Computed fields on user stories

[Tomasz Grobelny]

Hi all,

I am pretty new to Rally so forgive my ignorance. The questions I have is: is it possible to create a computed field on user stories? For example consider I have a user story with a set of tasks that are classified into several categories (Implementation, Review, DevTesting, Testing) and I want to have a property that will tell me that implementation is complete what all tasks with tag Implementation will be in state Completed. What would it take to implement/configure such functionality? Where do I start?

Best regards,
Tomek

[David LeDeaux]

Hi Tomasz,

Unfortunately there's not a way to have a custom computed field.  That sounds like a great suggestion for our ideas board.  You can go to https://ideas.rallydev.com and submit it there.  If you don't have an account, please submit an email to [e-mail] and mention you'd like an account.

[Tomasz Grobelny]

Ok, I have account there now. I found this: https://ideas.rallydev.com/ideas/D4266. Answer from CA has this: "Agile Central has the ability to add custom fields, and an API to set them, so it may be already possible to do what you'd like." So my original question should then be restated as:

1. How do I create custom fields? Do I need any special permissions to create them? If so can they be granted on team level?
2. Where and how do I write code that updates them. I don't want to write code on my desktop that pull data from Rally, makes some calculations and upload data again. I want the calculations to be instant and preferably available to all users.

[Sagi Gabay]

Hi Thomasz,

You can learn about custom fields in this page: Manage Custom Fields 

1. You must be an admin to create custom fields: Workspace admins can create custom fields across the workspace, while Project Admins can create custom fields for their project only.
The better practice is to create custom fields across the workspace. In this situation they're already and always available for all projects/team (and future projects/teams) within the workspace. Projects or teams that don't need a specific custom field can opt to hide it. If a custom field is created on the project/team level then it is not available at all for other projects. If they will need it they will then have trouble creating same field cause Name and Display Name must be unique. So, the recommendation is to create them across the workspace. If you are not a workspace admin, then you may want to defer to a workspace admin to help.

2. Once defined, custom fields are like any other field and they can be accessed via the API. We provide a Web Services API that is a REST API that allows creating/setting/getting information using http methods such as put,post and get. I can provide you more information on that if needed. 

As David said, we don't have the ability to apply logic upon updates to custom fields. Their behavior is limited to their type which you select at creation. Drop-down for example, will allow you to choose from a pre-defined select list of values. There isn't a capability to create a computation that will automatically run upon changes to the field. Generally speaking we don't have this availability in Rally. Some fields, are controlled by Rally and offer rollup computation but these are a select few fields, and they're only out of the box. There isn't any way to change, modify or extend it, as well as not apply similar behavior to custom fields. 
This does need to be requested as a future feature as you did with the idea. You may want to reply back to the idea and explain this in more details.

3. There is only one way to implement what you are asking for, and I wouldn't at all recommend you do that. You are requesting for instantaneous calculation that will respond to changes to your field. Even if you developed your custom code using the API, it will need to be triggered immediately with every change to your custom field. The only mechanism that can help is our Webhooks, but it's a feature that's in beta, it's response times aren't guaranteed and it may not respond immediately upon the change. In my opinion it's not a mechanism that's reliable to guarantee instantaneous computations as the kind you're asking for.

In short - you shall continue your dialog with our Product team on the idea you posted, hopefully they'll include this mechanism and build it into Rally, which is what you asked for and how it should be handled.

I hope this helps.
Sagi