Viewing synchronization status

Each work item record contains information that describes the status of synchronization operations involving that work item. View the synchronization status to verify that changes are flowing between work items and ClearQuest® defects and to troubleshoot problems.

1. Navigate to the work item in the Team Artifacts view.
2. Expand the project area, then expand Work Items. Navigate to a query or create a query to retrieve the work items that you want to check. After you run the query, double-click a work item from the results in the Work Items view to open the work item.
3. Click the Links tab in the Work Items editor. In the Links section, double-click the entry under the External connection heading.
   The following table lists and describes the possible synchronization status values.

   Table 1. Synchronization status values

   Synchronization status	Description
   Conflict	Conflicts can occur when two users make nearly simultaneous changes to a ClearQuest record and its corresponding work item. The changes result in a ClearQuest field and the work item property to which it is mapped containing different values. You need to resolve the conflict so that the work item property and ClearQuest field contain the same field values.
   Cycle	Too many incoming and outgoing synchronization operations have occurred without completing successfully.
   Incoming error	An error occurred that prevented incoming synchronization of changes from ClearQuest from completing successfully.
   OK	An incoming-outgoing or outgoing-incoming cycle has occurred and the resulting states (with respect to the properties being synchronized) are equivalent.
   Outgoing error	An error occurred that prevented outgoing synchronization of changes from IBM® Engineering Workflow Management (EWM) to ClearQuest from completing successfully.
   Pending (blocked)	Changes could not be applied due to a dependency on another object that is not yet connected.
   Pending incoming	Outgoing changes (from EWM to ClearQuest) have been applied. If the next incoming state is equivalent, the status changes to OK.
   Pending outgoing	Incoming changes (from ClearQuest to EWM) have been applied. If the next outgoing state is equivalent, the status changes to OK.
   Uninitialized	This is the initial state. Synchronization has not occurred.

   Note: Several cycles of synchronization might be necessary before the status of an item changes to OK. When you create or modify a work item, it synchronizes to the corresponding ClearQuest record. Because ClearQuest schemas can have hooks that change the values of certain fields when a different field is changed, the ClearQuest Synchronizer sends those possible changes back to the work item. Likewise, the EWM project area process might be configured to alter a work item field when a change to another field is made. In this case, the ClearQuest Synchronizer then needs to check back with ClearQuest to make sure that the change is reflected there.

   The Synchronization Status tab also contains a table that lists the fields and values of the ClearQuest defect record (External Property and External Value) and the mapped properties and property values (Item Property and Item Value) in the corresponding work item. You can examine these values to verify that synchronization is occurring as you expect it to.

4. To see the synchronization rule that controls synchronization between the work item and the ClearQuest defect, click the link next to Synchronization rule.
5. If a synchronization operation for the work item has not completed successfully, you can click the Retry Incoming Synchronization or Retry Outgoing Synchronization button.
   You can select multiple items and retry synchronization of them. By default, the synchronization operations of up to five items that you select are performed in parallel. If you select more than five items to retry, the first five are processed in parallel, then the next batch of five or fewer items are processed in parallel, and so on until synchronization operations for all selected items are done.

   Note: To change the number of items that can be processed in parallel, add the following property to the install-directory\eclipse.ini file: –Dcom.ibm.team.interop.ide.ui.parallel.resynch=n where n is the number of items. If you specify a large number of items to be synchronized in parallel, performance can suffer.
6. When viewing unsynchronized items in the Synchronization Status view, one option for handling unsynchronized items is to stop synchronization between the Jazz item and ClearQuest record by right-clicking the item and selecting Stop Synchronizing. This action breaks the existing connection between the Jazz item and the ClearQuest record and removes the synchronization history for the two items, but the Jazz item and ClearQuest record still exist.

   Because the connection no longer exists, if either item is modified and synchronization is still configured to synchronize that work item or that ClearQuest record, it is possible that a duplicate work item or ClearQuest record is created. Given this potential consequence, the Stop Synchronizing action should be used as a last resort if synchronizing changes on either side cannot resolve the synchronization issue. One situation where this might be useful is if the item seems to be stuck in an uninitialized state. In this case, synchronization links have not been created, the Jazz item has not been created, and stopping synchronization is a way of clearing things and starting over.

   You might also want to stop synchronizing an item or items if you did not intend to synchronize them originally. For example, if the items were synchronized because you did not set up the ClearQuest filter queries correctly or you did not have the synchronization rule scoping set correctly, you can stop synchronizing those items.