Rally Office Hours August 25, 2022 Recap
As a follow-up from our August 25, Rally Office Hours session, we’d like to share some highlights in addition to the questions that were asked, along with their respective answers.
Thank you to all who joined us live. We appreciate your feedback and participation in the last session and are looking forward to our next one. If you were not able to attend, there is always an opportunity to ask questions here on the Rally Community discussion board and we'll do our best to answer.
Join us every Thursday, at 12 PM ET (register for upcoming sessions). We look forward to connecting with you!
August 25, Session Recap
Q: is there a way to display the dependencies in one view for all work item types?
A: This app should help: https://github.com/RallyTechServices/enhanced-dependency-app . In order to use the app, you can create a custom page, then include the Custom HTML app and paste this app's HTML deployment file.
Q: Work Rule - We want the error to appear when 2 fields are blank - one of these fields is custom field and the error message
A: Product Management is aware of these errors. Our Rally Engineering team is currently working to fix.
Q: Using the cycle time would it be possible to have an option to enclude or exclude weekends. I know most teams don't work on weekends---this would be good to see doing team retros for seeing what may be done to do better user story estimates
A: The Team Board Cycle Time page does include weekend days in its computation. Engineering is working to fix that so that it will only use the working days defined on the workspace.However, old apps are available in Rally app catalog and in our community: those apps adhere to the working days set by the workspace and will avoid weekends in the computation.
Q: cycle time scatter --- the dates in the settings -- do they overwrite the setting on the report
A: Yes, they do. As a general rule: apps that include filtering will normally use their embedded filters instead of the timebox-filter that's embedded to the custom page.
Q: Hi - I have been trying to figure out how, if possible, there is a way to export test case steps with the input validation and expected results under an entire test folder?
A: The customer clarified they're not asking to ONLY export test case steps, but also export test cases.
If the ask was to only export the test case steps then you can run this query in your browser (open a new tab):
https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/testcasestep.csv?query=(TestCase.TestFolder.FormattedID ="TF3")&fetch=ExpectedResult,Input&pagesize=200
This query will create a CSV file of all test case steps belonging to any test case under test folder TF3 (so replace TF3 with your own test folder formatted id).
Considering customer's asking to export two objects (both test cases and test case steps) under the test folder then we'll need to write a script to do that. We will follow up with the customer.
Q: is there a way to export a Work View of User Stories that includes the data in the Parent / Feature column?
A: You shall include the Feature and/or Parent columns in your Work View, then if using the export this view to a CSV then these columns will be included.
Q: Another question....when using a Team Board and moving a User Story from one swimlane to the next, how do I maintain the order without having to reprioritize the column? When we move a User Story, it is randomingly going into a different position in the swimlane.
A: Changing a flowstate (a column) of a work item in the team board will NOT affect it's general ranking. However, moving a work item up/down inside a column will affect its general ranking.
Q: I'm having some trouble with work rules for portfolio items. Posted in the Rally Software site also. Two issues specifically 1) was not able to create a rule to make a custom field required and 2) created a rule to look at release and planend start/end dates and it didn't trigger when I tested it. :(
A: Product Management confirmed they know of these errors and that Rally engineering is working to fix.
Q: I want to be able to assign Risk to Iteration just like user stories and defects so that we address it during the iteration.
A: Risks are assigned to work items. As such they can not be assigned to a timebox such as Iteration. This in itself should be submitted as an enhancement request. However, customer clarified they're asking how to find the risks attached to work items which belong with a given iteration, i.e: how to filter on the assigned iteration of the work items and find their risks: For that we can use the Custom Board (available in App Catalog). You can include this app on your dashboard, use the settings page and set it to work on Risk, then use the app's filter to query the iterations you need.
Q: We got this question from our user community. The question about the Feature Planned End Date. Is this Planned End Date tied to the Implementation or the Stories themselves? For example, all of the Stories under a Feature are planned to be completed on 10/11/22, however, the code is not moving into Production until 2023 sometime. Should the Planned End Date be 10/11/22 or should it be our best guess of the date for 2023? The Feature is currently in the Deploy to Production State. The second part of the question is should we keep updating the Release until the Code has been implemented?
A: Planed Start Date and Planned End Date are not affected by the actual activity in Rally. The Actual Start Date and Actual End Date are affected.
Q: Cycle Time Report and Team Board Cycle time numbers are not the same -- which would be the better one to use?and are there plans to have one or other removed?
A: The skew is due to that Team Board cycle time currently includes weekends in the computation while the Cycle Time Report does not. This is being fixed and Team Board cycle time will compute only activity in the working days as defined by the workspace.