Common Actions

A single Rally subscription can hold multiple workspaces. If you have access to multiple workspaces in your Rally subscription, you can easily move from one to another by selecting a target workspace using the workspace drop-down in the upper-left corner of the Rally screen. See How Rally organizes information.

Select a workspace and project combination to be your default from the Profile page:

1. Select the Setup mode from the upper-right corner of the Rally screen, then select the Profiles tab.
2. Click Edit Profile.
   • On the Edit Profile page, the Default Workspace/Project field is in the Settings section.
3. Click the drop-down arrow and select your workspace and project.
4. Click Save & Close.

From the Users page, you can sort any column to help you locate users to add to the team. You can also filter by user name, first name, last name, display name, user status and permission, and team membership. Once you have entered your filter criteria, press Enter.

To add new members to a team:

1. Click Setup mode, then click the Workspaces & Projects tab.
2. Select a workspace.
3. On the workspace detail page, select the Projects link in the sidebar.
4. On the project summary page, select the project to which you want to add team members.
5. On the project detail page, click the Users link in the sidebar.
   Users are displayed alphabetically by user name.
6. Click one of the following buttons:
   
   • Add User: Enter the user's first name or user name. This field displays auto-fill suggestions for the name you enter. Specify whether the new team member is a viewer or editor, then click Add.
   • Add Users From: Select an entire group of users already assigned to another project in that workspace. Click Apply.

Summary pages in Rally have an Actions button used to perform multiple activities. The options of the Actions button may vary based on the summary page displayed. The following table lists the series of actions presented from the Actions button:

When you export, the work items exported will vary based on the work item summary view accessed.

As you create work items, you may find that you have an existing work item that is similar to the one you need to create. Save time and effort by copying an existing work item, then editing the copy to make necessary adjustments. Copy a work item from the related summary view or detail view.

The copied work item receives a unique ID number after you have saved the work item.

Copying of releases or iterations is not allowed.

If drag-and-drop ranking is configured, a copied work item is ranked in the page at a position directly below the work item that is the source of the copy.

To create a new work item:

1. Select the appropriate page, such as tasks, backlog, or test cases. Each work item summary and detail view has an Actions button in the upper-right corner of the page.
2. From the Actions button, select New <work item>.
3. Enter the name in the Name field (required text).
4. Enter a description in the Description field (optional).
5. Continue entering any necessary detail for your work item.
6. Click Save.

   The new work item displays at the end of the summary view listing, unless you have applied filter or sort criteria.

Required fields are highlighted in red on the full screen editor.

If you expect to see a field that is not on this screen, it may have been hidden by the administrator.

You can delete a work item from multiple locations.

To delete a work item from the summary page:

1. Locate your line item to be deleted on the appropriate summary page.
2. Click the icon. You will receive a message asking you to confirm your action.
3. Click OK to delete, or click Cancel.

To delete a work item from a detail page:

1. Locate the individual work item to delete.
2. Select the item to view the detail page.
3. From the Actions button, select Delete.
4. Click OK to delete, or click Cancel.

Notes:

• When you delete a work item with tasks, its tasks are deleted.
• When you delete a user story with child stories, its child stories and their tasks are deleted.
• When you delete a user story, the following work items are also dissociated:
  
  • Test Cases
  • Defects
  • Predecessors
  • Successors

To restore a deleted work item:

1. From the Recycle Bin, locate the item you want to restore.
2. Click the Restore link, and your item is restored to the original location.

Rally's on-demand Recycle Bin allows you to restore user stories, tasks, defects and test cases after they are deleted. The Recycle Bin allows your development project data to be recovered in case of an accidental deletion. A link to the Recycle Bin displays at the bottom of each page.

Note: Items that appear in the Recycle Bin are permissions-based.

From the Recycle Bin page, click the row action icon to display the Restore and Permanently Delete options. Click Restore to remove an item from the Recycle Bin. A banner briefly displays at the top of the page when you restore a work item, along with a link to the item.

A banner briefly displays at the top of the page when you delete a work item, along with a link to restore it.

When you restore a user story:

• All child stories are restored along with their associated tasks
• Parent-child dependencies are no longer applied
• Predecessor and successor dependencies are no longer applied

When you permanently delete a user story, its entire story tree is deleted. If an item has disappeared, it may be that the parent has been deleted.

If an entire story tree is deleted and you want to restore a child, you will need to restore the entire tree.

It is good practice to delete items regularly because there is no way to bulk delete.

Use the Edit action to make changes, update, or add more detail to work items that have already been defined. In general, editing a work item can be done from the detail or summary views.

From the summary view, select the Edit icon located at the end of the row to the right of the work item. In most instances, Rally also supports inline editing of work item fields available on summary views.

From a detail view, click the work item in the summary view to access the detail view. From the Actions button, select Edit.

If you expect to see a field that is not on this screen, it may have been hidden by the administrator.

Do not edit a screen that you have reached via the browser back or forward buttons. You will receive a message that the work item cannot be saved.

In most instances of summary views, Rally supports inline editing of work item fields allowing you to edit fields and values directly inline during your work process.

1. Hover over a row. When the row changes color, it is ready for inline editing.
2. Double-click the row to activate the inline editing capabilities.
   • Drop-down lists, state boxes, and text boxes display.
3. When you have completed your editing, click the inline Save icon and your changes are preserved. You may cancel your inline edit at any time by clicking the inline Cancel icon.

Use the following keyboard strokes to facilitate inline entry:

• Esc: Cancel your changes.
• Ctrl+Enter: Save your inline edit.
• Click any Status value to change the state of the work item inline .
  • The Status value is yellow when activated. Click the Status value once to set the new value.
  • Double-click on any status value during inline edit to toggle the status between blocked and unblocked status.

Note: If your administrator has required a work item field after the work item was created, and the required field does not display on the inline edit row, the requirement will not be enforced with the inline edit.

When you inline edit a work item, the Rank field specifies the position of the work item on the page if drag-and-drop ranking is configured.

Filtering allows you to manage your work items by displaying only those work items that meet the criteria you have defined.

To filter your work items, begin by accessing the appropriate summary view.

To customize the default filtering options:

1. Click the drop-down box and select a value for the related attribute as filter criteria. You may select one value for each attribute to filter, setting different value criteria for each.
2. When you have completed your filter criteria, click Filter.
3. The filter criteria remains applied until you remove it by selecting the ALL value for each attribute, or until other filter criteria is selected.

A filter in the Tree View returns all matches of parent and child user stories. The parent is always listed to retain the hierarchical display, but may be grayed out to indicate it is not an exact match of your filter criteria.

Whenever you create, copy, or edit a work item, you have several save options:

• Save and Close: Saves the work item and closes the window
• Save and New: Save the changes and close the work item being created, edited, or copied and open a new page in its place
• Save: Saves any changes and keeps the current editor open

Saving often permits you to capture a detailed revision history for changes and updates made to your work item.

Sorting is a powerful tool that allows you to group your work items together in a meaningful display to assist you in managing them. Sorting is done from the work item summary view.

To sort the work item summary view:

1. Click a heading and sort the entire view by the selected heading in either ascending or descending order. An upward or downward arrow displays in the sorted column indicating which type of sort has been selected.
2. Click the heading again to toggle between the ascending and descending order.

The initial default sort order of the summary view is ascending by the ID column.

Tagging is a way to group or identify collections of work items. It provides all team members the ability to logically group and filter user stories, defects, defect suites, test cases, and tasks.

The Tag field is located directly beneath the Name field on the edit page for defects, defect suites, test cases, and user stories.

Use the Choose Tags drop-down field to create new tags. Search for existing tags in the search box. Searches are not case-sensitive. Select a tag's checkbox to add or remove it from your work item. You can use multiple tags.

Tags are visible in custom views and you can filter or search for specific tags within Rally.

Tags are limited to 32 characters. Pasting characters into the Tag field with the mouse will not trigger the existing tags drop-down box.

Tag archiving and renaming can be done by your administrator, or through the WSAPI using a user name with workspace administrator permissions.

Tags are not case-sensitive, except when an archived tag is added back in the course of tagging a work item. In this case, you may inadvertently create duplicate tags. For example, Regression and regression.

If a tag does not appear in the list of tag options, the tag may have been archived by your administrator. You may re-add the tag to the work item, but you must contact your administrator if you want to have the tag appear in the list for other work items.

Bulk tagging

Bulk tagging allows you to quickly apply the same tag to multiple items.

To add or remove tags for multiple backlog items:

1. Select the check box for the items that you want to tag or untag. The gear menu switches to bulk edit mode. .
2. Click the bulk edit mode gear menu and select Tag.
3. On the Bulk Edit window, select an existing tag or create a new tag by entering the tag name in the search field, then click Create New.
4. Click Apply to add the tag to the selected items.

You can use a double pipe (||) to separate tags when saving an artifact. This can be used to quickly add multiple tags.

You cannot delete tags, but your administrator can archive tags. You can remove tags from the work item, but not from the list itself.

Only letters and numbers are accepted characters in tags.

A tag only exists within the workspace in which it was created but can be used across defects, defect suites, stories, and test cases.

A Rich Text Format (RTF) field provides you with the standard Word formatting options of Ariel, Courier New, or Times New Roman fonts; bold, italics, underline, font color, text highlight color, numbered lists, bullets, indent, outdent, hyperlinks, and graphics. Rich format text fields are present in all work items (typically the Description and Notes fields). These fields give you flexibility for formatting data.

Note: When inserting a hyperlink, some browsers may require you to highlight text to be linked before clicking the button.

There is a 32Kb limitation on the Description and Notes RTF fields and 2Kb limitation on all other RTF fields. Note that a 32Kb entry immediately becomes larger than 32Kb once any type of formatting is applied to the text. Some formatting types extend each character to more than 1 byte.

When you press Enter in any RTF field, the spacing between the lines appears in double-line format. For single-line spacing, press Shift+Enter.

The Undo edits action using the Ctrl + Z or the main Edit menu for the Rich Text Editors will not work when using Internet Explorer. However, these actions do work in Mozilla-based browsers.