Linking work items in a global configuration context

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You can link work items to versioned artifacts in a global configuration (GC) context. Linking across lifecycle domains or components requires a global configuration context and certain versioned artifacts, such as requirements and tests. Linking does not apply to SCM artifacts.

Work items and change sets from any ELM application are not versioned and are not specific to any configuration. Therefore, they do not contribute directly to any global configuration.

The following rules apply to linking:

  • To create and resolve links from work items to versioned artifacts and to the correct version of the target artifact, additional settings are needed. These settings include such as configuration context, release, attribute mappings, and other settings. To understand the concept of linking of work item to versioned artifacts, see Enabling linking of work item to versioned artifacts.
  • All links that are related to work items are stored in EWM, regardless of the other artifacts that are involved or where or how you create the link.
  • Link direction and storage are independent of where you initiate link creation.
  • When a link exists between two artifacts in associated project areas, each application stores a link to the other application's artifact. This process is called back linking. For example, when you link a requirement to a work item, the RM application stores a link to the work item, and the IBM® Engineering Workflow Management application stores a link to the requirement.
  • After you enable configuration management in at least one Quality Management (QM) and Requirements Management (RM) project area, back links between artifacts are removed. Links between artifacts across project areas are owned by and stored in only one of the applications that are involved in the link. IBM Engineering Workflow Management owns links to artifacts in the Change and Configuration Management (CCM), Architecture Management (AM), Quality Management (QM) and Requirements Management (RM) applications.
  • When CM is not enabled, the target artifact is modified, and a back link is stored for the incoming link.
  • In EWM, when no explicit context is set, each link type effectively has its own context for determining forward link navigation. So, on a work item, you might have LinkType1 use GC1, LinkType2 use GC2, and LinkType3 have no GC at all because either mappings are not set, no attribute value is set, or the release doesn't specify a GC. Thus, link navigation can be in potentially different contexts and can indicate an inferred GC.
  • In EWM, the inferred GC is determined from the saved settings of the work item. The work item must be saved with appropriate values in the Found In or Planned For fields before a link can be established by using inferred GC.
  • In EWM, the value that is selected in the banner affects only the oslc_config.context that is applied to the links in EWM views.
  • EWM doesn’t use forward-link filtering. It just uses back-link filtering in DN or ETM. EWM never filters the outgoing links that are shown in the work item editor. Whatever links were created are shown, regardless of the release attribute values.

For more information, see Enabling linking of work items to versioned artifacts.