns will immediately show that (no restart needed).

Customizing the name and the order of new template files

If you upload a new template like customTestRunExport.docx then this filename appears in the template list.

To make filenames easier to comprehend in the template list:

• Transform/translate the filename to something more readable/user-friendly
• Customize the order the templates appear on the UI, for example, move the new template to the beginning of the list.

Translating/transforming template's names

Each template file can have a more readable and user-friendly name, and these names can be also translated to German and other languages.

For this you can add the descriptive name of your template file to the following files:

This is implemented in such a way that exporttemplates directory contains configuration files where the filename transformations can be configured similarly to ApplicationResources.properties. The translations configured in the following files:

These translation files contain the file name of the user-friendly name mapping: For example the exporttemplates/Trackers/template-items-all.docx template file will appear as English Trackers/template-items-all.docx on the UI if this is set in the templateNames.properties file.

exporttemplates/Trackers/template-items-all.docx=English Trackers/template-items-all.docx

Ordering of the templates

The order of the template files is configured in the order.txt files on the file system. These files contain the file names in the desired order. So if you want to add their custom template and appear at the first place on the list, then the template file should be added to the folder and the file name at the first line of order.txt.