Windows shell integration advanced

© 2016 IBM Corporation
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Sreerupa Sen
STSM – Rational Team Concert
IBM Rational Team Concert -
Windows Shell Integration,
Advanced Mode

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Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Modes of operation
 Usage patterns
 Setting up your work area
 Working in the Shell
 Code review
 Handling conflicts
 Preferences
 Client Parity

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Who does the Shell Integration target?
 Windows users who want to use Rational Team Concert (henceforth RTC) for source
control, tracking and planning
 Developers who use a different IDE than the ones supported out of the box (Eclipse
and Microsoft Visual Studio IDE are the supported IDEs)
 Such as embedded developers who often use other tools/IDEs
 Non developer users such us documentation engineers, analysts, user experience
designers…
 Who do not need to use IDEs but would want to version control their documents and artifacts
 Multiple modes of operation depending on your usage patterns

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What’s the goal for this integration?
The goal is
 To use this integration for version control of your source artifacts, and the day-to-day developer
workflows
 To use RTC browser clients for tracking and planning your project
 To use RTC browser clients for managing builds
 To use RTC browser clients for admin work
 [Note: The admin may need to use the Eclipse client for certain tasks that have not been web
enabled yet, though a lot of parity work has been done in the last few releases
 Some process customizations can only be done via Eclipse though most are now via the web client
 Creation of build definitions requires an Eclipse client as well]

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Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

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Welcome!
 You’ve just installed the RTC Shell Integration and restarted your machine
 The welcome screen pops up, with options to explore the tool
 It asks you to choose a mode of operation: Advanced (focused on power users) or Basic (focused
on others)
 You can always change the mode of operation any time you’d like
 You could use the “Help me choose” link for guidance
 More on modes later in the presentation

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How do I get started?
 The Shell icon shows up in the Start Menu, Task Tray and in your Desktop
 The Task Tray icon has a set of menu items that can connect you to the control panel or log you
in or connect you to your local work area (sandbox) that’s managed by RTC
 Clicking the icon shows you the status of your RTC connections and managed work areas
 In the other places, clicking on the icon takes you to the control panel
Desktop
Start Menu
Task Tray
Status via Task Tray

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Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

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Modes of Operation
 It’s not one size fits all!
 Advanced and Basic Modes
 Advanced mode focused on power users (usually developers)
 Basic mode focused on users who want a simpler, guided experience
 Different usage patterns and user experience

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Advanced Mode
 Developer focused – rich-client-like experience
 Control Panel to set up RTC SCM
 Artifacts View for managing artifacts
 Advanced Preference Management
 Pending Changes View for fine grained control of source control
operations
 Rich context menus on files and folders
 History view to look at file history
In these charts, we’ll focus on the advanced mode

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Basic Mode
 Get started quickly and easily
 File oriented use, simple menus
 Don’t care about advanced RTC SCM concepts.
 Guidance, simpler usage patterns, verbose notifications
 History view to look at file history

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Shell Integration at a glance
 The Control Panel lets you manage your connections, source control artifacts,
preferences
 The context menus against managed files and folders let you perform a host of SCM
operations
 The Pending Changes View gives you fine grained control over your SCM artifacts
and provides advanced RTC SCM functions
 The History View shows file history
 The task tray icon lets you connect to your Control Panel and your work area, and
shows your status

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Shell Integration at a glance – Advanced
Mode

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Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

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Usage Patterns
 Contribute to a feature/module that your team is working on (starts with
loading a repository workspace), or
 Start working on a new feature/module and share with your team (starts with
sharing to a component in a repository workspace)
 Once you’re set up for contribution to a new or an existing feature, you’d use
the Shell integration for collaborative software development, with the same
pattern of change/check-in/review/deliver/accept/merge/change…
 In the next few charts, we’ll talk about setting up for share or load.

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Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 Contribute to an existing feature
 Work on a new feature
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

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Contributing to an existing feature
 Get connected to an RTC repository/project area (Shell Control Panel)
 Accept a team invitation or
 Create a new repository connection and connect to a project area
 Create a new repository workspace from your team’s stream (Shell Control Panel)
 Load the Repository Workspace into a local work area or sandbox (Shell Control
Panel)

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 Login to a browser based RTC Client and look at your team’s plan to see what’s
assigned to you this sprint (Web)
 Work on the source files for the feature (any editor or your own IDE)
 Undo, check in, accept changes, suspend/resume changes, discard changes (Shell
Context Menus, Pending Changes View)
 Compare, merge (Shell Context Menus, Pending Changes View)

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 Associate with work items (Shell Context Menu, Pending Changes View)
 Submit for review (Web)
 Incorporate review feedback (Web, local editors)
 Deliver to team stream and resolve the work item (Shell Context Menu, Pending
Changes View)

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Contributing to existing: Get Connected
 Using the team invite that you received you could connect to a
repository/project area/team area
 Or you could connect yourself using the Control Panel options

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Contributing to existing: Create and Load a
Workspace
 You can create a repository
workspace from stream or a
snapshot that has your team’s
changes
 Access permissions are set to
private by default but you could
change the scope
 Note that the visibility of change sets
you create isn’t controlled by this
access
 You can pick and choose the
components you’d like to work on
 Note that for local builds to work, often
times you’d need to load dependency
components that you’re not directly
working on.

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Contributing to existing: Create and Load a
Workspace
 By default, a the “New
Workspace” operation loads
the workspace into your local
machine as well
 You can load based on load
rules, or create additional
folders while loading
 The root folder that you load
into becomes your sandbox
or work area
 This is tracked by RTC from now
onwards
 More on this later

2323
Contributing to existing: Load Rules
 Your team may have specific load patterns expressed via load rules
 Load under a specific folder hierarchy
 May be different for different components
 Note: Load rules can be created only via the rich clients but applied across all clients including
the Shell integration
 Your team lead may have shared the rules file via email with you, and it’s on your local
machine – aka local load rules file
 Or the load rule file may have been delivered to your team’s stream – aka remote load
rules file
 Either way, you can load a repository workspace to match the patterns defined in a
load rule file

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Contributing to existing: Local and Remote
Load Rule files

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Contributing to existing: next steps
 Once you’re set up, the rest of the experience of working in the shell is the
same as when you’re working on a new feature, and we’ll describe that in a
bit, in the ‘Working in the Shell’ topic

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Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 Contribute to an existing feature
 Work on a new feature
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

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Work on a new feature
 You’ve been working on a new feature in a folder in your local machine and you’re
ready to share it with your team now
 Set the root folder in your work area as your sandbox (Shell Context Menus)
 Once the sandbox is set, you can share the top level folders under the sandbox
(Shell Context Menus)
 You can share into an existing component, your folder becomes a top level folder in the
component
 You can share into a new component
 The component can be in an existing workspace or you can create a new workspace
 Once shared, your source code is checked in to the RTC repository
 Note: The share workflow in the Shell by default prompts you to deliver your changes,
but in non-trivial cases you may want to get your changes reviewed first

2828
Work on a new feature
 Associate your changes with work items (Shell Context Menu, Pending
Changes View)
 Submit for review (Web)
 Incorporate review feedback (Web, local Editors)
 Deliver your changes to your team’s stream (Shell Context Menus, Pending
Changes View)
 If you’ve created and delivered a new component, it will show up as an
added component in your team’s stream that your team members will need
to accept (Pending Changes View)
 Note that in this case, you didn’t need to explicitly get connected to RTC. If
you’re not connected, the Share operation prompts you to get connected

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Work on new feature: Set Sandbox
 Once you set a sandbox, RTC starts
managing the files and folders under
the sandbox
 A .jazz5 folders stores the RTC metadata
 While setting a sandbox, you could at
the same time load a repository
workspace into the sandbox
 If a repository workspace is loaded, your
new changes would typically be shared
into a new or existing component in that
repository workspace
 Useful when you’re adding a new feature
to a set of existing features
 Otherwise you make your choices for
repository workspace/component during
Share

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Work on new feature : Share
 The Share workflow is
comprehensive
 If you’re not already connected, you
can connect to a new RTC repository
 You can create a new repository
workspace or use an existing one
 You can create a new component or
use an existing one
all as a part of the Share workflow

3131
Work on new feature: Share
 The Shell integration also
prompts you to deliver as a part
of your Share workflow
 If you’ve selected a workspace, your
changes will be delivered to the default
flow target for the repository workspace
 If you want your changes reviewed
before you deliver, do not deliver your
changes as a part of Share. Instead,
associate your changes with a work
item and submit for a code review
 Once delivered, your team can
see your changes

3232
Work on new feature: next steps
 Once you’re set up, the rest of the experience of working in the shell is the same as
when you’re contributing to an existing feature, and we’ll describe that now, in the
‘Working in the Shell’ topic

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Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 The Sandbox
 Working with files
 The Pending Changes view
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

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The Sandbox: what is it?
 This is your work area, the root
folder, under which
 you load your repository workspace,
 or have folders which you share with
your team
 It shows up in the list of sandboxes
in the Managed Artifacts view
 Easy access from the task tray icon
 Any SCM operation with files and
folders requires a sandbox to be
set

3535
The Sandbox: multiple sandboxes and
switching
 You can only track one sandbox at a time with the Shell
Client
 You can switch to a new sandbox either via the task
tray context menu or the Artifacts View
 You can switch between existing sandboxes via Open
Sandbox in the task tray or the ‘Set Current’ option on a
sandbox in the Artifacts View
 All the meta data for all the sandboxes are preserved
across switches
 The idea is that you work on one sandbox at a specific
point in time, and switch back and forth if you need to
 We could have supported multiple sandboxes at one
time, but some of our richer integrations like the
Pending Changes View would become complex to use

3636
The Sandbox: files and folders
 You can perform RTC SCM operations
on files and folders in the sandbox
 They have RTC context menus
showing up against them
 Files and folders in the sandbox may
have state specific glyphs showing up
against them
 Glyphs for unresolved, shared, outgoing,
incoming, conflict, …
 Note: The total number of glyphs that
Microsoft Windows allows is restricted, so
if you have other tools that set glyphs, the
RTC glyphs may or may not show up

3737
The Sandbox: Pending Changes View
 Changes to your
sandbox are tracked
in the Pending
Changes View
 More on that later

3838
Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 The Sandbox
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

3939
Working with files in the Sandbox
 You could use the context menu options on the tracked files and folders
 Change set management will be done by RTC under the hood
 Good enough for the simple workflow
• Make changes to one or more files
• Check in to a change set.
• Associate one or more work items with your changes (optional, but recommended)
• Submit for review
• Incorporate review feedback
• Deliver.
– Note that if you multi-selected files during check in, they’re all part of a single change set, so Deliver will deliver all
the files even if you’ve selected just the one.
– If you haven’t associated a work item yet, based on your preferences, Deliver can prompt you to associate a work
item as a part of the workflow.
– You could also directly choose to deliver the files that you changed. It will check in the files, prompt you for a
comment and a work item (based on preferences) and then deliver the changes.

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Working with files in the Sandbox

4141
Status of a File in the Sandbox
 Overlays show status
 The Windows Explorer has a
limitation on the number of
overlays that can be shown on
files and folders
 What other tools in your system
impacts the overlays that you
see.
 Status may or may not show
reliably
 The Pending Changes Status
menu option shows status
 More reliable

4242
File Properties
 The Jazz section in the Properties
View has the RTC related
properties for a file.
 You can change the executable
property, or the line delimiter or
MIME type for your platform if
you’d like.
 The line delimiter/MIME type is used by
the compare tool
 You can also define custom
properties

4343
History View
 ‘Show History’, invoked from the context menu on a file in the sandbox, shows the
version history of a file.

4444
Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 The Sandbox
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

4545
Working in the Pending Changes View
 Lets you work with files and
change sets
 Undo, check-in, deliver, accept,
associate with work item
 Advanced uses
 Suspend and resume: I want to
work on this critical customer
defect, so suspend my current
changes for now, I’ll resume them
later from my workspace
 Discard: not interested in these
changes any more

4646
Working in the Pending Changes View
 Advanced uses
 Setting flow rules
• I want to back-port
this change to a
maintenance stream
• I want to both accept
changes from and
deliver changes to
my team’s stream,
and only deliver
changes to the
integration stream

4747
Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

4848
Working in the Pending Changes View:
Submission for Code Review
 Advanced uses
 I want to submit my changes
for a peer review before I
deliver
• ‘Submission For Review’
completes the change set,
associates a work item and adds
an approver, all in the same
workflow
• You can associate an existing
work item or create a new one
• Integrated with the new Code
Review feature in 6.0.1

4949
Working in the Pending Changes View:
Submission For Code Review

5050
Reviewing Code: 6.0 and earlier
 Prior to 6.0.1
 Reviewers could view the change
sets submitted for review in the
browser based client
 Add review comments to the
associated work item
 Or they could review change sets
via the Change Summary View in
one of the rich clients

5151
Reviewing Code: 6.0.1
 Your project admin needs to set up Code Review for your project (more on this later)
 Now when you submit for Code Review, the review information gets added to the
Approvals tab
 Click on the Open Code Review button to start the review in the browser

5252
Reviewing Code: 6.0.1

5353
Code Reviews in 6.0.1: Set up
 To enable the new code review feature in 6.0.1, your admin needs to set it up via the project area
editor in a browser client
 Your project admin needs to add an approval attribute for Code Review for code review to be enabled in your
project.
 Since 6.0.1

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Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

5555
Handling Conflicts
 If you and someone else are
working on the same file and
s/he delivers first, you may get
a conflict when you accept
incoming changes
 If your changes are checked in,
then you get a conflict
 If your changes are still local
(Unresolved) then RTC will
warn you that it may overwrite
some changes. Do not ignore
the warning unless you don’t
care about your changes

5656
Handling Conflicts
 You could try to auto-
resolve, RTC will prompt
you if it’s unable to.
 Use the compare merge
editor to resolve conflicts
manually
 Resolve with mine
overrides the incoming
changes
 Resolve with proposed
overrides your changes

5757
Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

5858
Preferences
 Customize your
workflows via preferences
 Use a compare tool of
your choice plugged into
the RTC compare merge
process
 Export your preferences
to a file and share with
your team or import your
team’s preferences into
your environment

5959
Outline
 Goals
 Getting started
 Usage patterns
 Code review
 Preferences
 Client Parity

6060
Does this integration give me all SCM functions I get in
Eclipse or Visual Studio Clients?
 This integration is focused on developer work flows
 Team workflows such as creation of streams needs to be done via a rich
client.
 This was intentional; the shell client is supposed to be lightweight the
goal was not to make it clunky
 Developer workflows such as creating and loading workspaces, sharing
your files and folders and related activities are the focus

6161
Does this integration give me all SCM functions I get in
Eclipse or Visual Studio Clients?
 IDEs support editors and views, the Windows Explorer
does not
 We wanted the integration look and feel as shell-native as possible
 Some views such as the Pending Changes View and the History View
are an important part of the developer workflow, and can be used in the
Shell
 We could have implemented all editors and views in the Shell but then it
would look like a rich client embedded in the Shell, or a standalone tool
 Your feedback is welcome!

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Backup

6363
Install Tips
 During uninstall/install, instead of restarting your machine, you could kill the shell process
(explorer) in the task view, uninstall, reinstall and then restart it in the task view again (File->New
Task(Run…))
 The Shell installer lets you choose if you want to restart after an install/uninstall
 If you don’t restart, you may see unexpected behavior in your Windows Explorer

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Thank you!

Windows shell integration advanced

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