CodeBeamer Quick Tour

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CodeBeamer is a J2EE-based, collaborative software development platform that provides critical software change management capabilities and captures the invaluable intellectual capital generated and transferred in development related communications. CodeBeamer uniquely solves the escalating problem of software development by enabling team members to easily share technical, managerial and quality information. It is highly configurable to support organizational processes and easily integrated with existing software development tools.

User Start Page

The User Start Page appears after login and provides a quick overview of a user's personalized information, such as TODO list, approval list, and status reporting. Optional information such as the list of monitored discussion forums and work items can also be viewed on this page.

Project Summary Page

The Project Summary Page provides a quick overview on the status of a project. It displays a project summary with creation data, category, type and optional blocks such as SCM commits, code-metrics links, project-statistic links, announcements, news, tasks, bugs, links, reports, and source files. The content of the Project Summary page is easily customizable.

Change Management

CodeBeamer's change management functionality includes work items tracking, task management, project management, to-do list, approval list, automatic email notification and status reporting. Project scope can be controlled with powerful change management that ensures repository commits are associated with an approved change.

Work items tracking enables better impact analysis using work item associations with code and other artifacts and repository commit feature. Project scope can be controlled with powerful change management that ensures repository commits are associated with an approved change.

Task Management enables multiple assignments to be defined and provides users with real-time data about actual progress and status against key tasks and deliverables. It eliminates the need for imprecise, time-deferred and tedious status emails and off-line meetings. Software developers and other project team members can see the work assigned to them and report their project status including any changes to their tasks, such as a potential bugs that need to be fixed, or a new test that needs to be completed.

The approval workflow provides support for role-based acceptance of changes and ensures the change process is executed according to required timelines.

SCM Repository

CodeBeamer is SCM (Software Configuration Management) independent enabling its collaborative features to be used with existing version control tools. It has built-in interfaces for CVS, Subversion, PVCS, SourceSafe, CM Synergy and ClearCase SCM systems and can easily be extended to support other systems.

CodeBeamer provides managed repository services with Subversion for distributed, Internet-based development teams. The integration provides full web based access and control over Subversion repositories with unified role based access control.

CodeBeamer’s SCMLoop facility for Subversion and CVS allows developers to easily associate tracked items with repository commits. The integration meet users' requirements for tracking code changes, associating commits with bugs, browsing repository revisions, commits, branches, and tags. The SCMLoop facility is integrated with Eclipse and other IDE's.

Build and Release

CodeBeamer’s Build System and Document Manager provide an effective means to organize the software build, release and publishing process. Integration with ANT enables builds to be scheduled as required and run automatically. Integration with the document management system automates the software download process. Unlimited numbers of download categories and downloadable files can be efficiently organized into folders for easy navigation. Setting up different permissions controls which files are available for developers, beta testers and customers. Download activities are tracked automatically by reports and email notifications.

Discussion Forums

Discussion forums enable the capture and retention of knowledge and information from any and all communications with team members, consultants, customers, and other stakeholders. Information is captured in the context of a specific project and can be linked to other project assets as well as easily searched on. Threads can be watched and forums subscribed to, to inform when new messages are posted. News, announcements and events can be posted to the site-wide bulletin board. Access controls can be set for each discussion forum and inboxes can be polled periodically for emails to be copied to a forum. This functionality addresses the challenges typically associated with verbal conversations, lost emails, and employee turnover.

Document Manager

The Document Manager provides a secure, role-based document access where you can share, upload, download, browse, version, approve and track documents.

The following features are available:

• Role-based access control - Provides control on what documents are available for read/write to users in different roles such as developers, beta testers and customers. Unlimited number of custom roles are provided.
• Version Control - Provides Versioning with lock ability that prevents documents from being overwritten or deleted as documents are updated.
• Document Delivery and Notification - Users can create download folders for software delivery, and organize secure document distribution with access notification access audit trail.
• User Access Audit Trail - Tracks how and when documents are accessed by users. Provides a permanent record essential for regulatory compliance of who has read, write or deleted documents.
• Search and Indexing - full text search and indexing on MS-Word, RTF, PDF, HTML, Wiki and Text documents.
• Folders and subfolders - Users can create folders and subfolders, and store and organize documents, such as development specifications, agendas etc.
• WebDAV access - With the WebDAV Web based Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol, users can access documents directly from MS Office and other WebDAV compliant applications.

Wiki

Most of the complex or dynamic content, like charts, MS-Excel, Report or graphs, is served by plug-ins. These parametric language elements have their own documentation hosted. To integrate with external systems or customize your own wiki, the plug-in mechanism is the primary wiki extension point.

Search

CodeBeamer offers powerful search and indexing features on all data that it captures. The search engine spans all assets including code, documents, work items, change requests, forums, chat sessions, user information, builds and releases. The search scope can be at the single project or multi-project level.

Full text search and indexing is provided on all data inclusive MS-Word, RTF, PDF, HTML, Wiki and Text documents.

Unified Access Control with Groups and Roles

Access to specific CodeBeamer functions can be controlled with unified log-on. Project Managers can build up organizational structure with secure personalized information access. Roles such as Architect, Developer, Stakeholder and custom-roles can be used to organize a hierarchical or task-based team structure. Groups can represent organizational structures such as off-shore, near-shore, partners, and customers. LDAP access and single log-on authentications are integrated.

Project Dashboard

CodeBeamer's multi-functional dashboard provides immediate visibility into project status allowing real-time access to task status, work item reports, source code quality reports and other key information. Historic project and individual performance can easily be viewed. Reports, at the single or multi-project level, can be presented in several forms including bar, trend, and Gantt charts.

Defect Reports

CodeBeamer provides visibility into defect submissions and follow-ups. Accurate and real-time defect reports can be provided at anytime, from anywhere. Defect reports are provided on a single project basis or at a multi-project level with different views for project managers, and developers. This allows the project team to focus on the right fixes and to respond quickly.

Workflow Support

Workflows provide project managers, architects, QA engineers and other users with better control on changes of critical tasks, requirements and other artifacts where the change has impact on the project plan, on resources or on deliverables. CodeBeamer trackers integrate a simple and flexible process engine to model business process workflows.

Using this flow control mechanism, you can enforce the proper business processes to your trackers and improve your business operations.

Reports

Reports work on a list of tracker items from one or more trackers belonging to one or more projects . Simple reports contain one table for each tracker. Merged reports present the tracker items in a single unified tabular layout.

Code Comprehension

Static code comprehension accelerates code understanding for developers, analysts and QA engineers. Comprehensive tools are provided with web and fat-client interfaces. Quick symbol search and cross referencing (to, by) are available on projects of any size.

Eclipse plug-in

CodeBeamer provides Eclipse (www.eclipse.org ) with team collaboration features such as change and task management inside the eclipse platform. From the plug-in eclipse developers can share tasks, change requests and work items in a distributed development environment. The plug-in provides project managers with either an eclipse view or a web interface to coordinate and execute development tasks. Both developers and project managers have real-time visibility on the project's status.

Also See

• Knowledge Base
• Feature list
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• Permission denied [Eclipse plug-in]
• Permission denied [Subversion ]
• Permission denied [Wiki Formatting ]
• Permission denied [Wiki Plugins ]

Permission denied [Support & Resources]