Simplify item locking

Tom Strader
edited July 2016 in
Locking items is great for teams working together when they are concerned about compliance or stepping on each other.  Locking items is not great for teams moving at high speed, especially when items are unintentionally locked by users and prevent other users from getting their job done.

We have this issue come up every day, users accidentally leave an item in edit mode and forget to close edit mode and now the item is locked somewhat indefinitely until an admin unlocks it.  This adds a lot of admin overhead and prevents users from getting their job done.

There are many viable solutions to this problem for our use cast
  1. Turn off automatic locks all together.  If multiple people edit at the "same" time, just create a version for every edit.  Sure someone's edits will get trumped by another user, but the reality is that multiple users rarely edit the same item at the same time.
  2. Offer a lock timeout.  If a user hasn't done anything with the item in some specified number of minutes, release the lock
Im sure there are many other solutions, but either of these approaches would work for us to get locks out of the way and let us use the system more productively.

Comments

  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    You raise a good point, as far as agile/kind of agile teams are concerned—Locking items is not great for teams moving at high speed—so thanks for bringing this up. As Jama moves to more stringent compliance I don't think we'll change this radically (if at all), but I think your point is definitely one we need to keep in mind when Jama is part of an agile workflow.
  • Hello!

    Bumping this back up, now that we are finally on a more recent version .With inline editing available, we are running into a lot of locking issues. I would be very interested in the ability to set a default "unlock" period, especially since now, I try to just go through and unlock things every few days as I remember. Having a default unlock time would take a lot off my effort as admin. 

    Thanks!!

  • +1 from us.

    The fact that items can't be unlocked by anyone other than org admins is bad. Project admins should be able to unlock items in their projects.

    I really like the idea of a lock timeout. We default unlock all items after 3 months because MOST of them are erroneous locks due to people timing out sessions. 

    Might be a good idea to separate:

    1. Items that have been INTENTIONALLY locked by a user (which probably shouldn't be unlocked by the timeout)
    2. Items that have been locked due to edits (which probably should).

    In any case, good topic and one which we support!

    Cheers,
    Grant
    Grant More
    Systems Engineering Specialist
    More Consulting Ltd.
  • Not sure I agree with proposed solution, but agree with the problem. I often find requirements that are locked and no one can figure out why. Likely the reason Grant explained in his post (thanks for the insight).
  • Our teams are also running into the problem of having too many locked items that are not being actively worked on.  Project leaders managing content in Jama are becoming increasingly frustrated as more users interact with the tool.

    Any update on plans to address this behavior?
    Tom Green
    Thermo Fisher Scientific
  • Kind of on the same token, when a moderator for a review is sick or has an unplanned absent, the administrator and / or the project manager should have the right to moderate the review in the original moderator's absence.
    Ken G
  • This is a daily occurrence for us.  We keep the "time out" fairly short because the licenses are expensive.  So what happens is we get a lot of items that are "locked out" due to time out while in edit mode.  We're spread out around the globe, so often offices just coming online in the morning will be unable to access "locked out" items from those who timed out in edit mode at the end of their day.  I like the idea of treating those items that are deliberately "locked" differently than those which are not.  Also, I think it would be a good idea to list out all the locked items that you have locked out in the home page when you first log on.
  • This answers a question that I've had on why items are locked by me when I didn't lock them. I would like this also.
  • A possible suggestion is to notify the user they have an item locked....a section located on the Jama Homepage that notifies the user of items locked or have an option in Configure Project to list items lock so the Project Manager can unlock without having the Org Admin involved.
  • Gavin Ryan-Keenor
    Gavin Ryan-Keenor Business Analyst
    Having a lock item count or summary on the homepage would is a great idea.  +1

    Also, we see 3 types of lock - 1, item currently being edited; 2, item edited and session has timed out; 3, user has locked the item to prevent further changes.  It would be great to see/know the difference.  We'd like the ability to have timeout locks automatically unlocked after 24 hours.  This provides a balance (for us) between allowing the user time to refresh the session and complete what they were doing and releasing the item for others to work on.
  • Chloe Elliott
    Chloe Elliott Product Team
    edited March 2021
    Jama is looking into ways to improve how we lock items. To help us move forward with improving how Jama Connect handles user and system locks, we invite you to fill out this survey.
  • Donia Cheok
    edited March 2021
    Thanks for creating the survey.  Since I can't add additional comments in the survey, I'm including them here.

    One of the main issues is that it's unclear how items are locked.  Even though we follow the proper workflow, save items, then close, the items are still not unlocked all the time.  Many of our test cases required to be passed on from one person to another person during execution due to access rules in our software (e.g. tester 1 execute steps 1 - 4, pause the test and close, tester 2 resume test and execute steps 5 - 8).  So the locking has caused a lot of frustration.  Even if there's a timeout in place, it probably won't help as the test could be picked up by someone else in the next minute.

    For now, I have a project coordinator to unlock all items that're locked the previous day.  However, we get many request each day to unlock items when we pass test cases from one person to another.
    1. Turn off automatic locks all together.  If multiple people edit at the "same" time, just create a version for every edit.  Sure someone's edits will get trumped by another user, but the reality is that multiple users rarely edit the same item at the same time.
    2. Offer a lock timeout.  If a user hasn't done anything with the item in some specified number of minutes, release the lock
    Im sure there are many other solutions, but either of these approaches would work for us to get locks out of the way and let us use the system more productively.
    Donia Cheok
  • Alessandro Valli
    edited March 2021
    Hi Donia,
    are the still-locked items system locked (light blue lock) or manually locked (yellow lock) ?
    You are speaking about workflows. I imagine you have a light blue lock and after a transition you expect an unlocked item but it is still light blue. In such a case you could have an issue with your workflow. Just check this first, both at organization level and at project level (maybe you have a workflow override).
    I hope it helps ...
    Best,
    Alessandro
    Alessandro
    Systems Engineer
    SICK AG
  • Donia Cheok
    edited March 2021
    Hi Alessandro,

    Thanks for the info.  I'd say 99% of the issues comes from Jama auto locking the items when user is editing or running the tests.  Then the lock wasn't released properly.  So they are yellow locks.   

    Thanks.
    Donia Cheok
  • Alessandro Valli
    edited April 2021
    Hi Donia,
    I know -> there some bugs around.
    SOS-DEF-5109 (Test Runs).
    SOS-DEF-5196 
    Best,
    Alessandro
    Alessandro
    Systems Engineer
    SICK AG