Support

Hi Community,

I was wondering if anyone has switched off the creation of a new versions upon changing the status of an item, as this was actually a very long awaited feature request we had.
Today I played around with that feature on our sandbox and was very surprised by how it is designed. When the feature is enabled a warning is displayed "When versioning is disabled, items in a baseline will continue to show its current life cycle state rather than its status at the time of the baseline." 
So this actually means, that the status of an item is never incorporated in a baseline, which in our case leads the whole baseline concept to absurdum: When you think about how workflows, status changes and reviews go together then this is my understanding: Send items in draft status to a review -> review the items -> if everything is fine: transition the items to approved state -> use the baseline with the approved items e.g. for reports or as evidence, that items were approved at  certain stage in the project.
In my opinion the status field is THE most important information you want to check, because it tells you if the information you are viewing is "draft" or "approved". When this information is not incorporated into the baselines anymore, this will clearly not work out anymore.
I then tried to formulate my unexpressed requirements to this feature. What I probably expected was a way to define that for CERTAIN status changes (like changing an item from draft to approved) no new version is created, because essentially changing the status marks this version as approved. It's like a stamp you put on a piece of paper after approval... 
On the other hand - transitioning an item back to draft MUST create a new version to work on it. 

Maybe I am too much stuck in our own business processes, but I cannot relate how this feature would be useful, as the link between the status and a version of an item is completely lost. So any thoughts would be highly appreciated.

Thank you,
Anna

------------------------------
Anna Henke
MeVis BreastCare GmbH & Co. KG
------------------------------

Hi Anna,
I totally support your point- I had a Zoom discussion with Jama team about 1-2 years ago about the automatic review-driven status change.
My suggestion was that a new baseline is created by jama that includes the approved status and keeps the review-approvals of the team (as you can remember, the status change "clears" the approval status in a regular new baseline).
Unfortunately, Jama chose a solution by making the status very volatile- in my opinion the current status is a bit better than before, but the biggest disadvantage is that baselines are never really frozen.
In general, I think jama is not suitable (as a single tool) to check e.f. your tests of the pasts, to create one defined version of documentation- because there is so much that can be done to change content (e.g. moving without undoing).
This is why we insist to create "real" documents and store them in a database.

------------------------------
Sebastian Merz
Requirements Engineer
Sick AG
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 02-18-2022 03:27
From: Anna Henke
Subject: Has anyone disable the creation of new version upon status change?

Hi Community,

I was wondering if anyone has switched off the creation of a new versions upon changing the status of an item, as this was actually a very long awaited feature request we had.
Today I played around with that feature on our sandbox and was very surprised by how it is designed. When the feature is enabled a warning is displayed "When versioning is disabled, items in a baseline will continue to show its current life cycle state rather than its status at the time of the baseline." 
So this actually means, that the status of an item is never incorporated in a baseline, which in our case leads the whole baseline concept to absurdum: When you think about how workflows, status changes and reviews go together then this is my understanding: Send items in draft status to a review -> review the items -> if everything is fine: transition the items to approved state -> use the baseline with the approved items e.g. for reports or as evidence, that items were approved at  certain stage in the project.
In my opinion the status field is THE most important information you want to check, because it tells you if the information you are viewing is "draft" or "approved". When this information is not incorporated into the baselines anymore, this will clearly not work out anymore.
I then tried to formulate my unexpressed requirements to this feature. What I probably expected was a way to define that for CERTAIN status changes (like changing an item from draft to approved) no new version is created, because essentially changing the status marks this version as approved. It's like a stamp you put on a piece of paper after approval... 
On the other hand - transitioning an item back to draft MUST create a new version to work on it. 

Maybe I am too much stuck in our own business processes, but I cannot relate how this feature would be useful, as the link between the status and a version of an item is completely lost. So any thoughts would be highly appreciated.

Thank you,
Anna

------------------------------
Anna Henke
MeVis BreastCare GmbH & Co. KG
------------------------------

It is important to distinguish the content of a baseline from a statement about that baseline.
The content of a baseline are the versioned fields and relationships of the items in the baseline.
Statements of the form "these items in this baseline are approved" are statements about the baseline, and are not the content of the baseline.  Those statements about the items in the baseline (such as the status) have to be mutable.   This includes things like comments about an item in the baseline, as well as the status of an item in a baseline.  That doesn't make the contents of the baseline unstable.

------------------------------
Geoffrey Clemm
Jama Software
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-29-2022 01:49
From: Sebastian Merz
Subject: Has anyone disable the creation of new version upon status change?

Hi Anna,
I totally support your point- I had a Zoom discussion with Jama team about 1-2 years ago about the automatic review-driven status change.
My suggestion was that a new baseline is created by jama that includes the approved status and keeps the review-approvals of the team (as you can remember, the status change "clears" the approval status in a regular new baseline).
Unfortunately, Jama chose a solution by making the status very volatile- in my opinion the current status is a bit better than before, but the biggest disadvantage is that baselines are never really frozen.
In general, I think jama is not suitable (as a single tool) to check e.f. your tests of the pasts, to create one defined version of documentation- because there is so much that can be done to change content (e.g. moving without undoing).
This is why we insist to create "real" documents and store them in a database.

------------------------------
Sebastian Merz
Requirements Engineer
Sick AG

Original Message:
Sent: 02-18-2022 03:27
From: Anna Henke
Subject: Has anyone disable the creation of new version upon status change?

Hi Community,

I was wondering if anyone has switched off the creation of a new versions upon changing the status of an item, as this was actually a very long awaited feature request we had.
Today I played around with that feature on our sandbox and was very surprised by how it is designed. When the feature is enabled a warning is displayed "When versioning is disabled, items in a baseline will continue to show its current life cycle state rather than its status at the time of the baseline." 
So this actually means, that the status of an item is never incorporated in a baseline, which in our case leads the whole baseline concept to absurdum: When you think about how workflows, status changes and reviews go together then this is my understanding: Send items in draft status to a review -> review the items -> if everything is fine: transition the items to approved state -> use the baseline with the approved items e.g. for reports or as evidence, that items were approved at  certain stage in the project.
In my opinion the status field is THE most important information you want to check, because it tells you if the information you are viewing is "draft" or "approved". When this information is not incorporated into the baselines anymore, this will clearly not work out anymore.
I then tried to formulate my unexpressed requirements to this feature. What I probably expected was a way to define that for CERTAIN status changes (like changing an item from draft to approved) no new version is created, because essentially changing the status marks this version as approved. It's like a stamp you put on a piece of paper after approval... 
On the other hand - transitioning an item back to draft MUST create a new version to work on it. 

Maybe I am too much stuck in our own business processes, but I cannot relate how this feature would be useful, as the link between the status and a version of an item is completely lost. So any thoughts would be highly appreciated.

Thank you,
Anna

------------------------------
Anna Henke
MeVis BreastCare GmbH & Co. KG
------------------------------