Agile Development Blog

We are pleased to announce the availability of our Rally On-Premise 2012.1 release. We have been incredibly busy on a number of fronts, and we’re very excited to be introducing our new and improved SOLR Search capability. Notable features you will find in this release include:

• SOLR Search – much higher performance and richer results
• Upgrade to Oracle 11g
• Bulk Parenting of User Stories to Portfolio Items in Rally Portfolio Management
• View multiple Rally windows in multiple tabs
• Share Rally pages via unique URLs
• Share Custom Rally Dashboards within a workspace

PLEASE NOTE: Late in the process we identified a known issue that did NOT get included in the On-Premise 2012.1 Release Notes:

The Rally Portfolio Management Timeline is missing the actual bar. This has since been fixed in our On-Demand environment, but we were not able to get the fix put into our 2012.1 On-Premise Release. This fix will be included in the 2012.2 On-Premise release.

The 2011.4.1 On-Premise Release was issued on January 18, 2012 as a replacement for the 2011.4 Release. 2011.4.1 addresses two primary problems:

• A defect associated with running reports on projects that contain over 200 iterations or release has been fixed
• A defect with re-logging into Rally from a browser running multiple Rally tabs where one tab’s login had timed out or expired has been fixed.

The one known issue with this release is a defect associated with running reports on projects that contain over 200 iterations or releases.  It exists in 2011.4, and does NOT exist in 2011.3.  If this is an issue that will prevent you from upgrading to this release, please let us know.  We may issue a point release early in January with a fix.

• Rally Portfolio Manager.  This exciting new product is now available to our On-Premise customers.  Getting this product enabled is a simple three step process:
  1. Upgrade to the On-Premise 2011.4 Release
  2. Review the Rally Portfolio Manager Getting Started Guide
  3. Contact your Account Representative to request access to the product.  Rally will then forward you a new license key with the RPM Product turned on.

On-Premise Specific Enhancements

• Email all users from the Control Panel.  This will allow On-Premise Administrators to email all their active Rally users before restarting the Rally Server or doing any other maintenance activities.  This was a highly voted Rally Idea.
• Release Version number on the Control Panel.  This makes it easy for the customer to know exactly what release/build of Rally they are running.

• Migrate from On-Premise to On-Demand We are now offering a service to migrate your On-Premise Rally environment to our world class On-Demand (SaaS) environment.  Please contact your Account Representative for more information.

We are pleased to announce the availability of our Rally On-Premise 2011.3 release with LDAP Support!

Request your upgrade by sending an email to rallysupport@rallydev.com.  Please make sure you specify in the subject line – “Request On-Premise 2011.3 Release” and we will get right back to you with your upgrade.

LDAP Integration

The long awaited LDAP Integration for Rally On-Premise is finally available! The integration offers the following features:

• Users can now log into Rally using their corporate credentials without having to manage a unique Rally login and password
• Single point of control for managing Rally user access – turn them off in LDAP, they immediately cannot log into Rally
• Add the user to the LDAP Rally group and they are automatically provisioned in Rally

The LDAP integration is bundled into our Rally Advanced Security and Administration Module which is included with Rally Unlimited Edition. Enterprise Edition users may contact their account representative for upgrade details.

Notable 2011.3 Features
On-Premise Control Panel Enhancements

• Restart Rally application from Control Panel – Administrators can stop, start, and restart the Rally application from the Control Panel of the On-Premise software. Performing these actions will create entries in the log file.
• Network settings in Control Panel – Administrators can set and update network settings directly from the Control Panel.
• Backup/restore progress display – During a backup or restore operation, the log will display progress information. Current and remaining steps in the process will be listed.

Rally Idea Manager upgrades

Enhancement areas include:

• Spell check option in idea description fields
• Site name now included in discussion field when associating ideas to Rally user stories (RIM Integration must be enabled)
• Setup>Users>Administrators page now lists the Site Sponsor

Rally Idea Manager Multisite
You may now purchase multiple Rally Idea Manager sites. This feature is useful for customers who want to have separate feedback sites for individual products, or gather feedback in separate areas for their respective input sources.For more information, please contact your account representative.

Rally Quality Manager: Create and assign tasks to test sets
Test sets now accept tasks as associated artifacts. You may create these tasks from the Iteration Task Status page in Rally, using either inline or editor window options. You may also edit an existing task to create or change the association to a test set.

Rally Connector for Quality Center
Rally Connector for Quality Center now supports HP ALM 11.00 and HP Quality Center 11.00.

Rally Connector for Quality Center (Test)
Rally Connector for Quality Center (Test) is now available.

New Rally menus
New menus are available to all users in your subscription. Many exciting changes have been made, including:

• More vertical space
• Descriptive page titles in menu bars and browser histories
• Easier custom page editing
• Better support for sending direct URLs to other users

Copy custom views
You may now copy an existing custom view on summary pages, such as Plan>User Stories. Use this feature to quickly build several custom views that have similar filter criteria.

Dashboard panel project picker with parent/child controls
You may now specify whether to include items from parent and child projects, in dashboard panel settings menus.

App SDK 1.27
The App SDK was updated three times, with versions 1.25, 1.26, and 1.27.

App SDK WSAPI
Type definitions now return attribute definitions from ancestor types.

Rally REST API for .NET
The Rally REST API for .NET provides an intuitive interface to your Rally Data. It is compatible with any .NET 4.0 language, such as C#, VB.NET, F#, etc.

Concurrent editing
The following Rally work item editors were upgraded, so that if two or more users attempt to save edits concurrently, a message will display giving the option to review or overwrite changes:

• Defects
• Iterations
• Releases
• Test folders
• Test case results
• Test sets
• Programs

Notifications for artifacts moved to Recycle Bin
You can set up your notifications to include when an artifact (work item, task, and so on) is moved to (or removed from) the Recycle Bin. This notification can be bundled with others so you could receive an email with the subject of “Multiple Changes,” instead of simply “DE1103 moved to Recycle Bin.”

New Defect Trend Chart
The Defect Trend Chart displays the cumulative defects activated (opened) versus cumulative terminated (closed) over time.

Iteration Summary App
This new catalog app and dashboard panel provides users with a quick summary of progress against iteration work, and offers some guidance if the team may be falling behind.

Kanban enhancements
Four new features are available for the Kanban Board App:

• Card aging
• Task summary info
• New color scheme
• Tag filtering

Password reset messaging enhancements
When you request a password reset, an email is sent to the address on file for security and verification purposes. The messaging in the email has been updated, and will now display the name of the administrator who requests a reset on your behalf. If the request originates from the Forgot Password page, an administrator name will not be displayed.

Estimation Board App enhancements
Re-ranking has been disabled on the Estimation Board App. Many users were experiencing ranking issues prior to this change. The app has also been updated to match the current look and feel of our other board-based apps. If you have already installed the Estimation Board, you will be upgraded automatically.

Updated Dashboard report panel thumbnails
The preview images for report panels have been updated in the Dashboard panel catalog.

Password reset enhancement
Whenever a password is reset, either by a end user or administrator, any open sessions will be terminated. Sessions will be terminated when a password is reset, not when a reset is requested.

Changes to the SOAP, REST, & JSON Web Service API
The Web Services API has been revised to version number 1.27. Click the Web Services API link from the main Help page to view your Web Services documentation.
Click the API Versioning link under Topics in the left navigation of the Web Services API documentation for details about version changes.

Known Issues for On-Premise 2011.3

“Contains” is not supported in dashboard panel queries
The “contains” operator is not supported in custom grid dashboard panel queries.

Not all work items may be recovered from the Recycle Bin
Only user stories, defects, test cases and tasks are recoverable from the Recycle Bin.

Dragging test sets into the backlog on the Plan page
Dragging a test set from an iteration into the backlog on the Plan page will appear to make the test set disappear.
The test set is still in Rally, but it has become unscheduled. To view the test set, go to the Iteration Status page and choose an iteration dropdown value of Unscheduled.

Popup blockers and Rally
Be aware that some of Rally’s content is displayed using popup windows. Popup blockers may inhibit this functionality. To correct this, configure your popup blockers to allow Rally popups.

Using Rally with multiple browser windows or tabs
Rally does not fully support multiple browser instances for a single user. Once you select a new browser tab from an open session of Rally, problems can arise in both windows or tabs. This behavior could lead to unexpected errors if you try to save changes, filter, sort, or perform other actions. This behavior has been improved greatly with the first release of the new Rally menus. Future releases will introduce full multiple browser instance support.

Notifications using the conditions “owner changed-to/from” will not send against new Rally work items
If you create a notification rule with ownership changed conditions, and then change the ownership on a Rally work item that has never had an owner, a notification will not be sent.

User story list view displays incorrect summaries when parent stories are shown
Users who have both parent and child stories visible in the List (flat) view on the User Stories page will see summaries at the top of the list that combine parent and child estimates. We are considering fixing this by only showing child stories in this view, and would appreciate your feedback on this.

Iteration Defect Status printed report shows incorrect totals
The default settings for “Print Report” on the Iteration Defect Status page work correctly. However, if you deselect “show nested items” the report will indicate that all stories have “no defects”, even if some do. To work around this, make sure you keep “show nested items” checked when printing this report.

Custom Timesheet Reports will display “No Entry” where a custom field should be if Rally artifact is deleted
If you run a Custom Timesheet Report that includes deleted data, the output will include “No Entry” instead of a custom field name for any deleted work items.

Right click actions produce both right and left clicks on Macs with Safari or Chrome
If you are using a Mac laptop or desktop, right clicking an item in Rally while using the Safari or Chrome browsers will produce both a left and right click action.

Release Metrics page includes items in the recycle bin
The values found on the Track < Release Metrics page will include any work items scheduled in the release, even if they are moved to the recycle bin at a later time.

For additional detail on features and defect fixes, please see the What’s New page on our Rally website.  For reference, the 2011.2 release was created from the 2011.06.11 build.  The 2011.3 release was created from the 2011.10.22 build.

Do you ever find that you would like to share an idea with the Rally Product team or other Rally On-Premise customers on how we could enhance the Rally On-Premise products and solutions? You’re writing a User Story and you think… if I could just customize this…Or… if only it worked like this… We have a place for you to share those ideas with the Rally Community and more specifically, with your On-Premise counterparts. We have found that understanding how you use Rally day-to-day and the feedback you have is crucial in helping us design future enhancements.

Rally Ideas is our community for Rally users to exchange ideas about our solution and product. These ideas are reviewed diligently by the Rally Product team. Comments and votes all help in prioritizing our backlog. Categories, Tags, Tabs and Statuses are ways to both navigate in the site as well as post an idea (with the exception of Status). Statuses are deemed by the Product Owner after careful consideration.  With that said, there is an On-Premise Administration specific category; which the On-Premise team pays close attention to.

You may be thinking, yes, that is all interesting but what are the perks? First and perhaps foremost, is the ability to view Rally’s current work-in-progress via the ideas that are in the Statuses Coming Soon or Planned. Complete transparency into what the status of any idea is, (statuses include: New, Under Review, Coming Soon, Planned, Already Available, Released or Not Planned). On-Premise Ideas that are being implemented are directly linked to Rally as stories creating a direct feedback loop for not only the submitter but to Rally’s development team.

Your input brings an insurmountable amount of value to our implementation designs and strategic vision.

If you are an On-Premise user without a Rally Ideas account, all you need to do is send a request to ideas@rallydev.com to have your account created and receive your log-in credentials. Once you are logged in, I suggest you subscribe to the On-Premise Administration category and other categories that interest you. To do this, simply click into the category, click on the envelope on the upper right of any idea within the category and check the box. You may also subscribe to individual ideas here. A subscription will allow you to be notified when there is a new idea or comment posted to that category. If you subscribe to an individual idea, you will also be notified when that idea has a change of status. View the Rally Ideas Quick Guide for additional details.

We are pleased to announce the availability of our Rally On-Premise 2011.2 release!

Request your upgrade by sending an email to rallysupport@rallydev.com.  Please make sure you specify in the subject line – “Request On-Premise 2011.2 Release” and we will get right back to you with your upgrade.

Notable Features and known defects

LDAP Update

The LDAP Integration Beta program has yielded some excellent feedback from our beta partners.  This work has been analyzed, broken down into additional stories and prioritized in our backlog.  Now that 2011.2 is out the door, the On-Premise Team is focusing the majority of its time on getting LDAP to GA.

Release Details

Watch our most recent Release Webinar for 2011.2.  NOTE: This webinar focuses on feature enhancements that are relevant for the On-Premise 2011.2 release with one exception – the server side performance.  The performance metrics stated in the webinar relate directly to the On-Demand environment – not measured from On-Premise environments.  That said, your On-Premise environment will benefit from the performance enhancements mentioned here.

Features implemented since 2011.1

• Rally Connector for Quality Center now supports HP ALM 11.00 and HP Quality Center 11.00
• New Charts and Reports Available as Dashboard Panels such as: Cycle Time Report, Throughput Report, Build Health Chart, and Build Health by Iteration Chart.
• Tagging Enhancements
• Build and SCM Traceability now follows project scope settings
• Rally Add-in for Excel
• App SDK 1.24 Release
• Recently Changed App enhancements
• Estimation Board App enhancements
• Rally Connector for JIRA
• Permanently Delete Tags
• Stateless Editors – If two or more people are editing the same object concurrently, a message will display when saving the object. New stateless object editors are Story, Defect Suite and Task text editors. NOTE: Defect and Test Case editors are still “stateful” and being worked on.
• Kanban Board
• Cycle Time Chart
• Throughput Chart
• Discussion Post size increased from 4k to 32k
• Show/Hide Builds in Build Status
• Updates to WSAPI Queries
• Updates to Text Editors (Change font size and remove formatting from text pasted in from other editors)
• Planned vs. Actual Burndown App
• Sum of Task Actuals

Defect Fixes since 2011.1

• DE10687 – Cannot select existing tags.
• DE9979 – Admin is logged off when creating user with .tr in username using Add with details
• DE10613 – Dashboard Panel – panel scope setting allows navigation to artifact to alter app global scope
• DE10646 – Regression: When creating children, Save & New option does not retain hierarchy link
• DE10649 – Class Cast Exception handling concurrency conflict in stateless DS editor
• DE10652 – Images cannot be resized in editor
• DE10660 – Predecessor Icon missing from Plan > User Stories if you have a user story that is a successor of another story
• DE10695 – Querying on Tag objects in WSAPI does not return anything
• DE10421 - Export to PDF for Time Sheet rounds to one decimal
• DE10470 - StandardReport does not support TaggedStoryBurndown
• DE10637 - Rally 2 SVN connector doesn’t rescue execptions in some instances for command line calls
• DE10694 - Jetty timing out at 2 minutes
• DE10740 - Bogus “rank moved up” in revisions when inline editing in Chrome and Firefox
• DE10750 - RTE Dialog not cleaned up with editor submission
• DE10769 - Last Result by Test Set has error when TestCaseResult has no TestSet attribute
• DE10770 - External HTML5 storage triggers security warning in IE
• DE10772 - Events added with scoping do not pass back the control
• DE10734 - Velocity Charts throw error on community and trial server
• DE10701 - The ExceptionNotificationFilter is not catching all exceptions
• DE10828 – Build Health report(s) returns the same chart no matter the build definition chosen
• DE10236 - Defect editor page doesn’t allow multiple changes to associated work products
• DE10538 - Cannot associate test case result on defect editor
• DE10758 - Inline edit of a test case project causes resource not found error
• DE10829 - Static content is not being packed on editors
• DE10835 - Unhandled exception when trying to open the user story editor with a test set oid
• DE10837 - My Notification and Recent Activity panels not working on the dashboard
• DE10841 - Only the last report image loads when multiple reports are rendered in one custom app
• DE10844 - EditLink renderToHtml method not working
• DE10845 - Converting defects to user stories fails if story has required fields
• DE10748 - Project preferences can be updated by a user with project “Viewer” permissions
• DE9842 – Document that EIF Connectors only support 32k in text fields
• DE10824 – Help link on new search page is broken
• DE10857 – Iteration Scope Change report not showing data for last day of iterations
• DE10861 – Chooser on reports tab sending wrong custom state to the report
• DE10871 – Program Roadmap month list might miss a month due to time zone issue
• DE10885 – 404 Page Error when clicking browser back button after leaving Tag Management page
• DE10917 – Error migrating trial customers to production
• DE9206 – Hitting refresh on Dashboard throws JS error in FF
• DE8680 – clicking on a report panel doesn’t always take you to the correct report
• DE9758 – Release Status is sorting drop-down list of Releases in rev. order
• DE10314 – Pie Chart: Does not use allowed values end point.
• DE10648 – App SDK: Table with components sorting slow
• DE10764 – Timesheet custom report generator does not see scoped permissions of users
• DE10788 – Password reset emails for locked accounts do not provide accurate unlock time.
• DE10799 – JIRA connector: preserve text formatting from Jira to Rally & Rally to Jira
• DE10926 – TagArchiver won’t rename tags
• DE11049 – Project scoping hides child Changesets
• DE11029 – Users with Too many notifications slow down notification processing

For additional detail on features and defect fixes, please see the What’s New page on our Rally website.  For reference, the 2011.1 release was created from the April 2, 2011 build.  The 2011.2 release was created from the June 11, 2011 build.