Importing existing release links from Engineering Workflow Management to Global Configuration Management

After you associate Engineering Workflow Management releases with global configurations in the Engineering Workflow Management application, you must create corresponding release links in the Global Configuration Management application from those global configurations. You can add the release links in the global configuration manually or use the bulk import function of the Global Configuration Management application to ensure that the preexisting associations are set up properly.

About this task

You can use the bulk import function to import the previous associations between releases and existing global configurations from the Engineering Workflow Management application into the Global Configuration Management application in the following scenarios:

• When you upgrade from a prior IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management version to Engineering Lifecycle Management 7.1 version.
• To ensure that a relationship between a global configuration and a release exists in Global Configuration Management for each corresponding relationship between a release and a global configuration in Engineering Workflow Management.

The import of existing associations from Engineering Workflow Management into Global Configuration Management is important to ensure that all incoming links from Engineering Workflow Management work items to versioned artifacts in the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications (such as Engineering Test Management and DOORS® Next) appear correctly.

When you create a new global configuration (stream, baseline, or baseline staging stream) from a global stream that is associated with release links, the newly created global configuration gets a copy of the release values from its predecessor.

Note: A change to a release value of a global configuration somewhere in a global configuration hierarchy is not automatically propagated to that configuration's parent, child, or sibling global configurations in the hierarchy. You must manually propagate such changes and associate each configuration with an appropriate release link explicitly. If you don't propagate these changes, and you choose some other global configuration in the hierarchy as your configuration context, then versioned artifacts might not show the expected incoming work item links.

When personal streams are created, their initial release values are copied from their shared global configurations. But if any changes are made to the release values of the personal streams or their shared global configurations thereafter, they do not remain in sync.

If you want to import release links from all applicable Engineering Workflow Management project areas at once, then you can do so as someone who has access to those Engineering Workflow Management project areas. You can also import release links for multiple Global Configuration Management project areas at the same time provided you have access to those project areas.

Alternatively, importing can be done incrementally in successive cycles. So you can import release links from some project areas on one import, and from the other project areas on another import. For example, you might choose to import the release links from all project areas of server Engineering Workflow Management1 in one step, and then import the release links from the project areas of server Engineering Workflow Management2 in another step later.

Note: Importing release links from a project area that was already imported is harmless. But someone from your team must ensure that the importing task is complete. All necessary associations must be imported otherwise you might experience missing incoming work item links for versioned artifacts (requirements or test cases).

Example:

Suppose that you have the following relationship between a release and a global configuration in Engineering Workflow Management 7.0.1: Release 1.0 to Car 2026 as shown in the following image. As a post upgrade step in Engineering Workflow Management 7.1, you want to import the relationship into the Global Configuration Management application as follows: Car 2026 to Release 1.0 (the reverse direction). Here, you can use the Import Release Links wizard from the Administration menu in the Global Configuration Management application to link Car 2026 to Release 1.0.

Associating global configuration Car 2026 to Release 1.0 doesn't automatically associate Ignition 2026 to Release 1.0 or any other global configurations that belong in the hierarchy of Product Line 2026. You must manually associate the other configurations in the hierarchy with an appropriate release link by creating links explicitly. Otherwise, the expected work item links are not shown for versioned artifacts if you use a different global configuration in the hierarchy as your configuration context.

1. Open Administration > Import Release Links.
   A window opens.
2. Select the Engineering Workflow Management project areas from where you want to import the release links. Click Select all to select all the project areas. Then, click Next.
   Note: By default, all accessible Engineering Workflow Management project areas are available for selection. However, if you are seeing any irrelevant Engineering Workflow Management project areas, ask your administrator to limit the list of available project areas by enforcing project area associations.
3. Optional: Click Preview Import to preview the changes.
4. Click Import Release Links to start the process.
   Review the changes that are applied after the import.
5. Click Finish to exit.