Objectives

The new learning objectives of this exercise are to familiarize the user with setting up a reference connection between two objects in external repositories or on the local file system.

Preparation

This exercise assumes the student has

• Syndeia 3.2 installed as a stand-alone Desktop App with a valid license for use, and

• Syndeia Cloud installed on an accessible server (see Syndeia Cloud installation instructions) and user has a valid account. The user will need to contact the Syndeia Cloud administrator for their organization to get access credentials.

• Two or more Syndeia interfaces to external tools with valid licenses for use (Jama and JIRA are used in the example exercise). In the absence of two additional interfaces, see Alternative Exercise at end of instructions.
  The Syndeia Desktop App stores inter-model connections only in a Syndeia Cloud project. If you need to transfer connections from an earlier version to Syndeia Cloud, contact Intercax for assistance (www.intercax.com/help).

Exercise

1. Launch the Syndeia Desktop App and choose the project created in Exercise 1.1, PROJ_001 (or create a new project).
   
   

2. From the Connection Manager tab,

   1. Click the header title Repository on the left column and select your first repository (Jama @Intercax.com in this example). Expand the tree to show the element to be connected.

   2. Click the header title Repository on the right column and select your second repository (JIRA @Intercax.com). Expand the tree to show the element to be connected.

   3. The dashboard should appear similar to Figure 1. Note that Reference is selected in the center column and the other choices are greyed out. Syndeia Desktop App version 3.2 only supports creation of Reference connections, although other types of connections in the same project, created from plug-in versions of Syndeia, can be viewed.

   4. Drag and drop an element from the left column on top of an element in the right column (requirement Op11 and SDB-1128 in this example). Click Yes to confirm.

      Open

      

      Figure 1 Connection Manager showing local system contents
      
      

   5. Open the Connection Search tab and click the Get all button element to see the connection created, as shown in Figure 2.
      
      
      

      Open

      

      Figure 2  Reference connection viewed in the Connection Search tab
      
      

3. Right-click the connection row in the table at the bottom and select Open Target. In this case, the Target is a JIRA issue and will open JIRA in your default web browser, as shown in Figure 3.
   
   
   

   Figure 3  JIRA issue opened from Syndeia dashboard
   
   

4. While the JIRA issue is open, modify and save it, e.g. click the Start Progress button and change the status to In Progress.
   
   

5. Return to the Syndeia dashboard. Right-click the connection row in the table at the bottom and select Compare Source and Target. The Comparison Result tab will open and appear similar to Figure 4, with the connection in red and the Comment field showing a later version of the JIRA issue available.
   
   

   Figure 4  Comparison Result tab after modifying JIRA issue
   
   

6. Right–click the connection and select Sync Source to Target. The row color should change to green and indicate that the source is connected to the latest version of the target.
   
   

7. Return to the Connection Manager tab. Right-click the original Source element (Op11 in this example) and select Visualize, View neighboring artifacts – Auto-layout. The visualization should open in your default web browser and appear similar to Figure 5.
   
   

   Figure 5  Local visualization of reference connection in PROJ_001
   
   

8. The student is invited to create and visualize more reference connections, using both View all or View neighboring artifacts, if interested.
   
   

9. Alternate Repositories – If external repository connections like those shown above are not available, the student can create two different local repository connections, each containing an Excel file, and carry out the same exercise. No separate Syndeia interface licenses beyond the base module are required. Two separate repository connections are required, because Syndeia cannot create connections between elements in the same repository. See Part 2 Syndeia and Excel course materials, especially Exercise 2.1, for help in creating the necessary connections.