Create Dependent Tracker Artifacts

Make a Tracker Artifact depend on another Artifact

• A child artifact can have only one parent.
• A parent artifact can have any number of children.
• A parent artifact cannot be closed if a child is open.

note

Open or Closed in this context, refers to a type of status, not the status itself. A tracker administrator can specify a group of statuses such as Deferred, Fixed, Rejected, as equivalent to Closed, while In progress and Under consideration might be specified as Open statuses. For example, when you look at the artifact summaries at the top of any tracker list page, you are seeing a summary of the status type, not the status, of the artifacts.

1. On the artifact page, click the DEPENDENCIES tab.
2. Choose or create the related artifact.
   • If the parent artifact already exists, click Choose Child or Choose Parent. In the pop-up, type in the artifact ID or choose from the list of your recently edited artifacts.
   • If the related artifact does not exist yet, click Create Child in or Cread Parent in and select the tracker that the new related artifact will belong to. Fill in the form the same way as you would for submitting an unrelated artifact.
   note

   If Choose Parent or Create New Parent is not visible, the artifact already has a parent artifact. An artifact can only have one parent artifact.

3. Click Next.
4. Write a comment that describes the relationship, if appropriate, and click Finish.
   note

   When a dependency is added to or removed from a tracker artifact, a notification mail is sent to users monitoring the artifact. An option is provided at site level and user level to make sure whether the notification mail has to be sent or not. For more information on this, see Configure your Site's Settings.

The parent-child relationship between the artifacts is established.

• To cancel a parent dependency, click Remove.
• To cancel a child dependency, select the child artifact and click Remove.

note

Task dependencies and tracker artifact dependencies are different from each other.

For tracker artifacts, an artifact with dependencies ( a "parent" artifact) can't be considered closed unless all of its dependent artifacts ("children") are closed.
For tasks, a dependency means one task can't start until another task is completed.

Tracker Dependency Updates Within Change Log

• Artifact dependency updates such as adding or removing parent or child artifact are now added to the artifact's Change Log tab.
• The dependency change log includes information such as the user who updated the dependency, the time when the update was done, and a brief description of the old and new dependency values.
• This change log can come in handy for auditing purposes.

Context Menu to create Dependencies, Associations or Add Attachments

Use the context menu available in planning folder list view to quickly choose a "parent" or "child", remove a "parent", add associations, add attachments or clone artifacts.

In the planning folder list view, you can see a down arrow icon next to the artifact ID (as shown in the following screen)when you move your mouse pointer over artifact rows.

Down arrow icon

A context-sensitive menu pops up on clicking the down arrow icon.

Context menu if an artifact has a parent

Context menu if an artifact has no parent

To quickly choose a parent or child, add associations and attachments, or remove a parent:

1. Select a planning folder on the List Trackers, Planning Folder and Teams page. The planning folder List Artifacts page appears.
2. Move your mouse over an artifact's ID. A down arrow icon appears.
3. Click the down arrow icon to see the context menu. Depending on the context, you can do one of the following tasks.
   • Choose a Child
   • Choose a Parent
   • Remove a Parent
   • Add Associations
   • Add Attachments
   • Clone an Artifact

Choose a Child

1. Click Choose Child from the context menu. The Selection Children... window appears.
2. Select the Enter Artifact ID option and type an artifact ID. This artifact becomes the child.
   tip

   You can select the Add from Recently Edited option and choose a child from the list of recently edited artifacts.

3. Click Next.
4. You mad add a comment in the DEPENDENCY COMMENT text box.
5. Click Finish.
   note

   You may also click Finish and Add Another to continue adding more children for the same artifact.

Choose a Parent

1. Click Choose Parent from the context menu. The Selecting Parent... window appears.
2. Select the Enter Artifact ID option and type an artifact ID. This artifact becomes the parent.
   tip

   You can also select the Add from Recently Edited option and select a parent from the list of recently edited artifacts.

3. Click Next.
4. You may add a comment in the DEPENDENCY COMMENT text box.
5. Click Finish.

Remove a Parent

1. Click Remove Parent from the context menu. A confirmation message appears as: Do you want to remove the dependency?
2. Click OK.

Add Associations

1. Click Add Association from the context menu. The Add Association Wizard appears.
2. Select the Enter Item ID option and type an artifact ID for creating an association.
   tip

   You can select the Add from Recently Edited option and select an artifact from the list of recently edited artifacts.

3. Click Next.
4. You may add a comment in the Association Comment text box.
5. Click Finish.
   note

   You may also click Finish and Add Another to continue associating more artifacts.

Add Attachments

1. Click Add Attachments from the context menu. The Add Attachments window appears.
   note

   You can add any number of files by dragging and dropping them or by adding multiple files using the Browse button on the Add Attachments window.

2. Type a comment for the attachments in the COMMENT TEXT box.
3. Click Choose File.
4. Browse and select the file you want to attach.
5. Click the Attach another file link to add more attachments. Repeat this step for adding more attachments.
6. Click Add to attach the selected files to the artifact.

Clone an Artifact

1. Click Clone from the context menu. The Clone Artifact window appears.
2. Provide a name and description for cloning the artifact.
3. Click Clone to clone the artifact.