Rally QC Connector

[Anil Wadhwani]

I have been using the Rally QC connector for a few months now to transfer the user stories from Rally to the requirements folder in QC.
We have instances where a user story is made as a copy of an existing user story.
When I run the connector, these user stories are not transferred from Rally to QC.
I did observe the value in the cross link field was also copied when the original user story was copied, however even removing the value in this cross link field does not solve the problem and I still can't move these user stories.

Can someone please provide suggestion to resolve this issue?

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QA Analyst
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[David LeDeaux]

When the connector runs, one of the ways it determines if a work item needs to be copied to the other system is whether the external ID field is populated or not.  When you copy a user story that has already been synched, you would be copying the external ID field as well.  So as part of your workflow, you'd need to empty that field out.

Now, It may not work to go back and do this retroactively because there is a time file that is stored that also keeps track of the last time that the connector ran and it may ignore work items created after that time.  Off the top of my head I don't remember if that only applies to updates or new work items or both.  

It's possible to move the date back in the timefile, but I'm afraid you'd get duplicate updates by doing so.  Instead I would say the ideal scenario there would be to create a temporary copy of your configuration.  Then, identify the work items that need to be synched and add them to a copy selector in that config to ensure you're getting precisely the items you're wanting to retroactively synch over to QC.

[Anil Wadhwani]

Thank you David for your response to my query.
I just want to elaborate on the scenario you mentioned at the end. If I understand correctly, I can create a copy of my config file and then use COPY_RALLY_TO_QC to copy those items?  Is that what you meant by 'add them to a copy selector in that config'?  I would really appreciate if you can clarify this or guide me to an example of the scenario you mentioned?

<ConnectorRunner>
<Preview>True</Preview>
<LogLevel>Debug</LogLevel>
<Services>COPY_RALLY_TO_QC</Services>
</ConnectorRunner>



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QA Analyst
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[David LeDeaux]

Hi Anil,

Actually, I went back and looked at the logs and it looks like new work items don't care about the timefile.  So I think if you just cleared the external ID field and reran the connector you'd get them populated in QC

[David LeDeaux]

Hi Anil,

I got a response from you in an email so I'm going to paste that here so the community can have an opportunity to have input as well

Thank you David for your response. I did try clearing out the external ID field and was able to transfer those items to QC from Rally. The only problem I have is that I have 1000+ user stories in Rally which have the same problem, so it will be a tedious task trying to manually empty the external ID field in so many user stories. Do you mind elaborating the alternate option you provided in your original response to my query. Again I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my query. Thank You

So, the original line of thinking that I was proposing was flawed for a couple of reasons.  1) the connector doesn't consider the timefile for new work items it needs to copy and 2) CopySelectors are ANDed together and not ORed, so you would have needed to do them one at a time.  Additionally, it was not a substitute for clearing the ExternalID field; it was in addition to.

I think the best path forward for you on this would be to try and identify some common characteristic about those user stories and try create a filter in Work Views and then perform a bulk edit on them.  Do they share some common string in the name, or some common field setting that you could filter on?