NEW! Custom Field Reports - Export custom field visibility settings

[Andrea Schilde]

This post is for users with subscription or workspace level administration permissions.

Have you ever wondered in which projects your custom fields are visible or where they are hidden?
We just released 2 new custom field report options, which can be accessed in Rally's administrative area: Workspaces & Projects.

Export custom field usage for workspace

This report can be generated for a specific custom field and work item type across the workspace.
You can access this report from the project level field editor here:

Here is a snippet of an example report:

 

Report Information

• • Project ID
  • Project Name
  • Level
    • workspace level setting (workspace level settings displayed in top row)
    • project level setting (report lists only projects with visibility settings that differ from the workspace setting)
  • State
    • Open or Closed (please note that the current visibility count displayed in the app is for open projects only)
  • Work Item Type
    • work item type for which custom field report was generated
  • Custom Field Name
  • Visibility
    • visible or hidden

In addition you can also generate a similar report that will export all customs fields across all work item types for the entire workspace.

Export Workspace Custom Fields (All Types)

You can find this report in the following places:

• Workspace --> fields
• Project --> fields

Here is a snippet of an example report:

Report Information

• • Project ID
  • Project Name
  • Level
    • workspace level setting (workspace level settings displayed in top row)
    • project level setting (report lists only projects with visibility settings that differ from the workspace setting)
  • State
    • Open or Closed (please note that the current visibility count displayed in the app is for open projects only)
  • Work Item Type
    • work item type for which custom field report was generated
    • for this report you will see entries for all work item types, not just a specific one
  • Custom Field Name
    • for this report you will see entries for all custom field, not just a specific one
  • Visibility
    • visible or hidden

Generating the workspace level report for all custom fields across all work item types might take a little. You can continue to work in Rally while you wait for the CSV file to load. Navigating away from. this screen will not stop the report generation.

Please note that the number of rows in the report will not match the number currently listed in the app for project level visible/hidden setting.

• the report contains closed projects while the displayed count in the app is based on open projects only
  • wording for the in-app display will get updated
• the report show a workspace level setting that accounts for all projects that match the visibility settings of the workspace
  • only projects with a setting that differs from the workspace level setting will show as a unique row in the report

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Best,

Andrea & The Rally Product Team

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Product Manager
Rally Software
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[Neil Goodwin]

This is great.  Time to show the admin side some love!  Thank you.

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Neil Goodwin
Clarity & Rally Product Owner
Sabre
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[Eugene Kania]

Hi!
Can you explain a little more about the use cases that these new features are addressing? In our Rally user community, we would like to know which custom fields are used regularly and which ones have been "abandoned". Can these features help with that? Also, how do you identify who added a custome field in Rally? If we knew who created it, we could contact them to see if the custome field is still in use. Finally, sometimes people create a custom field for a certain set of projects in the hierarchy, but make the custom field visible across the entire workspace. This is detrimental to the projects that don't need or want this custome field to show up in their projects. Can these reports help with that?
Thanks!
Gene

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Program Manager
Broadcom, Inc.
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[Andrea Schilde]

Hi @Eugene Kania,

thank you for your message.

The 2 new reports do not address the following use cases that you listed:

• who created a custom field and when
• ​which custom fields are used regularly and which ones have been "abandoned"

This will be a separate body of work that has not yet been prioritized.

The 2 reports should help you with the other use case you listed:

• custom field that should apply to a set of projects only is made visible for the entire workspace

If you know the custom field you'd like to audit, you can generate the report for the specific custom field and work item type.
This report will show you the visibility setting for the workspace, plus the settings for all projects that differ from the workspace setting. The report can help you identify if the field in question needs to have its visibility settings updated.

The workspace level report gives you the same data, but for all custom fields and all work items types in the workspace.
If you have pretty strict rules around field exposure, it would help you identify custom fields that are exposed for all or for many projects within your workspace.

Hope this helps.

Best,

Andrea

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Product Manager
Rally Software
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[Matt Seitz]

To view who created a custom field

Select the Setup (tools) icon for your workspace

In the left-hand navigation bar, select "Revisions"

Use your browser "Find" capability to search the Revisions for "New Field"

12188

New field [FEATURE SETS LIST] added for work product [PORTFOLIO ITEM]

2020-04-28 20:36 PDT

Matt Seitz (matseitz)

[Andrea Schilde]

I added the following section to the initial write-up for further clarification:

Please note that the number of rows in the report will not match the number currently listed in the app for project level visible/hidden setting.

• the report contains closed projects while the displayed count in the app is based on open projects only
  • wording for the in-app display will get updated
• the report show a workspace level setting that accounts for all projects that match the visibility settings of the workspace
  • only projects with a setting that differs from the workspace level setting will show as a unique row in the report

For the full export we choose this format to ensure the report is performant and the data size is manageable.

The workspace level report, especially the one covering all custom fields across all work item types can get rather large.

The report still gives you all of the data points needed to identify the custom field visibility settings for a given project or list of projects.

The report is not listing the visibility setting for every single project. However, any project ID(s) or project name(s) not listed in the report simply indicates that these projects match the workspace visibility setting, which will always be listed in the top row.

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Product Manager
Rally Software
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[Henry Reimert]

When I downloaded the file for my workspace there were several custom fields missing from the file. I verified that these fields were visible for a project, were being used, and the project was open.