Creating a Release
A release is a milestone representing the internal or external delivery of a working, tested version of the software system under development. releases deliver incremental user functionality and enhance the software solution to assure an ongoing fit with customer needs. A project can contain multiple releases.
Creating a release includes:
You can create a release from multiple places so that you may create your releases in context as you work through defining and assigning work to your releases:
- From the Release Summary view, click the Actions button and select New Release.
- From the Release Detail page, click the Actions button and select New Release.
Your ability to create a release is dependent upon the user role and permissions you have been assigned for the project.
Bulk creating releases
If you use a project hierarchy, bulk create is available for use in managing your releases. Bulk create allows you to create a single release and propagate it to all child projects of your current project. This saves time spent in configuration and makes it easy to establish shared schedules across child projects.
The Bulk Create option is available on the New Release editor.
From the New release page, select the Bulk Create field to publish your release to all child projects.
- You must be in a parent project to use the Bulk Create field.
- You can only create releases for those child projects for which you have Create permissions.
When you use Bulk Create, the Release Name, Start Date, End Date, and State fields are automatically copied from the parent project iteration to the child project iteration.
Editing a release
When you edit a release, you can modify information such as attribute and resource values and textual descriptions.
A release contained within a program cannot be deleted until it has been removed from the program. A message is displayed prompting the user when this situation occurs.
Bulk updating releases
If you use a project hierarchy, you have the option of propagating edits made to the parent project to all related child projects using bulk update. Rally tracks all linked child projects and updates specified fields to keep the entire project hierarchy in synch.
The Bulk Update option is available on the Edit Release page.
From the Edit Release page, select the Bulk Update field to publish your edits to linked child projects.
- You must be in a parent project to use the Bulk Update field.
- You can only edit releases for those child projects for which you have update permissions.
When bulk update is activated, changes to the following fields are updated in the linked child projects:
- Name
- Start Date
- Release Date
- State
When editing a child project, the State field can be individually edited, but as long as the child project is still linked to the parent project through the Bulk Update field, any bulk update to the parent project will overwrite the individual edits.
Individual child projects can be unlinked from the parent project Bulk Update by deselecting the Bulk Update field. When deselected, the Name, Start Date, and Release Date are no longer grayed out and become available for edit. Make a change to any of these fields and from this point on, the child project release is unlinked and is not updated when bulk updates are made from the parent project.
Viewing the Releases Summary and Detail pages
Releases Summary view
The Releases Summary view provides basic information regarding all releases that have been created. When using a project hierarchy, this view reflects any view scoping settings that you have indicated in the project drop-down list box. All columns display the cumulative totals for the projects that have the same active Release Name and End Date.
From the Releases Summary view you can:
- Select the Edit
icon to the right of each listed release to edit that release. - Determine your active release. An active release has a state value of Active.
Use the Releases Summary view to find information about your releases such as:
- Release Date: The targeted date for the end of the release cycle.
- Resources: The amount of resources assigned to the release.
- Plan Est: The roll up of the gross level estimates for all of the scheduled items for the release.
- Task Est: The roll up of the task detail estimates for all of the tasks assigned to the release.
- To Do: This field to shows the cumulative remaining amount of work units to be completed for all tasks in the displayed release.
- Actual: A roll up from all tasks which accumulates the true time the tasks assigned to this release took to complete. This is helpful for estimating future tasks.
Adding a new release from a summary view returns you to the summary page from which the release was created. Your new release is added to the end of your summary display forcing you to scroll to this location, unless you have applied filter or sort criteria.
Releases Detail page
The Release Detail page provides a view of an individual release. From here, you can:
- View a read-only display of a single release in its entirety including all current field values and details.
- Perform multiple activities on the displayed release.
- Navigate to other work items associated to the displayed release.
Multiple actions are provided from the Release Detail page:
- The sidebar located on the left of the page displays any associated artifacts related to the current release. Click any link to navigate to a summary view of the related artifacts of the indicated type. This Summary view offers all actions of the typical work item summary view.
- Click the
URL icon in the upper-left corner of the Detail page to open a New Release Detail page with the complete URL to this work item. From here you can copy the URL to use as a reference link in email to team members, or attachments to other work items, and so on. - Use the Actions button to select options such as Edit, New, Copy, Print, Delete, and other specific actions directly from the Release Detail.
- As you navigate through the associations, the Actions button menu options vary in relation to the artifact you are viewing. The top section of the menu options apply to the root artifact (in this case the release), while the lower half of the options apply to the associated work item.
- Use the show
and hide 
icons to control the sidebar display.
Release fields
These field values can be set when creating or editing a release.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Bulk Create | This field displays when you are in a parent project and create a new release. Select this field to apply this release to all child projects. The release will be created using the same name and end date in all child projects of your current parent project. |
| Bulk Update | Select this field to allow edits made to the parent project release to be replicated for all child projects releases. Deselect from an individual child project release to uncouple it from the parent project release and allow a unique edit or update to the child project release. This field displays only upon edit of a release that has employed the Bulk Create option. |
| Name | Enter the name of the release. The red highlight of the field Name indicates that this is a required entry field. |
| Theme | Use this Rich Text Format field to enter a theme for your release. |
| Start Date | Click the  icon and select the start date for the release of the software or application from the resulting calendar. The red highlight of the field title indicates that this is a required entry field. |
| Release Date | Click the icon and select the date which targets a release of the software or application from the resulting calendar. The red highlight of the field title indicates that this is a required entry field. |
| Version | This textual field allows you to provide an identifying version number for your release. |
| State | The current condition of the release. There are a number of states that can be set from the drop-down list.
|
| Resources | The total number of points that the team thinks it can complete within this release. Although points is the recommended unit, you may customize the definition of units to indicate some other unit of measure. |
| Project | A read-only field that reflects your current project. The project field defaults to the project you are in and cannot be manipulated. To create a release in a different project, first switch to that project then create the release. |
| Plan Estimate, Task Estimate, Accepted, and To Do | These estimate fields are read-only fields for the release. These totals are rolled up from the estimates given for the associated scheduled items and their tasks along with the actual number of units of remaining work to be done. The Accepted field calculates and displays the total of scheduled item estimates whose state have been set to accepted. These figures are presented to assist you in providing more accurate estimates for future releases. These fields are calculated in iteration units. |
| Notes | Recording additional information associated with the release such as team decisions, or discussion results. |
| Change Description | Record any changes made to the release during an edit. Comments are stored and displayed in the Revision History page. Note: Changes made to the release are also systematically captured for Revision History. |
