We are excited to share some upcoming improvements to the app catalog, which will be generally available on Monday, November 6th! For anyone that uses dashboards or custom pages, here's some information to help you get started. Please check out the FAQ section at the end of this post for more information.
What's New
So far, we've made some great changes to the app catalog:
- A fresh new look and feel which makes it easier to find what you're looking for, including card and list views
- Badges on custom pages and in the app catalog to help distinguish between core, custom, subscription, and community apps
- Badges on custom pages and in the app catalog to help distinguish between apps that respect the iteration, release or milestone filter and ones that do not.
- The addition of our customers' favorite apps that are not already in the catalog
- Links to the GitHub repository for apps to make it easier to customize apps for your needs
- The ability to have milestone-filtered pages has gone from labs to general availability
- The Team Member Board has been moved from labs to the core app catalog
- There is an optional set of community app that can be turned on for your sub. We’ve taken some of our customers' favorite apps and included them in an optional community section to make it easier to create the custom pages you need.
List View and Tile View
There are two ways to view the app catalog, which can be changed by the toggle button at the top right of the app catalog. The default is tile view, which will show screenshots for each app. You can switch to list view for a simplified version of the app catalog.
What are community apps?
The new Community section in the app catalog is for apps that were created by various folks, including CA’s Technical Services and developers who are passionate about helping Teams succeed. They have been carefully selected and reviewed by our engineering team. While these apps will now be much easier for customers to add to their custom pages, we will provided limited support for them and they are subject to beta terms:
CA makes each of these applications available to you subject to the terms for Beta Products set forth in the SaaS Listing for CA Agile Central and to any additional terms included with such applications. By accessing or using the applications, you agree that these terms for Beta Products govern your access to and use of the applications in conjunction with CA Agile Central.
If you run into issues with these apps, you are encouraged to open an issue in GitHub (links to GitHub repos are provided with each community app in the app catalog) or to correct the issue yourself and create a pull request for it. While we will do our best to keep apps up to date, updates in the GitHub repos will not be automatically or immediately reflected in the app catalog and we will not guarantee pulling in these updates. You can also create a custom HTML app on your custom page or in your subscription app catalog using the source code from GitHub to make modifications to suit your needs. CA Support will only be able to assist customers with critical issues with these apps, such as a failure to load, data loss, etc.
Customers may have requests for apps that they would like to see in the Community App Catalog. We will review each request for technical feasibility and value of including it in the catalog, and we would like to encourage customers to submit requests through the feedback button on the app catalog.
How do I turn on the Community App Catalog?
To get the new app catalog, you can reply directly to this community post and someone will reach out to you.
Once the new app catalog is turned on for your subscription, you will need to enable the Community App Catalog to see the added community apps. Subscription administrators can turn on the Community App Catalog by going to Setup -> Subscription, then selecting the "Allow community app catalog apps" options near the top.
What is the subscription app catalog?
The subscription app catalog gives subscription administrators the ability to create custom HTML apps that can be shared with all of the users in the subscription. These apps can be based on the many custom apps available in the Rally Community GitHub or created with the CA Agile Central App SDK, and can be managed in the subscription settings in AC. More information can be found in our help page.
Are there more changes to come?
Quite a few of the older apps (we will refer to these a "dojo apps") will be moved to the community app catalog in December. These are the older apps in the catalog and most of them have minimal to no usage. The main impact of this change is that subscriptions that do not have the community app catalog enabled will no longer be able to add these apps to custom pages. If these apps already exist on custom pages, they will not be affected. The list of these apps can be found here.
How do I provide feedback?
We would love to hear about the things you like and would like to see changed with the new app catalog. Please provide feedback through the feedback button at the top of the app catalog.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I know I’m installing my subscription’s customization of an app from the community? Or if I’m using my own custom HTML version of the app?
- There are colored badges on each app that should help you determine the source of each app.
- Are changes to the apps in GitHub automatically included in the app catalog?
- Changes to apps in GitHub are not automatically included in the app catalog. Our engineering team will review changes submitted to these apps to determine when and if we will include the changes to the apps.
- Will changes to the GitHub version or community version of the app affect the same app that I have in my subscription catalog or as a custom HTML app?
- Any subscription and custom HTML apps being used will never be updated automatically. For the new community apps, if you have the same app source either in your subscription catalog or in a custom HTML app, changes in GitHub and changes to the community apps in the catalog will have no impact to your subscription and custom HTML apps. The only way to have update to subscription and custom HTML apps is for users to update them on their own by editing the apps.
- What happens if I decide not to turn on the community app catalog for my subscription?
- You will still see the new app catalog and badges even if you do not turn on the community app catalog. The only difference is that you will not see the community apps, which will include dojo apps shortly after the app catalog is generally available.
- Do I need to have custom HTML apps enabled for my subscription in order to get community apps?
- No you only need to have the community app catalog enabled to get community apps.
- If I have a subscription app that will be available in the community app catalog, how do I help users transition from the subscription version to the community version?
- For subscription admins, you can see the number of pages that use each app but we cannot provide information on which pages or which users are using those apps.
- How do I know which apps will be moving from core to community (aka the dojo apps)?
- If my subscription does not have Community App Catalog enabled, will all dojo apps disappear from our custom pages?
- All dojo apps that are currently on custom pages will remain, but you will no longer be able to add these apps to new or existing custom pages. We will be working with customers on these apps to try to understand usage and find alternatives for them.
- Can we turn this on for just one user or one set of users?
- The new app catalog and Community App Catalog can only be turned on for an entire subscription. This means that turning on the community apps will provide access to them for all users in your subscription.
- Can we choose which apps we include in the Community App Catalog?
- If you choose to enable the Community App Catalog, you will not be able to choose which of the community apps are allowed. Turning on the Community App Catalog will enable all of those community apps (list below).
- Should I see two versions of the Estimation Board in the app catalog?
- We have added the new version of the Estimation Board in the catalog as a means to move customers over to the new functionality, which has more filtering, the Add New button and swimlanes.
- Where did the custom grid app go?
- For the last few years, the custom grid app has been called "Custom List (formerly Custom Grid)". As part of our clean up work, we removed the last portion of the name so this is only called Custom List.
- What apps are included in the Community App Catalog?
- PPM Timesheets (https://github.com/RallyTechServices/ppmtimesheet)
- Lightweight Financials (https://github.com/RallyTechServices/portfolio-cost-apps)
- Portfolio Cost - Snapshot Viewer
- Portfolio Cost - Team Admin
- Portfolio Cost - Tracking
- Custom Grid With Deep Export
- Rally Iteration Health
- Cycle Time Data
- Test Set Results Per Iteration
- Custom Chart
- Estimation Board (new version)
- Iteration Retro
- Portfolio Alignment
- Release Tracking Board
- Team Capacity Grid
- Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
- Cycle Time Chart
- PI Scope Change Chart
- Portfolio Item Copy
- PSI Feature Burnup
- Super Customizable Cumulative Flow Diagram
List of Dojo Apps
These are the dojo apps that will be moving from the core app catalog to the community section a few weeks after the app catalog changes are released to everyone.
- Estimation Board
- Blocking History
- System Requirement Validation Document
- Traceability Matrix
- Build Dashboard
- Build Health
- Build Health By Interation
- Build Traceability
- Source Code Check-In
- Enhanced Velocity Chart
- Iteration Dashboard
- Iteration Scope Change
- Iteration Traceability
- Personal Burndown Chart
- Recently Changed
- Super Customizable Iteration Chart
- Completed Stories and Defects Per Iteration
- Dependency Status Dashboard
- Planned vs Actual Burndown
- Productivity Chart
- Release Scope Change
- Stories By Creator
- Story Map
- Utilization Chart
- Weekly Actuals Report
- Agile EVM
- Portfolio Item Burnup
- Portfolio Item Cumulative Flow
- Active Defects Chart
- Defects By Closer
- Defects by Package
- Last Result by TestSet
- Open Defect Age
- Test Case Pass/Fail History
- Cross Workspace Release Status
- Dependency Status Dashboard #2
- Enhanced Burndown Chart
- Epic Progress
- Project Status
- Release Dashboard
- Release Dependencies
- Super Customizable Release Chart
- Story Deep Copy
- User Lookup