Adding configurations to a stream

Use a stream to group configurations contributed by this and other IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management applications, such as IBM Engineering Workflow Management, IBM Engineering Test Management (Engineering Test Management), IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® Next, and IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody® - Model Manager ,.

Before you begin

  • To add configurations to streams, you must be assigned the Configuration Lead or Administrator role or be assigned the Modify stream attributes + replace configurations + change hierarchies permission. For more information about this permission, see Role-based permissions for Global Configuration Management.
  • By default, team members can add or remove configurations only in their own personal streams. Only administrators or team members with permission can modify other team members' personal streams.

About this task

An empty initial stream is created automatically after a component is created. You can add configurations to the stream from this and other contributing Engineering Lifecycle Management applications. Configurations that you add to the stream from this and other Engineering Lifecycle Management applications can be streams, change sets, snapshots, baselines, and global configurations. If you need to create a component, see Creating a component to establish a work context.

Recall that a stream is modifiable while a baseline is frozen. In the Global Configuration Management application, streams, change sets, snapshots, baselines, and global configurations are all called configurations when the state of the asset does not matter. When the state does matter, then the Global Configuration Management application and documents use the more specific terms.

After you add configurations from this and other Engineering Lifecycle Management applications to global configurations in the Global Configuration Management application, you see a larger context. Rather than seeing just the configurations you are working with in a contributing Engineering Lifecycle Management application, such as requirements configurations, the tree view also shows you test configurations, design configurations, and other global configurations organized in a hierarchy.

Global configurations show configuration hierarchies only, not the artifacts that reside within each contributing application's configurations. If you want to view the artifacts, such as artifacts in a test stream, you can do so in the contributing Engineering Test Management application.

Adding contributions from other Global Configuration Management instances

Sometimes, you need to build configuration hierarchies that include external contributions, which are configurations from Global Configuration Management instances on other Jazz® Team Server instances. A Global Configuration Management administrator must enable Global Configuration Management servers to contribute configurations to other Global Configuration Management servers.

You can add only one external contribution from any Global Configuration Management instance. To add more than one external contribution from a Global Configuration Management instance, you must group configurations in that instance, and then add the group configuration to the hierarchy on the home Global Configuration Management server, as shown in the following example.

Conventions in the following image:
  • Green boxes represent global configurations on the home Global Configuration Management server.
  • Yellow boxes represent external contributions from another Global Configuration Management instance.
Image showing a grouping configuration that contributes to a configuration on the home server, and also two examples that are not valid

On the home Global Configuration Management server, you can add only one global contribution from any Global Configuration Management instance. Suppose you need to add GC B1 and GC B2 to the GC A1 configuration. As shown in the example, with the check mark, because you can add only one contribution from another Global Configuration Management instance, you must create a group configuration (GC B3) that contains the GC B1 and GC B2 configurations, and then add GC B3 to GC A1 on the home server.

You can't add multiple contributions from the same instance to a configuration on the home server, as shown in the second and third examples.

To create a group configuration like the one shown in the example with the check mark, complete these steps:
  1. In the Global Configuration Management instance that contains GC B1 and GC B2, create global configuration GC B3 and add the other two configurations to it.
  2. On the home server of the GC A1 configuration hierarchy:
    1. Remove any external contributions from the server that contains the GC Bx configurations.
    2. Add the GC B3 configuration that you created. In the configuration picker, external contributions are decorated with a cloud icon that is superimposed on a global configuration icon, as in this example: External contribution icon shows a cloud superimposed on a global stream icon.

You can add the group configuration to a configuration hierarchy on another Global Configuration Management server that a Global Configuration Management administrator configured to allow external contributions. If you don't see the project area from the other Global Configuration Management instance in the configuration picker, contact your Global Configuration Management administrator.

To add configurations to a stream, complete the steps in the Procedure.

Procedure

  1. In the configuration hierarchy, select the global stream to add configurations to, and then click Add Configurations.
  2. Add as many configurations as you need to the stream.
    1. From the menu, select a Engineering Lifecycle Management application.
    2. From the Project Area menu, select the project area to search.
      If you select the Global Configuration Management application in step 2.a:
      • After you select a project area, you can use a query to find global configurations: click the menu on the left of the search field and choose a query type.
      • If you belong to multiple Global Configuration Management projects, you can select All project areas to search for global configurations across project areas that you have access to. See the menu options.
      • To view another column in the results shown, use the Add a column to the results icon (Table columns) on the results table.
    3. Engineering Test Management and DOORS applications only: From the Component menu, select the component that contains the configuration to add.
    4. Choose the configurations from the list and click OK, or drag them into position in the tree view.
      Remember:
      • Change sets can be added only to personal streams.
      • Filter results by entering a tag or configuration name in the search field.
      • Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next and Engineering Test Management applications: You can drag configurations from the pages in the Manage Components and Configurations section in one browser window into position in the tree view in another browser window.
      • DM application: You can drag configurations from the Manage Configurations page in one browser window into position in the tree view in another window.

Results

Now that you added configurations from this and other Engineering Lifecycle Management applications to your stream, the configurations are part of a larger context. Teams refer to this larger context as a high-level configuration, a grouping configuration, or a global configuration. All of the names mean the same thing: a configuration that groups related configurations that were contributed by this and other Engineering Lifecycle Management applications.

What to do next

You can move, rename, replace, remove, or reorder configurations. See Managing configurations.