Objectives

The new learning objectives of this exercise are to create a repository connection to a JIRA repository on the Syndeia Web Dashboard (SWD), view the repository including properties, relations and search, and create a reference connection.

Preparation

This exercise assumes the student has

·         Syndeia Cloud 3.4 installed with a valid user account,

·         A valid user account to a JIRA repository, and

·         A valid user account to a at least one other on-line repository, e.g. Confluence.

The user can use any JIRA repository they have available.  Because the content of your JIRA repository will be different, the specific examples in the following exercise instructions are only a guide and example for your actions. It is generally advisable to carry out these exercises in a non-production repository, a “sandbox”, set up for training and practice purposes.

See Video 1.9 for an introduction to the Syndeia Web Dashboard.

Background – JIRA

As envisioned by Intercax, the Digital Thread is composed of inter-model connections between models in different repositories, which Syndeia creates and manages, and intra-model connections between elements in the same repository, which the individual tool creates and manages. As of Syndeia release 3.4, the Syndeia Web Dashboard can extract and display some model information from a JIRA repository. Figure 1 shows a tree view of this information, with labels identifying the Jira element types. Note the different icons. The label color coding indicates how the JIRA element type is mapped to the Syndeia Cloud element types: Repository (green), Container (red), and Artifact (blue).

The Syndeia JIRA integration supports a large number of standard JIRA issue types, including Story, Bug, Task, Improvement, as well as other standard and custom types. Similarly, the Relations table (Step 7) and the Digital Thread Explorer (Step 9 onwards) can display a wide variety of JIRA relations between issues, as well as inter-model connections. A partial list of supported Jira relations include Relates, Blocks, Cloners, and Duplicates. The intra-model connections are not permanently part of the Syndeia Cloud graph; they are extracted and displayed as needed.

This information is important in formulating and interpreting Syndeia graph queries. A more complete diagram of the Jira data model as it is understood by Syndeia is available through the web dashboard help menu on the left.

Within the SWD, users can view these element types in the Tree view of the repository contents, as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1 Tree view of JIRA repository

Exercise

1. Log on to the Syndeia Cloud Web Dashboard (see Video 1.9) and click on the Repositories icon on the left border (Figure 2).
   
   

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   Figure 2 SWD Repositories page (initial) – Repositories icon outlined in red
   
   

2. If no repository connection to JIRA is available, select JIRA in the left column, then click the + icon at the top of the column. Complete the form and click Create (Figure 3).
   
   

   Figure 3 Adding a JIRA repository connection
   
   

3. If a JIRA repository connection already appears under JIRA, but you need to add your own access credential, select the JIRA repository and click the Gear icon at the top of the column. Complete username and password and click Update (Figure 4).
   
   

   Figure 4 Updating JIRA repository info
   
   

4. Your repository should load. Expand it to show Projects and Issues, as in Figure 5. See Background section for discussion of JIRA artifact types.
   
   

   Figure 5 Viewing JIRA repository contents on Repositories page
   
   

5. On the right border, there are three icons, labeled Details, Relations and Search. Select a JIRA element in the Tree View column (ADS-10 in our example) and click on the Details icon. A Detail list appears to the right as in Figure 6. Scroll down and review the attributes of the JIRA element that are available to Syndeia 3.4, including name, type and externalKey, which is the unique identifier in the JIRA repository. Click the Details icon again to close the list.
   
   

   Figure 6  SWD Repositories page, Details list (Details icon highlighted in red)
   
   

6. Click the Search icon on the right.
   
   

   1. In the Search window, select JIRA Simple or JIRA Advanced from the Select type pull-down menu.
      
      

   2. If JIRA Simple is selected, select the JIRA Container (Project) to be searched from the first pull-down menu and the Artifact Type from the second pull-down menu. If additional filtering is required, use the Property and Operator pull-down menus. fill in the Value field and click Add to add one or more filter conditions. Click Search. In our example, we entered Autonomous Driving Systems for Container, Artifact Type = Issue, and issue = ADS-1 for the filter. The result(s) of the search are shown on the right, as in Figure 7.
      
      

      Figure 7  SWD Repositories page, Search feature (Search icon and search result highlighted in red)
      
      

   3. If you select the JIRA Advanced option before searching, you may enter a query in JQL (JIRA Query Language) for the search.  See JIRA documentation for a discussion of JQL.
      
      

   4. Click the Search icon again to close the Search window.
      
      

7. Select a JIRA element in the Tree View column (ADS-8 in our example) and click on the Relations icon on the right.
   
   

   1. In the Relations window (Figure 8), you will see a list of Inter-model relations, from the selected JIRA item to other non-JIRA models, and a list of Intra-model relations, from the selected JIRA element to other JIRA elements in the same JIRA repository. In this example, there is one Inter-model relations, to a GitHub file, and two intra-model “relates to” links (“relates to”  and “blocks”) to other JIRA issues.
      
      

      Figure 8  SWD Repositories page, Relations lists (Relations and Add icons highlighted in red)
      
      

8. To create a reference connection between a JIRA item (in our example, ADS-8) and an element in another repository, click on the + (Add) icon highlighted in Figure 8. A Create Reference Relationships window will appear as in Figure 9.
   
   

   1. At the top, either select an existing Syndeia project to save the connection within (DZSB01 in our example) or create a new project. See Video 1.5 on creating Syndeia projects for further discussion.
      
      

   2. Under Select target artifact, choose the other repository to which the new connection will be made. In our example this is TestRail @ Intercax.
      
      

   3. If you have valid access to this repository, its contents will appear at the bottom of the window. Scroll down to the element that will be the target of the new connection and click the checkbox beside it. This is TestRail test case Object Identification in our example.
      
      

   4. Each Syndeia connection has a directionality. The Select direction pull down menu higher up in the window allows the directionality to be set as desired before the connection is made.
      
      

   5. Click on the Create Reference Connection button at the bottom. The new connection should appear in the Inter-model list after the Reload icon is clicked.
      
      Note: In Syndeia release 3.4, it is not possible to create Model Transform inter-model connections or intra-model connections through the SWD. Some of those use cases will be added in future releases.
      
      

      Figure 9  SWD Create Reference Relationship window
      
      

9. The Digital Thread Explorer or DTE (Figure 10 - Figure 12) provides interactive visualization of inter-model and intra-model connections in a graph format. To launch DTE, right-click an item in the Tree View and choose Graph View. In our example, this is a JIRA issue, SDB-2149. Initially, it appears as a single node in the Graph View, as in Figure 10.
   
   

   Figure 10  DTE, stage 1
   
   

10. Click on the node (it will show a black border when selected), right-click on it and choose Expand. If this element has any connections, they should appear as in Figure 11. In our example, the initial element had one intra-model connection to another JIRA item (blue circles) and two inter-model connections, to a GitHub file (gray) and a TestRail test case (green).
    
    

    Figure 11  DTE, stage 2
    
    

11. If I right-click on one of the new nodes (JIRA issue SDB-2143) and expand it, additional edges and nodes are displayed (Figure 12) to other JIRA issues. This process can continue until all connections are displayed.
    
    

    Figure 12  DTE, stage 3
    
    

12. JIRA issues in either the Graph View or the Tree View offer direct access to that element in the JIRA repository. If I right-click on SDB-2134 in the diagram in Figure 12 and choose More Details, my browser will open to the same element in JIRA as in Figure 13 (I may be required to log-in to JIRA first).
    
    

Figure 13  JIRA browser interface launched from Syndeia Web Dashboard