Creating work items

Create a work item to submit a defect, task, or other type of work request that the project uses.
About this task
To create a work item:
  1. In the Team Artifacts view, expand the project area node, right-click Work Items and select New > Work Item. In the Create New Work item wizard, select the work item type, such as Defect, Enhancement, or Task. Click Finish.

    Alternatively, click the New Work Item toolbar icon; select the project area; and then select the work item type.

  2. Enter or select values for the following fields on the Overview tab:
    • Summary: A brief headline that identifies the work item.
    • Type: The type of work item. Commonly available types are Defect, Task, and Story. You can customize the project to include additional types.
    • Filed Against: A category that identifies the functional area that the work item belongs to. For example, your project might have GUI, Build, and Documentation categories. Each category is associated with a team area; that team is responsible for responding to the work item. If you are unsure of the category, you can click the Guess Category button. The Guess Category button attempts to guess the correct category by using the text in the Summary and Description fields to search for similar work items.
    • Severity: An indication of the impact of the work item, such as Minor, Normal, Major, or Critical.
    • Found In: The release that the work item refers to.
    • Description: A detailed description of the work item. For example, the description for a defect might include a list of steps to follow to reproduce the defect. Any descriptions that are longer than 32KB are truncated, and the entire description is added as an attachment.

    In the Summary, Description, and Discussion fields you can use short notations to refer to other Jazz™ artifacts. When you save the work item, these notations become links to those artifacts. Specify the type of artifact and its ID. For example: work item 123, defect 25, comment 5, and attachment 982. You can also refer to artifacts in other work items. For example: task 50775, comment 4.

    In the Summary, Description, and Discussion fields you can use the Content Assist feature to help you find favorite items and recently used work items, users, and templates. Press Ctrl/Space or click Edit > Content Assist to use the Content Assist feature.

  3. On the Links tab, add attachments, screen captures, and subscribers, and specify related work items. You can also associate the work item with one or more ClearCase® activities.
    • To attach a file, click Add File and navigate to the file location
    • To take a screen capture and attach it, click Add Screenshot. Position the frame to the area that you want to capture. Use the arrows on the sides of the frame to expand or reduce its size to fit the area. Click the camera icon. You can use the pen, oval, and rectangle icons to highlight specific areas of the screen capture. Specify the graphics format in which to save the image. Under Attach to: click Work Item <ID>.
    • To add subscribers, click Add in the Subscribers area. Enter part or all of a user's name, then select the user from the Matching items list. Click OK. Subscribers receive E-mail and feed notifications whenever someone modifies the work item. When you create a work item, you are added as a subscriber to that work item. To stop receiving notifications, you can remove yourself as a subscriber by selecting your name and clicking Remove.
    • To link the work item to another work item in the same repository, click Add in the Links area, then click the option that represents the type of relationship you want to establish. For example, you can establish a parent-child relationship between work items; mark a work item as a duplicate of another work item; or indicate that one work item is blocked by another work item.
    • To link the work item to another work item in a different repository, click Add > Add Related Change Request (project_area_name). The name of the project area appears in parentheses. To link to work items in project areas on other Jazz Team Servers, cross-repository communication must be configured and the project areas must be linked.
    • To associate the work item with one or more ClearCase UCM activities, click Add in the Links area, then click Add ClearCase Activities. Enter a ClearCase activity selector (for example, activity:actname@/pvob) in the URI field. You must use forward slashes in specifying the VOB tag. You can retrieve information about the activities by opening them in the Links area. This option is available only if IBM® Rational® ClearCase is installed on your computer.
  4. Click Save to save the work item.
Results
Members of the team area can configure their preferences so that they receive feed notifications for new work items submitted against the category associated with their team area. The owner, creator, and subscribers of the work item also receive E-mail notification of the new work item. The work item is now ready to be triaged.

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