Creating or modifying a workflow by using the Rational Team Concert client

You can use the Rational Team Concert Eclipse client to create a new workflow that a master lifecycle is modeled on, or modify an existing workflow.

Before you begin

Note: Creating new workflows, or modifying existing workflows is only available when using Enterprise server licenses. A Standard server license does not support custom workflows; only the predefined workflows can be used. This task requires web server administrator credentials.

You can use IBM Rational Team Concert to create a new workflow or modify an existing workflow that you can use to configure new lifecycles in IBM Rational Asset Manager.

With the Rational Team Concert version 2.0 Eclipse client, you can create a new work item and a new workflow, bind them, and save your changes to create a new workflow that is available on Rational Asset Manager. You can download the Rational Team Concert Eclipse client from jazz.net.

Prerequisites:

Procedure

To create a workflow:

  1. From the Rational Team Concert client, connect to the Rational Team Concert server that was supplied with Rational Asset Manager. You must use the same server URL for the Rational Team Concert connection that is set for the Rational Team Concert server that was supplied with Rational Asset Manager. To find the URL, click Administration > Configuration > Internal Rational Team Concert Path > Path. You must use the same web server admin credentials to log in to this new connection. You must connect to the RAM Lifecycle project area the first time in your Rational Team Concert client. Afterwards, if you are connected, you will see the RAM Lifecycle project area.
  2. Click the RAM Lifecycle > Process Configuration tab.
  3. Create a new Work Item Type and Category. To modify a workflow, you select an existing Work Item Type and Category. You do not add new types or categories.
    1. Under Configuration, select Project Configuration > Configuration Data > Work Items > Types and Attributes
    2. To create a new work item category, next to the Choose the Type Category to edit, click Add and enter a name for the work item category. This name (ID) must be unique. To modify a workflow, you select an existing type category.
    3. You must also add a work item type to a category. Under Work Item Types, click Add. The work item type is what will be visible as a workflow in Rational Asset Manager.
    4. In the Add Type window enter a work item type name and ID (for example, "MyWorkItemType" and "MyWorkItemTypeID"). The workflow item type name can be any name that you specify but it will be displayed as the workflow in Rational Asset Manager (not the workflow category name or the work item type category). The ID must be unique.
    5. In the Custom Attributes section, you must add three required attribute types:
      • Click Add, select Reuse Existing Attribute, and from the list choose Asset link. Click OK.
      • Click Add, select Reuse Existing Attribute, and from the list choose Active state history. Click OK.
      • Click Add, select Reuse Existing Attribute, and from the list choose Repository id. Click OK.
    6. Click Save.
  4. Create a new Rational Team Concert workflow. To modify a workflow, you select an existing workflow.
    1. In Rational Team Concert, in the Project Area, click Configuration Data > Work Items (advanced) > Workflows
    2. To create a new workflow, under Choose the Workflow to edit click Add, and enter an ID. To modify a workflow, select an existing workflow and add or modify states and transitions.
    3. In the Name field, enter a name for the workflow.
    4. Create the state transition model.
      • To create a state click States; then click Add and name the state. Repeat this step for each state in your workflow.
      • To create a transition, click Transitions; then click Add and name the transition. Repeat this step for each transition in your workflow.
      • A Start action is required. From the list, enter a state for the Start action by choosing an existing state or creating a new one.
      Optional: You can add icons. They are not required but using them can help make the asset display in Rational Asset Manager more understandable to users.
    5. Click Save.
  5. Bind the new workflow and new work item category.
    1. Select Configuration Data > Work Items > Workflow Bindings.
    2. From the lists, select the names of the work item type category and workflow that you created or modified in the previous steps.
    3. Click Save.
    You are finished with creating the new or modifying the existing workflow.
  6. To make the workflow available in Rational Asset Manager, restart Rational Asset Manager or wait ten minutes for the caches to be cleared. Rational Asset Manager includes an in-memory cache of workflows. The cache is cleared after 10 minutes, but if Rational Asset Manager is restarted, it detects the updated workflows from the Rational Team Concert server. You can also click Tools > Reset Caches. In version 7.2, the cache is only cleared on the server that the user is logged into. In a cluster environment, this feature might cause a problem because it clears the cache on one server, but will not clear the Rational Team Concert cache on other servers in the cluster.
  7. To validate that the new workflow is available, log in to Rational Asset Manager as an administrator and select Administration and under Communities select a community. For the given community click Lifecycles > New Lifecycle. In the list of workflows, you should see the name of the workflow that you created or modified.

    After Rational Asset Manager is recycled, if the new workflow is not visible, the workflow might not be configured correctly and you must use the Rational Team Concert client to make the necessary updates (for example, if you did not specify a unique ID for your work item, then it will not appear). Log in to Rational Team Concert and review the details of the new work item and workflow to ensure that you specified a unique work item type name, the required attributes, a workflow Start action, and a correct state transition model. Make changes as needed, save them, restart the Rational Asset Manager server and verify that the workflow is available.


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