1. David Hatten (drh@us.ibm.com) Developer, UrbanCode 17 October 2013
IBM UrbanCode Deploy v6.0 Support Enablement Training Rational Team Concert – Work Items plugin (RTC-Work Items)

2. Agenda Overview Installation and configuration
Migration and/or Upgrade Process
Troubleshooting procedures
Known Issues
Source: If applicable, describe source origin (date, author, publication)

3. UC Deploy v6.0 RTC-Work Items - Overview
Add capabilities to the IBM Urban Code Deploy (UCD) product that allow for integration with a Rational Team Concert instance
OSLC-driven functionality
Two operations of interactions with RTC
Change Work Item Status
Add Work Item Comments
Source: If applicable, describe source origin (date, author, publication)

4. UC Deploy v6.0 RTC Work Items: High Level Flow
Plug-in steps to change work item state and add a comment will typically be run as the last step in a component/generic process, updating RTC in different ways depending on whether or not the process succeeds or fails
Component processes leveraging the RTC plug-in are likely to use properties scoped to the component process for arguments that vary across process and results, for example, the RTC work item ID, the new work item state or the specifics of a comment

5. UC Deploy v6.0 RTC – Work Items – Change Work Item Status
Arguments
RTC Server Url: Usually ends with /jazz## eg.
User Name: RTC server user name
Password: RTC server password
Project Name: The project name to which the work item to be updated belongs
Work Item ID: The ID of the work item to be updated. Defaults to a property ${p:workItemId}
Action: The action to perform on this work item
New State: The new state to put the work item in
The user must specify either a state or an action to take. If both are specified then action will take precedence.
The plugin retrieves the POST URL to the work item using the project name

6. UC Deploy v6.0 RTC – Work Items – Add Work Item Comments
Arguments
RTC Server Url: Usually ends with /jazz## eg.
User Name: RTC server user name
Password: RTC server password
Project Name: The project name to which the work item to be updated belongs
Work Item ID: The ID of the work item to be updated. Defaults to a property ${p:workItemId}
Comment: The comment to be added to the selected work item
Add URL to Comment: Check to append the URL of the deployment request to the comment
The plugin retrieves the POST URL to the work item using the project name
The URL for “Add URL to Comment” should be the component deployment request’s URL
The “Add URL to Comment” logic is driven by hidden properties. If these properties are modified, this feature will not work.

7. Migration or Upgrade Process
This is the first release of the RTC-Work Items plug-in so there is no upgrade process.
Source: If applicable, describe source origin (date, author, publication)

8. Troubleshooting Procedures
If the “Add URL to comment” feature of “Add Work Item Comments” is not working correctly, check the hidden properties on the step. If these are modified, the “Add URL to comment” feature may not work as intended.
Any fields of text input that will match up with some attribute within RTC should have the same capitalization as the attribute within RTC.

9. Known Issues & Gotchas
This version of the plugin will only be usable in Version and older of UrbanCode Deploy. Version and newer will have a new kind of property syntax that won’t work with this plugin
Modifying the hidden properties on the “Add Work Item Comments” step may result in unpredictable behavior. These properties should not be touched by the user or anyone else.
To add a new line in a comment, use “<br />”. RTC doesn’t recognize newlines in incoming input; it seems to append any new lines to the end of the comment, no matter where they are in the comment
Work item state transitions must follow the workflow for work item. For example, if the workflow for Tasks requires one to go from New->In Progress->Closed, then you must follow that path (e.g can’t change the state from New directly to closed). You can view the workflows in the Process Configuration for the project area.
Entering an incorrect value for the RTC Server URL is a common error that will typically result in the step failing and an error message indicating a parsing problem. An easy way to determine the proper URL is to view the work item in the RTC Web UI and discard everything after and including web. For example
Becomes

10. Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why isn’t there a create work items step? A: Work Item creation can vary from instance to instance. Some RTC implementations may require a Filed Against category for new work items. A different implementation may require an “assigned to” field to be populated. Handling these additional fields is not a trivial matter due to the way OSLC works. Categories are looked up one way, users are looked up another, and any arbitrary, user created field may be looked up in a way we can’t predict. Because any RTC implementation can call for any arbitrary field (even user created fields) to be default, building a plugin step to predict any and every variation that will also work for every user doesn’t seem feasible.

11. Author Note: Mandatory Rational closing slide (includes appropriate legal disclaimer). Graphic is available in English only.
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Keep this as the last chart in the deck