Polarion 2014 SR2 – New and Noteworthy

Once again, as summer comes to a close, we provide you with a service release: Polarion 2014 SR2. The update is free to customers with a current maintenance agreement. As with all our releases, I’m happy to provide an overview of the main new features, improvements, and fixes.

Granular Document Permissions

The MODIFY DOCUMENT permission present in previous releases has been split into a more granular set of permissions for Documents:

• Permission to MODIFY FIELDS – allows modification of status and custom fields.


• Permission to MODIFY CONTENT – add/remove/modify Document-contained Work Items and modify Document structure. Cannot edit title, description, or attachments of contained Work Items without Work Item-specific permissions (but can edit other WI fields).


• Permission to MANAGE – move Document, adjust the default presentation (e.g. fields at start/end), etc.

Permissions Management

• New dynamic roles for Documents: document_author and comment_author. The default permissions for these roles can be modified globally and for specific projects.

• Easy visual identification of explicitly granted/denied permissions, and inherited permissions, in the permissions administration UI.

Document & Wiki Page Titles

Give your Documents and Wiki pages and documents human-friendly titles using ASCII or non-ASCII characters. When Title is used, it’s displayed throughout the UI, rather than the Name (ID). If not used, then Name (ID) is displayed, as before. So there’s no need to update existing Documents unless you want to. (Users of languages with non-ASCII charsets will probably want to!) Note that spaces are still not supported – we’ll deliver that next release.

 

 

 

Polarion Connector for HP ALM™ 12

Polarion Connector for HP ALM now supports HP ALM 12. HP ALM 11 is still supported, and HP ALM 12 support is transparent. No need to specify which version when you:

• Create a connection to HP ALM 12 server


• Create a sync pair with HP ALM 12 and see all available attributes


• Sync attribute of artifacts in HP ALM 12, excluding attributes that require direct database access.

You can configure sync pairs to include relations, so that all relations between HP artifacts are synchronized with Polarion. You can configure sync pairs to include Test Steps, so that test steps from HP ALM 12 are imported to Polarion.

Additional to that it is now possible to connect to HP’s Oracle database also.

Other Connector Enhancements

User can select attribute of spec objects that contain type information from a list of all attributes so that:

• Mapping sections for all options of the enumeration are shown.


• Type attribute will be used to select mapping configuration and determine which Work Item type is to be created.

Other Enhancements and Improvements

As always, we select and prioritize these based on feedback and input from our customers.

Administration

• Now possible to disable tracking of time spent (test duration) in execution of manual tests via a new system property: com.polarion.alm.ui.forms.extensions.disableTimeSpentRecording. (Such tracking may be prohibited by law in some countries.)
  

            com.polarion.alm.ui.forms.extensions.disableTimeSpentRecording=true

  
  


• “Dependent” enumeration lists: admins can set up configurations where user’s selection of a value in one list populates one or more other lists according the user’s selection. For example, selection of “Linux” in a list of operating systems can result in only Linux versions visible in a list of OS versions.
  
  


• Visibility of workflow functions and conditions: admins can now readily see if conditions and functions exist for workflow actions without having to edit each action. Functions and conditions can be edited by clicking on the items shown in the Actions table of the Workflow Designer.
  

End Users

• Reset Favorites: users can quickly reset their Favorite shortcuts to the original default state with a new button in the Manage Shortcuts dialog.
  
  


• Reset UI: users can reset their user interface to the original default state (other users are not affected). A button on users’ My Polarion pagerestores confirmation dialogs, among other things.
  
  


• New visual query element “SQL” in the visual Query Builder enables direct entry of SQL syntax in Work Item queries in the Tracker.

QA managers can easily mark Test Runs that should not be wiped by automated cleanup of Test Runs. Select multiple Test Runs in a table (manually or via query) and set the Keep in History flag for all of them at once.

Performance

• Reuse of Baseline views in historical database results in improved performance of historical queries and burn-down charts in Plans.


• Improved performance with a large SVN access file.

Other

• Advanced types of HighCharts now included with Polarion.


• Firefox 31 is now supported.

Important Fixes

• Default values for text and rich text custom fields, specified in Administration, are written when new Work Items are created.


• Order of children is kept when moving Work Items between Documents.


• Improved handling of invalid selections in the Document Editor.


• Faster and more reliable shutdown of the Polarion server.

Download Links

You can obtain the update distribution for all products, at: http://www.polarion.com/downloads/update.php. This distribution updates an existing production system.

If you want to test the new release separately from your production system, you should download the installer for the product you have (http://www.polarion.com/downloads/index.php). You will receive an evaluation license by email when you download.

On behalf of the entire Polarion Software team, thanks for using Polarion solutions.