Why Would an Organization Utilize Reuse & Sync?
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Duplicate
You can make a copy of an item, container or project. Synchronization is optional but can be enabled between items.
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Library/Catalog
Create a library or catalog to establish system-wide standards in your organization for all business units to follow. These might include common business practices, rules, glossaries, or even a set of non-functional requirements that teams should reference but not modify.
A business that relies heavily on acronyms and terminology might create a glossary that can be defined and managed in one place, and used as a reference everywhere else. Another organization might create and manage business practices in one place, allowing references to those practices to remain consistent across the organization.
TIP: If you are using a catalog to push changes to many projects, you can synchronize items to push changes from your “catalog” project to all other project items that share the same global ID. You must have write access on all projects in the sync to do this.
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Shared Requirements
Large projects typically adhere to a common set of requirements but, often, each requirement also has information specific to a project and needs to be managed by that project. For instance, a name and description can be shared across multiple projects but release values, priorities, assignments, and relationships can continue to be managed by each project.
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Branching
With you can split a set of information from a single point in time into several branches such that each branch can be modified in parallel. This can be useful when you want a snapshot of items at a particular point in time, but to still allow these items to be modified in parallel. Reuse results in the versioning of an entire made up of multiple items, rather than just a version of a single requirement.
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Release Management
Similar to branching, reuse and synchronization lets you use items across multiple releases or sprints in parallel.
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Project Template
You can set up a project to act as a template that you reuse and synchronize to quickly ramp up new projects or to establish standard practices on content organization. You can also synchronize the template to push updates to associated projects.
What Is the Difference Between Reuse and Project Duplication? What About Item Duplication?
See the differences here. We recently introduced the ability to duplicate one item at a time.
What Are "Sync Options"?
Sync options allow you to create and apply rules for how synchronization should work. This includes the option to synchronize relationships or widgets of an item.
There are also advanced sync options that allow users to apply reuse rules in a target location. Example: When synchronizing requirements, also synchronize only the downstream defects.
How Do I See Which Items Are Synced?
In the Explorer Tree, a blue dot will show in the bottom right-hand corner of the synchronized items.
You can then see whether the items are in- or out-of-sync from the Single Item View synchronization widget or from the Sync Items wizard. You can compare synced projects, components, sets, folders, and items from there, too.
How Do I Prevent Users From Synchronizing Items?
Users can only make changes to items they have Write permissions to. They cannot modify items through synchronization that have a user lock or that have a system lock, either.
As soon as you have Read permissions, you can reuse an item. Reuse is actually only restricted on the destination where users need Create/Edit permissions -- this means there's no way to restrict reuse unless you restrict access to the project, which can be done by granting each projects' permissions at the project level.
Locked or system-locked items cannot be modified through synchronization.
Can I Prevent an Item In My Project From Being Updated Via Synchronization?
Locked and system-locked items cannot be modified through synchronization.
What Happens To a Synchronized Item When I Convert It To Another Item Type?
When you convert a synchronized item to a different item type, such as converting a Requirement to a Feature Request, the item will lose its synchronization and will receive a new Global ID.
Can I Synchronize Containers?
Yes. You can synchronize projects, components, sets, folders, or items. If you Reuse items into a new container, the items would inherit permissions from the destination. The caveat to this is reusing containers (e.g. a folder with items inside); when containers (folders, sets, components) are reused, they will retain their original permissions regardless of the permissions set inside the destination.
What Does the "Reuse Source Project Hierarchy in Destination Project" in Reuse Mean?
You can select this option as part of the reuse process. This option will reuse all of the hierarchy of the source project selection (including components, sets, and folders), and copy that over to the destination project.
Why Can't I See the Upstream Item in the Sync Items Wizard?
Synchronized items will share the same Global ID, and no single item is marked or identified as the upstream (the original or parent item) or downstream. This allows for more flexibility and scalability in synchronization.
Do Synchronization Updates Trigger Suspect Links?
No.
When an item type is updated by an org administrator to enable Sync on a field, what does that do?
Whenever the Reuse and Sync feature is used for that item type in any project, that field will be copied, and any future changes will be flagged as “out of sync” from the original item.
What is a Global ID, and What is Its Role in Reuse?
The Global ID is a universal identifier. This is used for linking items together so that they can be compared and synchronized. You can read more about how the Global ID is used in reuse here.
If I Break the Sync, Will the Global ID Change?
Yes. As soon as you break the synchronization between two items, each one will have its own Global ID.
Can I Save a Comparison View Of the Synced Items?
Yes, you can configure a comparison view and save the view.
What is the Little Blue Dot On Items in My Tree?
The blue dot is a quick visual indicator that shows which items, folders, sets, and components have been synchronized.
Can I Synchronize from One-to-Many (Projects or Items)?
Yes. You can synchronize item by item or use the Sync All functionality in the Sync Items window. However, if you need to view and sync the items, you will have to initiate one-to-one synchronizations.
Can I Synchronize Widgets?
Yes. You can synchronize the most relevant widgets, including tags, links, and attachment links. However, synchronization for widgets needs to be enabled by the administrator on each item type, under Admin > Item Types > Edit.
What is a Reuse Rule?
A reuse rule allows you to reuse not only specific items, but also items related to your primary selection.
Example: copy a requirement and all of its downstream test cases, but not the downstream defects.
You can also select specific fields to be copied to the new item, as opposed to the default settings (all fields set to sync).
Can Rules Be Applied to All Projects?
All rules created within the organization are available to all projects under the Advanced Reuse Options View, even when the user has no permissions on the project where the rule was originally created. Rules that are not applicable in another project will be hidden by default, nevertheless, they can be made visible by the users and selected from any project.
Can Rules Be Created Only to Specific Projects?
You cannot restrict reuse rules to other projects. Rule names can be used to clearly describe the project for which each rule is intended. Also, rules need to be selected by the users in order to be applied.
Can I Grant Reuse Advanced Rule Access to a Project Manager, But Limit Access to Other Projects?
Yes. For this, you need to grant the required Reuse Administrator permissions at the org level (but only this specific permission at that level). Additionally, you need to grant the project manager the Manage Project permissions at the corresponding project's level.