Creating a Engineering Insights view

Views give teams insight into data from various development lifecycle management applications, and show relationships among artifacts. The artifacts can be requirements, test plans, test cases, change requests, work items, or other indexed information. Use artifacts as building blocks to create the views that you need and custom artifact elements to include design models in your views.

Before you begin

By default, only administrators create or edit shared views. To request permission to create views, or to use the views editor, contact your administrator.
Note: Starting in version 7.0, the Design Management (DM) application is no longer part of the IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management solution. If you use a previous version, use custom artifact elements to show DM artifacts in views.

About this task

The editor is an easy way to control the data in the view, and the view layout. Learn about the editor by hovering over the small question mark next to Page Properties and Properties.

You can create a view from scratch, or from an existing view. In the following steps, you create a view that is called Sample.

You can use two types of elements to create views:
  • Artifacts are organized by type, and are retrieved directly from the index. You use the same artifacts when you build your reports in Report Builder.
  • Custom artifact elements contain artifacts that are gathered from the index by a SPARQL query. If you do not see the custom artifact elements on the Palette tab, ask your administrator to deploy the content packages that are available on the application administration Contents page.
Use artifacts as building blocks to visualize the data you need to track. Instructions for building a view with artifact are available in the view editor, on the view canvas. The online directions are displayed after you create a view (Views > Create View).

After you complete the steps, the view looks like this image, but it contains your data. You can hover over each container to see more details.

This image is an example of what the "Simple" view looks like after you complete the following steps.

Procedure

  1. Create a view that is called Sample. In the main menu, go to Views > Create View.
  2. In the Sample dialog box, set up the view.
    1. Give the view a name of Sample.
    2. Save the view in My Views.

      Save the view in your private views folder until you thoroughly test the view, and are satisfied with the results. After your testing is completed, share the view with your team, if appropriate.

    3. Set the kind of view to be created. This view is empty, so do not change the Create empty view setting.
    4. Optional: If multiple data sources are configured in the Report Builder, select the right data source for your view.
      • Automatic: Use the data source that corresponds to what is selected in the Current Configuration menu.
        • If it is All Data, the data source is LQE.
        • If it is a configuration, the data source is LQE scoped by a configuration.
      • Lifecycle Query Engine: Shows all data from configurations and from projects that do not use configurations.
      • Lifecycle Query Engine scoped by a Configuration: Show data from the selected configuration.

      If the project teams use local or global configurations, team members can select a configuration to work in when they run a view. Only artifacts that pertain to the selected configuration context are shown in the view.

    5. Click Next.
    6. Optional: You can limit the scope of the view by selecting a project that contains the artifacts that you want to show in the view.
      Note:
      • If you do not select any project area, the view that you are editing includes all the project areas that you can access.
      • If you select all projects, the view includes only the selected projects. If a new project is created later, its data is not automatically included when you run the view.
    7. Click Finish, and Sample opens in the view editor.
  3. Configure how users select nodes in a view.
    On the Properties tab, set the node selection mode.
    • Disabled: View users cannot select nodes in this view.
    • Single node: View users can select only one node in this view.
    • Multiple nodes: View users can select multiple nodes in this view. If you create a new view, this is the default setting. If you create a view by modifying an existing view, the node selection mode of the new view has the same setting as the original view.
  4. Follow the steps in the Quick view setup assistance to create the Sample view.

    Use artifacts to build your view. To show related artifacts, right-click an artifact container, and select a relationship type or an artifact type that you want to explore.

    If you make an incorrect change, use the Undo icon to remove the change. If the view shows many artifacts, and takes a long time to load the artifacts after each change, click the Stop Loading icon, arrange your view, and load the artifacts when you are ready.

    Resize a container by dragging the container border. For more information, see Lesson 2: Populate a view with artifacts.

  5. Edit properties such as background, user interface types, and artifact nodes by using the Page Properties editor.
    You can change how the nodes display in the view.
  6. Edit the connectors to make them visually unique.
    1. Right-click the dashed arrow between containers, and select Edit Connection.
    2. In the Connections dialog box, change the connector arrows by setting the UI Type to roundConnection.
    3. Change the connector color in UI Parameter by changing the value of stroke to orange.
    4. Save your changes by clicking OK.
  7. Save the view.
  8. If you want to edit the view, but you do not want to overwrite the original view you created, select Save Copy. Give the view a unique name, and continue making any necessary changes.
  9. Create a report by using the sample report template to collect data, and view it in a printable format. You can also choose to export it in Word, PDF, or XSL-FO format.

    To run a report that is generated from a view, see Working with reports from views.

  10. If you are satisfied that the view results are valid, share the view.
    1. In the My Views screen, hover over the Sample view, and click the Move or Copy Selected Views icon.
    2. Choose to copy the view into a folder in Shared Views, and then click OK.
    3. The view is available to other team members in the Shared Views folder.