Database Connector - How to extract Feature/Rank field

[David Golden]

Hi All,

 

I'm setting up the CA Agile Central Database Connector (Postgres) | CA Agile Central Help  for our project.

Unfortunately the Rank field is not exported for Feature entities, while other fields are exported as expected.

Can you please advise if there is a possibility to extract the Rank field as well?

 

Thanks,

 

David

[Sagi Gabay]

Hi David,

 

While I'm not sure if the connector can export the Rank of a Feature, the name of that field is:

 

Can you include that in your config file for the connector (name: DragAndDropRank), is that helping?

If not, can you send us your configuration file?

 

Thanks,

Sagi

[System]

As Sagi_Gabay said, you can use the DragAndDropRank attribute to get the Rank of a feature, but it's just not very straight-forward.

 

The reason is that there is no way to get the relative rank of a Feature, as it could be ranked against any work items across the workspace, depending on against which items they are being ranked.  So a simple, numerical value such as 1, 2, 3, 4 would mean nothing without that relative context.  Hence, the DragAndDropRank attribute, which can really only be interpreted via an algorithm. 

 

Looking at the WSAPI doc, you can see that the DragAndDropRank attribute is part of a RankableArtifact:

 

However, it might take a bit of work to interpret the value. Please take a look at these two Knowledge Base articles for more:

• How to get numeric rank values in apps and custom - CA Knowledge 
• Interpret DragAndDropRank - CA Knowledge 

 

The actual value of the attribute looks something like this:

P!!#z~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

To actually pull the attribute with your extract of Features with the DB connector, simply add it to the Fetch area of your config file - something like:

 

Fetch : |
FormattedID,Name,Owner,Project,Workspace,ScheduleState,Release,DragAndDropRank

 

Hope that helps!

[David Golden]

Sagi_Gabay, @John Streeter, thanks for the quick and valuable answer!

 

I could extract and convert to number the DragAndDropRank successfully. Actually I need a relative priority of the features; I can easily generate a number starting with 1,2,3... to be shown in my report.

 

Thanks,

David