Managing artifacts by using configurations
Learn how to manage changes to artifacts and work in a parallel, multi-stream environment by using configuration management capabilities. These capabilities include setting up unique working environments for individuals or teams, creating baselines of projects at specific points in time, reviewing and approving changes to resources, and making changes visible to other teams or individuals.
After an application administrator enables configuration management for a project area, teams can work in a parallel, multi-stream environment.
If an application administrator also installs the Global Configuration Management application, team members assigned as configuration leads can create global configurations and add local configurations (streams and baselines) to them.
After a configuration lead creates global configurations, when you switch to a global configuration, you can create and view links to artifacts in other Engineering Lifecycle Management project areas that support configuration management. You can also view of all the artifacts that make up a version of a product or system. To work in the context of a global configuration, select one from the Current Configuration menu.
Many test artifacts in the Quality Management (QM) application can be versioned, which means that one configuration can have one version of the artifact, and another configuration can have another. For unversioned artifacts, wherever the artifact is used, the same artifact is used, never a different version of it.
The following table lists versioned artifacts and unversioned test artifacts.
| Versioned Artifacts | Unversioned Artifacts |
|---|---|
| Test plans Test cases Test data Test suites Test scripts Test Environments* Keywords Test case execution records Test suite execution records Test case results Test suite results Execution schedules* Execution schedule results* Note: Artifact types marked
with an asterisk (*): You cannot view their version history in a graph.
|
Build definition Build records Attachments Category and category values Custom attributes Query filters Quality objectives Risk types Lab management: Catalog (type system) Test cells Test adapters Lab resources Lab resource groups Lab reservations Requests |
- Versioned artifacts in dashboards
- If your project area has configuration management capabilities enabled, you can report on versioned artifacts in configurations in and across Engineering Lifecycle Management applications. You can configure a widget to always report on a specific configuration, or use the current configuration indicated on the toolbar.
- Selecting a configuration to work in
- The name of the configuration that you are working in is shown on the toolbar, as part of the Current Configuration menu. Use this menu to switch configurations and to complete configuration-related tasks, based on your permissions or role. To see and create links to artifacts in related project areas in other Engineering Lifecycle Management applications, select a global configuration.
- Managing configuration details
- You can open a configuration to see related configurations, manage its details, compare configurations, and create related configurations.
- Creating streams
- A stream is modifiable set of versioned artifacts. You can add, edit, and delete versions of artifacts in a stream. All team members who have access to the project area can access its streams.
- Creating baselines from streams
- A baseline is a read-only set of artifacts and their versions. Create baselines to capture the state of a stream at a specific point in time, and to define a starting point for new work. For example, create a baseline of a stream and use it as the basis of a new stream for new work. You can create a baseline of a stream at any point during the project lifecycle, such as before or after a project milestone is reached.
- Showing and setting link validity and validity summary information
- Link validity is the status of links between artifacts to indicate whether the contents of two artifacts meet the intended meaning of the link between them. You can use the link validity status to achieve consistency across artifacts and links as you make changes that propagate through the linked data.
- Cloning artifacts between QM components
- Reorganize how artifacts are grouped in your project by cloning them from one component into another. When you clone an artifact, a new version is added to the component that you clone into.
To learn more about configuration management, see this video.