Managing changes to artifacts

Create change sets to group related changes and to control where changes are delivered. You can link change sets to work items to help identify the changes that are related to a specific purpose or problem. When you finish making changes, deliver your change set to its destination stream. If you do not use change sets, your changes to artifacts or links in a stream are available to everyone who shares the stream as soon as you save your changes.

Before you begin

  • Ensure that you are familiar with project areas, components (if supported), baselines, streams, and change sets (if supported).
  • Ensure that you are familiar with global configurations and personal streams (if your organization uses them).
  • Ensure that you are logged in to a project.
  • Ensure that you have permission to manage change sets.
  • Understand how your organization uses streams, baselines, and change sets based on how many teams need to work in parallel on different versions of the same artifacts. To learn more, see Patterns for stream usage on Jazz.net.

About this task

A change set is a collection of related modifications to shared artifacts that is delivered to a stream, and can later be delivered to another stream. For example, you can manually create change sets to group changes that resolve a specific problem. By grouping related changes and then delivering them as a unit to a stream, you ensure that such groups of changes are made together or not at all.

Some teams might require you to manually create change sets as part of the organization's development process. To prevent unauthorized changes, some teams might also require that change sets be linked to a work item has been approved before you can deliver your changes.

To minimize conflicts with other team members' changes, use many small change sets and deliver them quickly.

If you do not create change sets, each time that you save your changes to an artifact or link in a stream, the application automatically creates and delivers a change set, and your changes are available immediately to other team members who share the stream. Even though working this way is simple, it can be harder to identify and deliver specific change sets to other streams. Ask your team lead or configuration lead for guidance about whether to manually create change sets to manage your changes.

If you are working in a global configuration, see the Current Configuration menu on the toolbar. The configuration context switches when you complete some change set operations:
  • When you create a change set, it is added to your personal stream automatically, and the current configuration is set to your personal stream. You can create or view links to artifacts in other project areas while you work in your change set.
    Note: Your personal stream can contain only one change set from a component (if supported) or project area (if components aren't supported). Typically, you should have only one change set at a time in your personal stream. To add a different change set to your personal stream, you must manually replace the change set that is already there. See the related topic about working with multiple change sets.
  • After you deliver the change set, it is removed from your personal stream.
For details, see the related task links.

Procedure

You can work with change sets from the following locations:
  • Current Configuration menu on the toolbar: In the Change Set section of the menu, see the change set tasks.
  • Change Sets editor:
    1. From the Current Configuration menu, click the link to the stream shown in the Change Set section.
    2. See the change set tasks near the upper right.
  • Change Sets tab of the configuration editor, when you open a stream in the editor:
    1. From the Current Configuration menu, click the link to the stream shown in the Local Configuration section.
    2. In the configuration editor, click the Change Sets tab.
    3. Use the icons above the table to create change sets and show different views of the change sets in the stream.
    4. In the Actions column, click Actions > action name to complete change set tasks:
      • Deliver Change Set: Deliver the changes to the stream the change set was created from. You can deliver only one change set at a time. You must deliver changes to this stream before you can deliver those changes to other streams by using the Deliver Changes operation.
      • Discard Change Set: You can discard only an entire change set; you cannot discard changes to individual artifacts in a change set.
      • Compare with Stream: Review the contents of a change set by comparing the versions of artifacts in the change set with the versions of artifacts in the stream that the change set was created from.
  • Design Management application only: From the Details tab of the configuration editor, when you open a stream in the editor.