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 neighbouring 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.

Please note, that from codeBeamer 8.2 the following tracker types cannot be choose as Initial trackers: Test Run, Test Set, Test Configuration, Release, Team.

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. 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 Inital Tracker changes, the page reloads after a confirm warning to provide the proper contexts.

You can optionally select the Public or Private Views of the tracker. Default Views will appear here also, and have blue background. From codeBeamer 9.1 if you select a tracker which has Document View support, and do not select view, the ordering of the result will be according to hierarchy which you can see on Document View (previously there was a Document View view name, which did the same behaviour).

From codeBeamer 9.1 there is also Branch support, a branch selector appear in which you can see the branch hierarchy of the selected tracker if present.

From codeBeamer 9.0.0, if you selected filters, the selected filters will be copied here. Of course you can modify the filters, but if you want, you can switch back to the tracker selectors by clicking the "Switch to Initial Tracker(s)" link below the Initial Filter label. You can come back anytime to the filter section by clicking the "Switch to Initial Filter" link.

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. Inside the Initial Tracker(s) section you can add only specific trackers, from the current project, and also from other projects. Click on Add button to see the possibilities. After added a tracker, you can change the views of each initial trackers.

Clicking on Add button of any other levels (from Level 1) you have more possibilites:

• Trackers of Current Project
• Tracker Types of all Projects: project independent filtering by tracker type
• Custom Tracker of other Project: a project and tracker selector overlay opens in this case
• All: it means that the tracker items of this level will not be filtered by tracker/tracker types, all of the depended items will be displayed. If you select All, all of the previously set values will be removed from the current level.

If you set anything to a level, the levels will increase and you can continue setting the traceability. You can also use drag&drop functionality between levels.

Below the Level section you can see the kind of relations, an option for filtering folder and information type tracker items:

• Associations: Downstream, Upstream
• References: Downstream, Upstream
• Show Folders and Information
• Show Children (from codeBeamer 8.2)

These options cover the result table globally. From 8.0.1 you are able to set the kind of relations between levels, see below.

From codeBeamer 8.2 you are able to show the descriptions of the items in the result table and filter the redundant items from the result:

• Show Description: if checked, the description field of the items will be displayed in the result table.
• Do not show redundant Items: the result table will not contain elements in a level if they are displayed in one of the previous levels. A warning message will appear in this case in the proper place of the table: "There are redundant connected Items, which are not displayed".

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

Configuration

You can change Traceability Browser settings by clicking the configure sign next to the Traceability Browser Current Selection header. The displaying overlay contains the following settings:

• Tracker types: select which tracker type(s) should appear in the available trackers and suggested trackers section.
• Show hidden trackers: if the Add context menu should contain the hidden trackers, and if the result should contain the tracker items from hidden trackers also.
• Show suggestions: if tracker/tracker type suggestions should be displayed on screen (blue background area). If set, the Suggestions are visible in initial screen, you can see a list of the possible related trackers of the current tracker. and also next to the result table.

The result table

After setting the desired trackers/tracker types/all of each level, you have to click on Show dependencies to see the result table. The first column of the result table will be the tracker items of the selected initial tracker(s) (optionally filtered by any view), the other coloumns will represent the Levels, and show the related tracker items according to the Current Selection level and kind of dependencies settings.

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. If Show suggestion is switch on, you can see an other blue background area next to the last column, and you can select an other level of traceability with one click.

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

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

From codeBeamer 8.2 to avoid performance issues, incremental scroll were implemented. The default page size is 50 item, but you can configure this value in general.xml (see below other configuration options). The page size refers to the number of items of the Initial level. Once you reach the bottom of the page, and there are other items in Initial level, the table will be extended automatically and you can continue browsing.

Please note, that from codeBeamer 8.2 Test Run trackers and Test Run tracker type cannot be selected in any levels. Also, if you select "All", Test Run items will not be included in the result. The following trackers and types are selectable in levels (not in Initial level), but the result will not include the further relations of these items (Traceability Browser does not follow these type of items): Test Set, Test Configuration, Release, Team.

Filtering by kind of dependencies between levels

This functionality is avalaible only from 8.0.1!

You are able to filter the result table by kind of dependencies between each levels. Click on the arrow of the header between the levels, to reach the control overlay. You can select here which kind of dependencies and which directions you want to see between the current levels. Click on OK button to see the filter result.

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/Store Presets

Project admins are able to store configuration presets in project level. The presets contains the current initial tracker(s) (optionally filtered by view), the Current selection list, the Association/Reference settings (downstream/upstream), the Show Folders and Information setting, from codeBeamer 8.0.1 the kind of relation setting between the levels also and from codeBeamer 8.2 the Show Description, Show Children and Do not show redundant Items options.

Click Save current Settings on the action bar to store current configuration as a preset. You have to type a unique name of the preset and click Save. You will 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:

You will see the names and the selection list of the stored presets. If you are a Project admin, you can also Delete the stored Preset, in other cases you are able to load them.

From codeBeamer 9.0.0 if you set Initial filter, the preset will show the cbQL of the initial filter.

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).
• 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:

• Wether to show Associations (not just References), default true
• Number of Levels up to 10 levels
• Wether to show descriptions of the items, default false
• Wether 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)
• 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.

The limitation options have maximum values, so if you set more than these values, this maximum values will be used:

• maxFirstLevelElements = 100000
• maxAdditionalLevelElements = 100000
• maxFirstLevelElementsPerItem = 500
• maxAdditionalLevelElementsPerItem = 200
• pageSize = 250

Please note, that the Trceability Browser Wiki plugin will use the set number of maxFirstLevelElements in the Initial Level too!

If you reach one of the limitations, a warning message will appear in the proper place of the result table, to show that there other elements, but not displayed because of the limitation: "There are other connected Items, but they are not displayed because of the limitations".