Hi Chris!
First I'll answer your questions.
1. No, not yet, and there isn't anything
in development for this quarter.2. No, there is not a method in the UI for a user to call something via the API.
3. Once again...no, there is not a means to do this, either.
The reason I mentioned the Item of Type field rather than a custom pick list is because the Item of Type custom field will be populated with whatever item type you indicate in the field configuration. This means you could theoretically have an Item of Type field in your Business Rule configured to bring up a searchable list of Learning Opportunities, meaning users wouldn't have to scroll through 2000 program and course values. However, that does require you to put all the Learning Opportunities in Jama itself as items (but you could do that via REST).
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Kristina King
Jama Software
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-02-2017 17:22
From: Chris Boxall
Subject: Any support for adding fields to a Business Rule that will integrate with another database
Thanks for the reply Kristina,
I think you might be referring to custom pick lists.
We could populate a custom pick list from our database (the data would be quite static but could be loaded every day/week as needed). So when a user is entering business rule they could choose the Program or Course from a custom pick list.
There are a couple issues with this that it would be great to get your feedback.
- There were some threads from 2016 about cascading pick lists that would allow an Administrator to configure the values of a pick list to be dependent on another. For example select a country and in another field show the states/provinces for the selected country. Can you confirm that this feature is still not available? We could use this to allow the user to select a Program (Bachelor of Arts) and then select a pathway (Major in Music, Honors in History, Minor in English).
- Are there any triggers available that can be used to call a REST API? For example if a user enters a Program Code the application can call a REST API to get the description of the program from somewhere else, either in Jama or in another database via a REST API?
- If we put all the programs, pathways and courses in a single pick list there will be 2000+ entries. To help the user select from a single pick list can we configure a custom pick list widget that has a search capability much like this one?

Thanks,
Chris
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Chris Boxall
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-02-2017 13:50
From: Kristina King
Subject: Any support for adding fields to a Business Rule that will integrate with another database
Hi Chris,
I don't have any specific recommendations for you, but I can say that this will work with our REST API. As long as the REST query is formatted correctly, you can use it to post your business rules. How you get the data out of the other database is up to you, though-we can't offer any specific advice on that. But you could use the API to post the business rules, then post sets or folders of learning opportunities. If you create an Item of Type field in your Business Rule it could be populated form your list of Learning Opportunities.
So this isn't quite as simple as using a Jama field to pull directly from another database, but if you add that data to Jama via the REST API this would all be possible.
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Kristina King
Jama Software
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-01-2017 13:26
From: Chris Boxall
Subject: Any support for adding fields to a Business Rule that will integrate with another database
We want to document our Business Rules in Jama and use the great features that the product offers including trace-ability, versioning, threaded comments, etc. For each rule we want to document the Business Aspect that the rule applies to. We are in the educational domain so for example we will have rules for Learning Opportunities, Programs, Courses, etc. So each rule needs to relate to a particular Business Aspect. Here are a few examples of the rule and the Business Aspect it relates to.
Bachelor of Arts Program - In order to earn their degree, students must complete at least 120 B.A.-eligible credits
MATH 100 - Prerequisite: MATH 001 or a score of 73% or higher in Principlies of Mathematics 11 or Pre-calculus 11.
Is it possible in Jama for us to add a field to the Business Rule type in Jama that will show a list of Learning Opportunities (for example: Bachelor of Arts, Master of Science, MATH 100) that are retrieved from another database and allow the user to select from a list and record the selected item and associate it to the Business Rule?
We are trying to avoid having to create items for Domain instances in Jama, but it is really important for our Business Rule documentation to include a reference to what the rule applies to.
Thanks for any feedback,
Chris
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Chris Boxall
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