Polarion ALM 2016 SR3 – What’s New and Noteworthy

As 2016 draws to a close, so does the development cycle of our product version 2016. I’m happy to announce the availability of Service Release 3 (SR3) and provide some information about what it delivers. Let’s jump right in.

LiveDoc Enhancements

We have delivered several improvements that many of you have asked for. These include more control over styling, and responsiveness of large docs containing large numbers of Work Items.

List Styling

You can now configure how hierarchical list styles are rendered in the web UI, and exported to PDF or Microsoft Word. There is a new system property that enables administrators to define styles:
com.siemens.polarion.document.listStyle=1ai

Possible characters are:

• “1” for decimal numbers “1,2,3”


• “a” for lowercase letters “a,b,c”


• “A” for uppercase letters “A,B,C”


• “i” for lowercase Roman numbers “i,ii,iii”


• “I” for uppercase Roman numbers “I,II,III”

With this configuration, the hierarchical list styles will look like this:

On-demand Work Item Loading

On-demand Work Item loading can be enabled as default behavior for all LiveDocs by setting the system property:
com.siemens.polarion.ui.document.lazyLoad.enabledByDefault=true

The feature is not enabled by default. We think you should decide about the system default for all Documents and users with this property. (It may interest you to know that we have turned it ON for our own production servers!)

For those not yet familiar with on-demand Work Item loading (introduced in SR2), it provides a much better user experience when working with big Documents having many Work Items. This release delivers integration of on-demand loading with continuous numbering of lists and captions, and display of Attachments visible in Document in the Attachments sidebar.

Note that Find and Replace is still not optimal: the system currently searches only the loaded content. We’ll be looking to improve this in an upcoming release. Even if on-demand loading is enabled by default, users can still opt to load the full Document (and subsequently search it) by disabling on-demand loading in the Document Properties sidebar. This affects only the specific Document for the specific user.

Test Management

We definitely appreciate the input from our customer base as we mature in this area of our product. This release delivers several enhancements you have been requesting.

Multiple Concurrent Test Execution

If testers need to execute two or more test runs in parallel at the same time, they can easily open multiple Test Runs in different browser windows and start executing them in parallel. This is especially useful if there is need to execute same test cases in different environments. Instead of executing in one environment first, and then again in a second, testers can now go test case by test case, executing each one in both environments before proceeding to next test case.

Test Run Table Filtering

When browsing the table of Test Run Templates (click Manage Templates on the Test Runs page), you can now filter the table using the Visual Query Builder tool, which now appears on the page and works the same way as it does elsewhere, except that here, it refines the table of Test Run Templates. You’ll find this especially useful if you have a large set of templates.

LiveDoc Test Planning

• LiveDoc Picker: When you plan your Test Runs through LiveDocs, you do not need to type the Document name anymore – you can select it in a visual picker.


• Offline Execution of Frozen Test Cases (Test Cases from specific Revision): You can execute the test cases from specific revision if you plan the Test Runs via LiveDocs, by placing a reference to a specific revision of a test case to your test specification. We have fixed some issues that were present in the system in case you are using Frozen References in your Test Specification and executing your test cases via the Microsoft Excel offline execution option.

More Test Management Enhancements

• Browse test results: You can now open the test execution view (sidebar and test execution panel) for closed Test Tuns and access the detailed test step results.


• Link to a test case execution: When you know the link to a Test Case from an execution context (Test Record, Defect, etc.) the execution panel of the Test Case will load the details of the test execution from the selected Test Run.

Other Enhancements and Fixes

Notification Target for All Document Approvees

Suppose you need to notify (by email) all the “approvees” of a Document (i.e. people who must sign a Document workflow transition) that a Document has been modified, or that a Document has been pushed for their signature. To make that happen, just configure Notification Events and Targets in Administration so that the “all-approvees” target is selected.

Database Table with Work Item-to-Document relations

The integrated database now contains extra table that stores relations between Work Items and Documents. This table allows easier composition of traceability queries on Documents that contain referenced Work Items.

API Enhancements

• Web services: Execute multiple Test Cases in a single call: New TestManagementWebService operation executeTest executes Test Cases given by the Test Records within a specified Test Run. This operation differs from others within this web service because it can execute multiple Test Cases in a single call. It can also create a defect if a Test Case fails. (If configured to do so on the Polarion server.) It replaces having to call multiple web service operations like addTestRecord or updateTestRecord and manual creation of defect.


• Web services: Get configuration of Test Run custom fields: New TestManagementWebService operations getDefinedTestRunCustomFieldKeys, getDefinedTestRunCustomFieldType, getDefinedTestRunCustomFieldTypes, getTestRunCustomFieldType, and getTestRunCustomFieldTypes enable you to get information about global and project-level custom fields configuration of Test Runs as well as definition of custom fields of particular Test Run.

As in the past, version 2016 SR3 is a free update for all customers with a current maintenance subscription. You can download the update distribution by clicking here.

If you would like to evaluate the release before updating your production installation, simply visit this download page, download the product of your choice, install it on any available computer and use the built-in 30-day evaluation license.

On behalf of the entire Polarion ALM team, thanks for your continued use of Polarion solutions.