Administering a project that uses a project template

Once your project has been configured, you can invite people to join the project and work can begin.

Task overview: Administering a project that uses a project template:

1. Invite people to join the project.
2. Update the list of project members on the Communications page.
3. Set expectations with team members.
4. Upload stage-specific documents, project management documents, and other documentation as needed.
5. Update the Project Management page as needed, for example, by assigning deadlines for work items to specific milestones.
6. Ensure that team members use the Communications page.
7. Upload build results.
8. Assign defects that were uploaded from Test Director and "shadowed" in Project Tracker to specific stages in the project.
9. Generate reports and metrics for the project.

Invite people to join the project

Once you have set up the project pages, you can add members to the project. The CollabNet environment has features for adding users to the domain, creating project roles and permissions, inviting and adding users to a project, and assigning roles and permissions to project members.

See the CollabNet online help for information on inviting new project members for details.

Note: If people who you want to invite do not appear in the list of potential invitees, contact your domain administrator. The domain administrator can add people to the database, and can set the roles and permissions for these invitees.

Update the list of key project members

The Communications page is intended to help project members locate each other, schedule meetings, and perform other communications activities. As a project owner, you should add a list of key project members (or all project members) to this page.

See the help on customizing the Communications page for a project for details.

Set expectations with project members

As an owner of a project that uses a project template, you may want to communicate the following to the project members:

• What steps to follow at each stage.
  Tell project members what activities must be performed at each stage. For example, if certain project members are to document the product architecture and others are to update the use cases, you need to communicate this.
• What documents to create, and where to upload them.
  You need to tell project members what documents they are responsible for. For example, if designers are responsible for creating design specs and use cases, you must tell them where to obtain templates for these documents. You must also decide whether you want people to upload their completed documents or if you are going to upload them yourself. For an example of how to upload process documentation, see the section on working with documents in the Help on defining requirements.
• What Project Tracker artifacts are provided in the project, and how to use them.
  The CollabNet Baseline Project template provides Requirement, Defect Report, Incident Report, Customer Case, and other artifact types. In general, but particularly if you have modified these artifact types or added new ones, you should tell project members what artifact types to use, and how to complete the artifact entry form. For example, you may want to instruct designers to attach use cases to Requirements artifacts. Also, if you have modified the Requirement and Defect Report artifacts and queries so that query results are based on an attribute other than subpage in Lifecyle, you need to specify the fields that users must complete to "promote" an artifact to a new subpage.
• What software to install or other preparations to make to participate in the project.
  For example, if users have write permission to the Subversion repository, you may want to tell them what Subversion client to download. Or, if you want users to host WebEx sessions and to chat using IRC, you may need to tell them to get WebEx accounts and install the IRC client locally.

Note: You may want to add documentation to the Community page if the process being supported is an organization-wide process. See the online help on the Community home for details. (This topic is available if you have permission to view the Administration page.)

Add completed project documents to the subpages and pages

The CollabNet Baseline Project template provides sample documents for each stage of the process, and for the Project Management page. For example, the Project Management page contains a template for a project plan and the Definition page contains a template for a Marketing Requirements Document (MRD).

As a project owner, it is your role to inform project members of the document templates that they should download, and you should tell them how completed documents should be uploaded. For an example of how to work with stage-specific documentation, see the information on working with project documentation in the Help on defining requirements.

Schedule meetings and chat sessions using the Communications page

You should encourage team members to schedule meetings using the WebEx tool and to use chat sessions via IRC. See the Help topic on communicating with teammates for details.

Update the milestones using the Project Management page

As progress is made on the project, you will need to update the Project Management page:

• You should assign particular work items, such as Requirements, Defect Reports, and so on to particular milestones for the project.
• You or other team members should create documentation related to project management and upload this information to this page. See the Help topic on viewing the project mission and milestones for details.
• You can add resource links and links to additional work products. See the Help topic on customizing the Project Management page for details.

To ensure that a work item appears on a milestone query from the Project Management page:

1. Click the Projects page.
2. Click the link for a project that uses a project template.
3. Click the Project management icon in the navigation toolbar or the Project management link in the left navigation pane.
4. Click a query link for a lifecycle artifact type (for example, the View active defect reports link) in the activity area.
   The activity area is either directly below the page navigation toolbar or at the top of the page. It is the area with a light blue background.
5. Click the link for an artifact that you want to associate with a particular project milestone.
6. In the Planning and Execution section, select the appropriate milestone in the Target Milestone field.
7. Click Save Changes.

Upload build results

You or a delegate should upload build results information so that project members have easy access to it from the project Code & Build page or the Integrations page.

For information on uploading build results information on the Integrations page, see the Help on accessing third-party applications and reports.

To upload build results:

1. Click the Projects page.
2. Click the link for a project that uses a project template.
3. Click the Code & Build icon on the page navigation toolbar or click the Code & Build link in the left navigation pane.
4. In the Activities area, click Build/integration results.
   The activity area is either directly below the page navigation toolbar or at the top of the page. It is the area with a light blue background.
5. From the Build Results page, click Upload document.
6. Locate the build results document that you want to upload and click Save.
   Note that this document is saved in the project's version control repository. If you want to rename or delete this document, you must use your version control client.

Process defects that are "shadowed" from Test Director

If your project uses data from the Test Director product, as the project owner, you may be responsible for ensuring that all information uploaded from Test Director is visible to project developers and test engineers. See the help on accessing third-party applications and reports for details.

Run reports and produce project metrics

The CollabNet Baseline Project template allows you to download graphical reports of project artifacts. For example, you can view bar charts that indicate how many Requirements are in definition, coding, testing, and so on. See the help on viewing project metrics for details.

Adding components to your project home page

You can modify your project home page by adding components or editing existing ones to suit your requirements. To do this you will have to update the /snippets/page.xml file. The page.xml file for each page, holds the information on layout, title, settings, and visibility information for each of the components. The home page editor automatically maintains this file, but if you want to make manual changes to your project home page, you will need to make updates to the page.xml files.

To add an HTML component:

1. Create the snippet and add it to the snippets directory.
2. You can have as many snipptes as you want to as long as you have a valid url name.
3. When you add a new html snippet file to the snippets directory, you’ll want to modify the page.xml file to make sure the new snippet is displayed when the page is rendered in your home page.
4. Open the page.xml file with a text editor and add this element into the:
   <component_list>
   <component visibility=”1” type=”Html” order=”A_NUMBER”>
   <title localize=”false”>A_TITLE</title> <filename>A_FILENAME</filename> </component>

• A_NUMBER = the position where you want the component to be displayed on a page.
• A_TITLE = the title of the component. This field is optional.
• A_FILENAME = the name of the snippet file.

To add a Documents component

When adding a documents component to a page, you can add the Documents directory as a subdirectory to the page.

You will then need to add the following information to the page.xml file:

<component visibility="1" type="Documents" order="A_NUMBER">
<title localize="true"> A_TITLE</title>
<showtemplates>false</showtemplates>
</component>

• A_NUMBER = the position where you want the component to be displayed on a page.
• A_TITLE = the title of the component. This field is optional.

To add a Milestones component

To add a Milestones component to your project home page, add the following to the page.xml file:

<component visibility="1" type="TaskMilestones" order="A_NUMBER">
<title localize="true">A_TITLE</title>
</component>

• A_NUMBER = the position where you want the component to be displayed on a page.
• A_TITLE = the title of the component. This field is optional.

To add a Project Activity Report component

To add a Project Activity Reporting component to your project home page, simply modify the page.xml file and add:

<component visibility="1" type="ArtifactReport" order="A_NUMBER" layout=”[1|2]”>
<title localize="true">A_TITLE</title>
<report title=”A_REPORT_TITLE” view_link=”A_VIEW_LINK”>A_REPORT_URL </report>
</component>

• A_NUMBER = the position where you want the component to be displayed on a page.
• A_TITLE = the title of the component. This field is optional.
• A_REPORT_TITLE = title of the report.
• A_VIEW_LINK = view link to the report.
• A_REPORT_URL = url for the report image.

Note that if layout is set to 2, you should have two <report> elements.

To add components using the editor refer the documents - Customizing your home page and Adding components.