Preconditions and follow-up actions

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Preconditions are conditions that must be met before an operation can be completed. Follow-up actions are events that are generated, like work items that are created, when the operation is completed.

You can set different preconditions and follow-up actions for each role in a project area or team area. You can apply a precondition or follow-up action to some or all roles. You can also specify that a precondition or follow-up action applies only for a specific timeline, iteration, or iteration type.

Preconditions and follow-up actions are defined as part of a configuration. A configuration identifies the operation; the role or roles that the precondition or follow-up action applies to; and the timeline, iteration, or iteration type during which the precondition or follow-up action is in effect. The following image shows two configurations. In each configuration, the precondition or follow-up action applies to the Everyone role. The precondition and follow-up action apply all the time; they are not configured to apply only during a specific timeline, iteration, or iteration type.

Note: Because all users are assigned the default Everyone role, you can have specific operation behavior apply to all users by specifying it for the Everyone role; you need not specify it for every role. At runtime, IBM® Engineering Workflow Management (Engineering Workflow Management) checks the operation behavior settings for all other roles assigned to the user before checking the operation behavior for the Everyone role. If operation behavior is specified for one of those roles, Engineering Workflow Management uses that operation behavior instead of the operation behavior that is specified for the Everyone role.

The Preconditions and Follow-up Actions page in the web client. A table has the following columns: What, Who, When, Summary, and Actions. Two operations are shown: Generate Team Invitation and Save Work Item. The Who column shows the Everyone role. The When column shows Always. The Summary column for the Generate Team Invitation operation shows 1 follow-up action. The Summary column for the Save Work Item operations shows 1 precondition.

To assign a different role (who) or time frame (when) to a precondition or follow-up action, you must copy a configuration and then edit it or create a new configuration.

Note: If multiple preconditions are specified for an operation, all of the preconditions are evaluated, even if one of them fails. This behavior ensures that users are alerted to all unsatisfied preconditions that would cause the operation to fail.

For a detailed explanation of how Engineering Workflow Management determines which behavior to enforce at runtime, see Jazz.net article.