Knowledge Base

Q: What Are the Different Roles Within a Review?

A: There are three (3) roles within a review:

• Moderator: Creates and manages a review
• Reviewer: Can participate in a review to provide feedback. A reviewer’s feedback is optional and doesn’t include approval to complete the review
• Approver: A reviewer with the added authority to approve/reject items. This usually applies to managers, project owners, and/or customers who need to sign-off on requirements before development starts.

  Electronic signature is an optional capability you can add to an approver’s review process to document the official sign-off for auditing purposes.

Q: What Are the Different Types of Feedback?

A: There are four (4) types of feedback reviewers can provide:

• Comment: General feedback.
• Question: If you need clarity on an item you’re reviewing.
• Proposed Change: If you are proprosing an edit to the moderator for them to make.
• Issue: Can flag a comment as an issue if you identify a problem.

Q: How Can I Activate the Review Center if it is Disabled or Unavailable?

A: Contact sales@jamasoftware.com to request Review Center activation. You will receive an updated license with access to the Review Center.

Q: Who Can Create a Review?

A: Any Jama user who has read/write permissions for the requirements and other items being selected within a project for a review can be an moderator. From a licensing perspective, these can be either Named or Floating Users. Stakeholder and Reviewer users cannot moderator a review because they are limited to read-only permissions within Jama. However, they can participate as a reviewer or as an approver in a review.

Q: What’s the Difference Between a Review and Revision?

A: A review represents the entire process of gaining consensus and approval of the requirements. Within a review, you may have multiple revisions. If edits are made per the feedback received within a review, then the moderator updates the review with a new revision and sends out an alert to the review team. The process continues until all items in the review are approved.

Q: Can External Stakeholders That Aren’t Employees of My Organization Participate?

A: To leverage the Review Center with your external customers or other stakeholders, we have introduced a new license type called Reviewer License. External reviewers can be invited via e-mail when initiating a review. In addition, anyone with a Reviewer License will be able to see public reviews. See: Initiate a Review. Note that anyone e-mailed through this method will be given a Reviewer License. When the maximum amount of Reviewer Licenses has been met, this functionality will no longer work. Reviewer Licenses can also be set up via the normal user setup procedure.

Q: What is a Reviewer License?

A: The new Reviewer License allows a user to participate in a review, but they do not have access to the Projects tab within Jama. This is useful for internal and external stakeholders for a specific set of requirements or project that needs their feedback, review and approval.

Q: What’s the Voting Feature For?

A: Votes are an optional feature for reviews. If you want to allow reviewers to apply weight to their feedback to emphasize priority or some other characteristic, the moderator can add that when configuring the review settings. The number of votes per review are configured by the moderator during setup.

Q: What Time Increment is 'Time Spent' Measured In?

A: It shows hours:minutes.

Q: What Does the Time Tracking Feature Do?

A: It provides a mechanism for the moderator to monitor the time a review takes to complete.

Q: Can I Update the Time I’ve Invested in the Review?

A: Time tracking can be modified by the individual reviewers if needed to more accurately represent the real time invested in the review. This editing capability is useful if you leave a review open while you attend a meeting, or if you get distracted by something else mid-review.

Q: I've Been Invited to a Review That Ends at 5 PM, But the Moderator Lives In Another Time Zone. Does it End During My 5 PM, or Theirs?

A: The moderator must designate a time in their time zone for the deadline. All email correspondence should list that time zone next to the review deadline. However, when viewing My Reviews, all review times will be listed in your local time zone. So, if it is currently 11 AM PST where you work and the review ends at 5 PM EST, your review will display that there are 3 hours left.

Q: How Can I See Items Flagged as Important Within a Review?

A: As an moderator, you can mark a comment or item as important in order to highlight and filter specific feedback. All participants can view the important items via the preset filter on the Feedback page called "Important".

Q: What Does an Electronic Signature Represent?

A: For organizations that need official sign-off for compliance or auditing purposes, you can configure a review to have approvers add their electronic signature as part of the final workflow when 100% approved. When moderating a review, there is an option in the setup wizard to “Require electronic signatures from approvers.”

Note: When Jama is integrated to SSO on our SaaS envrionment, the electronic signature option is disabled. This configuration removes the ability for users to enter a password directly into Jama.

Q: Why Can't I Use an Electronic Signature on My Reviews?

A: When Jama is integrated to SSO on our Cloud environment, the electronic signature option is disabled. This configuration removes the ability for users to enter a password directly into Jama.

A: By default, when a user makes a comment on an item in a review, they are automatically subscribed to follow the item. This can be turned off in their profile menu under the Review Center tab. To keep from getting the notification emails, users can select the arrow next to the item's title and unfollow the items in the review or change their preferences in their My Profile section to not automatically be subscribed when they participate in a review. Users can also follow and unfollow all items in a review under the Actions menu. More information on how comments work in a review can be found in this article.

A: You can go back to the home project of the set, filter, or release you sent to review and add and delete items. When the changes are made, you will see a pencil and paper icon indicating the Review Center has noticed a difference. When you publish a new revision, the changes will be reflected.

A: Depending on your role, there are different criterion that needs to be met in order for this option to show in the Tools menu. If you meet those requirements, just select Update Moderators and choose your additional moderators. For additional information, you can consult this article on the Community.

A: The pie chart defaults to show how users responded after finishing the review; the information below that shows how they responded on the items themselves. For more information on the Stats Page, you can consult this article.

A: As of now, there is no way to filter comments down to a single revision. There are, however, ideas being discussed on the Community if you would like to vote or provide feedback on them from within the Ideation module.

A: There are pre-built filters on the left column that will give you several options to filter the items in the review.

A: They are organized by the Heading field. To check this field, you can select it from the cog menu in List View of the Project section.

A: A deleted review cannot be recovered. If this is an issue, we suggest archiving reviews rather than deleting them.

A: This will require Organizational Admin permissions. Navigate to Admin > Item Types > [item you wish to change] > Configure View > Review Center Reading View or Review Center Single Item View. You can then move field names to the Visible column. This topic is covered in more detail in this article on the Community.

A: You can send a Component, Filter, Release, or Baseline with many types to review. If items are added or deleted to the Component, Filter, Release, or Baseline, the review will change as well.

A: This error occurs when the user has read-only access to the items being sent to review. When a review is created, so is a baseline. Since the user does not have create/edit permissions on the items being baselined, a review cannot be created.