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# Known issues

This section includes the known issues when working with ALM.

In this topic:

## ALM installation

Server | Oracle: Oracle Container DB mode is not supported. License Administration: ALM has been updated to support management of a new license type, Named License. Quality Center Enterprise Edition continues to support concurrent license types, but does not support the Named License type. When a project with extensions is restored or imported onto a server with a confidential data passphrase that differs from the one on the server on which the project was originally created, an error occurs. The message, `Failed to Get Simple Key Entity`, appears when the data encrypted on the database layer is accessed. To avoid this issue, make sure to install the server with the same confidential data passphrase as the original server. Install Anywhere is the third party product used for the ALM server installation. The dollar sign ($) is a reserved sign in Install Anywhere. To use the dollar sign ($) in any editable text parameter, replace $ with `$DOLLAR$`. ALM installation: The DNS name cannot contain an underscore character "_" in the repository location. Workaround: Replace it with an IP address. Alternatively, in Site Administration, click the Site Configuration tab. Then edit BASE_REPOSITORY_PATH and change the default repository location. For more information, see this KB article. Unsupported databases: When installing ALM on an unsupported database, a license validation error occurs. For more information, see this KB article
Client | If a non-administrator user with privileges to install ActiveX controls clicks the yellow information bar to install ALM, client installation fails. Workaround: Non-administrator users should be prevented from installing ActiveX controls, and should only use the link on the launch page to download the ALM Platform Loader. The following prerequisite applies if there is a forward proxy with Basic Authentication between the server and client machines. Before the first connection to the ALM server, each ALM client must configure the proxy credentials by using the Webgate Customization Tool. To run the tool, on the ALM client machine, browse to the following path and click the appropriate link: http://<ALM server name>[<:port number>]/qcbin/Apps/ In WebGate Customization, navigate to the Proxy Credentials area, select the Use these credentials check box, and type values in the Proxy Username and Proxy Password boxes. Click Save and then Close.

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## Project upgrade

Project repository migration | While repository migration is in progress, you cannot export the project, or create a new project by copying data from the existing project. While repository migration is in progress, if you deactivate a project on an ALM server, and restore the project on another ALM server, the project is not synchronized between both servers and may be corrupted. Workaround: Instead of deactivating the project, remove the project from the first ALM server. The following limitation may occur when adding a file manually or renaming an existing file name directly in the repository while the repository migration is in progress: The file may remain in the old repository without a record in the repository migration report. Workaround: After the repository migration has completed, remove the file manually from the repository. Repository migration may take a long time due to numerous debug messages. Workaround: Set the log level to Warning. While repository migration is in progress, you must not perform a backup of the database or file system. Workaround: If it is essential to back up the database or file system before repository migration is complete, first suspend the repository migration, and deactivate the project. For more information, refer to the Micro Focus Application Lifecycle Management Installation and Upgrade Guide.
Project upgrade with extensions | To upgrade a project that has extensions enabled, the same extensions must be available in the new version. Before upgrading the project, the availability of these extensions in the new version should be verified. Contact your system administrator for more information.
Stored procedures | ALM upgrade fails when trying to upgrade projects which contain stored procedures created by a user who doesn’t have the required permissions for the upgrade project process. Workaround: Save and remove the stored procedures before the upgrade and put them back in after the upgrade succeeds. Alternatively, change the DB user of the stored procedures to a user that has the required permissions for upgrade.
non-UNC base repository path | ALM fails to upgrade projects where the ALM repository uses a mapped drive (non-UNC path) as the base repository path. Workaround: In the Site Configuration tab of Site Administration, modify the base repository path from an absolute path to a UNC path.
Upgrade prioritization | When upgrading projects, ALM does not use the priority values defined in the Project Prioritization dialog box.
Database schema | When the project schema on Oracle contains user defined tables or views that have field names which are the same as the ALM project’s predefined field names, it leads to inconsistent behavior. Workaround: Rename the field names of the user defined tables and views so that they are unique. ALM fails to upgrade projects if the size of the field LN_LINK_TYPE is changed.
Oracle | When you upgrade ALM projects on an Oracle database, the size of the Oracle rollback segment (RBS) may increase when running large transactions. When you upgrade large projects (with a database size greater than 2 GB), it is recommended that you increase the RBS size for the duration of the upgrade so that it has at least 3 GB free. After the upgrade, you can change the RBS size to its size before the upgrade. After installing ALM using Upgrade a copy of the existing schema, if ALM succeeded to create a copy of the LAB_PROJECT, the verify report shows missing indexes, triggers, sequences, and constrains. For more information, see this KB article.
Use of Major Change | To benefit from ALM's session reconnect feature, use of the Major Change option for saving customization changes should be minimized. After a project is upgraded to this version of ALM, the project administrator should review the Allow Major Change permission for custom user groups, and adjust accordingly to minimize the number of users who are granted this permission.

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## Site Administration

Template | When creating a template by copying an existing template or project, or when importing an existing template, the option to enable versioning is mistakenly displayed. ALM creates the template with versioning enabled or disabled based on the source template or project.
Copy project | When adding a non-nullable column to BP_ITERATION (or to it's corresponding BL and HIST tables), the upgrade of the project to ALM fails with an error of `"not enough columns"`. Workaround: Drop the extra columns from the table. Starting from ALM 11.x, ALM converts symbolic links to real paths. The physical directories of ALM domains and projects are real paths. They cannot be changed dynamically. For more information, see this KB article. If a project copying operation is interrupted (for example, the server becomes unavailable), the source project remains inactive and cannot be activated from Site Administration. Workaround: Back up the Site Administration database. Connect to Site Administration using any DB tool. In the PROJECTS table, locate the corresponding row for the project. Use DOMAIN_NAME and PROJECT_NAME columns to identify the project. Change the PR_IS_ACTIVE value to 'Y' to activate the project. Restart the ALM server.

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## Project customization

- Unable to save user properties in Project Customization while the project administrator is modifying properties of another user.

  Workaround: Wait for the project administrator to exit Project Customization.

- Restoring a project that was previously linked to a template onto another server without the template causes Project Customization to be read-only.

  Workaround: Clear the Linked_Template_Items database table, restart the server, and log in to the project.

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## Web Runner

- If you create a defect rule for the following timing, the rule does not work.

  - Creating defect > Load form
  - Editing defect > Load form, without specifying the condition.

## Version control

- Filtering. If you filter on entities using the Version checked out by and Version owner fields, checked-in entities are still included in the filter.

  Workaround: To exclude checked-in entities, use the Version Status field.

- When enabling version control on an existing project, the first check-in time is set when the first version control action occurs (check-out, check-in, view history of versions, etc.).

- Version control is not supported when working with the following test types: Vuser Script and LoadRunner scenario.

- In a version control enabled project, you cannot copy and paste entities that you have checked out. You also cannot copy and paste entities with related entities that you have checked out.

  Workaround: Check in the entities or undo the check-out before you copy and paste them.

- Microsoft Excel Add-in. When working in the ALM Upload Add-in tab, you cannot upload non-versioned tests (for example, LR-SCENARIO, ALT-SCENARIO, or QAINSPECT-TEST) to a version control enabled project. The following error occurs: "test with id ... is unsupported by version control".
- Risk-Based Quality Management. The following limitation occurs when checking out a requirement that is not an assessment requirement, and then it is changed to an assessment requirement: The requirement will not be included in the RBQM analysis until it is checked in again.

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## ALM modules

Releases Module | Project Planning and Tracking. For projects that have been upgraded, the Test Instances Executed out-of-the-box KPI type contains a KPI analysis graph named Not Executed Test Instances by Responsible Tester. The name of the KPI analysis graph should be changed to Not Run Test Instances By Responsible Tester. This has been corrected for ALM 11.50, but needs to be manually implemented for upgraded projects. Project Planning and Tracking. In the Scorecard tab, the scorecard can contain no more than 600 cells. You must take into account the number of scope items and KPIs defined for each milestone.
Libraries Module | After importing a library, the roots of the imported library are not marked in the content view when the original filter contained entity IDs. Sharing of libraries is not supported between version control enabled projects and non-version control enabled projects. In the Comparison Settings dialog box, selecting the Coverage check box in either the Requirements or Tests tab instructs ALM to consider coverage. To ignore coverage, the Coverage check box in both the Requirements and Tests tabs must be cleared. Therefore, if you select or clear the Coverage check box in a library that contains only requirements, for example, this setting is saved and also applied when comparing a library that contains only tests. In a version control enabled project, if you synchronize libraries when there are entities checked out by another user, the checked out entities are not synchronized. When you compare the libraries after synchronization, the entities that were not synchronized because they were checked out by another user are not displayed as Modified in the Compare Libraries Tool dialog box, despite the fact that they are different. When importing or synchronizing a baseline from one project to another, both projects must have the same requirement types.
Business Models | If you remove a model from the business models tree without deleting the representative requirements and then you re-import the same model, new representative requirements are created with the suffix _1. Colors and fonts of model activities are not imported into ALM. Activities are displayed in default colors and fonts. If a model path includes a loop, the loop is ignored, and activities are listed only once in the path. Paths that begin or end with a loop are not considered. If re-imported models change drastically, paths may not resolve automatically. Workaround: An icon indicates unresolved paths. Resolve the paths manually. Support for ARIS 9.8: Model Types: When importing models from ARIS 9.8, you can import standard EPC (Event-driven Process Chain), EPC with column-display, and EPC with row-display. Other EPC notations are not supported. FAD (Function Allocation Diagram) can be imported, however it is not officially supported by ALM. VACD (Value-added Chain Diagram) is not supported in ALM. Performance degradation may occur while importing models when a significant number of imported models/activities already exist in your project. Assignments: If a node has several model assignments, only the first one will be imported to ALM. Adding an assignment to a connector is not supported. BLOB/Pictures/OLE: Importing embedded pictures, OLE objects, and wallpapers are not supported. BLOB type attributes are not supported. Combined-type and User-defined Entities: Combined type attributes are partially supported in ALM. System-defined list type attributes are partially supported in ALM. User-defined list type attributes are not supported in ALM. User-defined attributes are partially supported in ALM. User-defined symbols appear as base symbols. To enable mapping attributes to user-defined fields in an existing model, you must delete the model from ALM and reimport it back from ARIS XML. Pathfinding: Pathfinding is not supported in cycles. Miscellaneous: Automatic creation of requirements for non-activity nodes is not supported. If there are two or more consecutive activity nodes and a non-activity node follows, the generated path will not be connected to the non-activity node. Importing text format is not supported. For example, font size, text color, bold or italic font style. Some visual properties are not supported. For example, 3D format and shadow effects.
Test Resources | When uploading a folder with a file that has the same name as a file in the resource folder, the file is uploaded without deleting the original file.
Test Plan | In test configurations, when changing between the Data Type and Data Resource fields, after synchronizing the libraries, these 2 fields will not be synched.
Test Lab | When non-Latin characters are used for the Domain Name and Project Name fields, the notification email for test set execution summary may contain corrupted characters in those fields. If ALM uses TLS 1.3 as the SSL protocol, enables SSO, and uses Approval ID authentication mode, the “OTA Server is not connected” error occurs when you run tests. Pinned test sets. The following test types cannot be added to pinned test sets: Vuser Script, and LoadRunner scenario. Test Board: Unable to display more than 400,000 test instances in the Test Board tab. If you are using an ALM version earlier than 16.0.1 P2 and have the Enterprise Integration extension enabled for your project, the Test Board tab is not be available. Manual Runner. To cancel a test run using the Manual Runner, you should have the Delete or Delete by owner only permission.
Lab Management / Server Side Execution | Timeslots. If you use a customized version of one of the predefined time formats for your client's system time, timeslots do not function properly. Customizing Lab Entities. After customizing an entity in the Lab project, you may receive an error when you log back in to ALM. Workaround: Delete the TD_80 folder on the client machine before logging in to the project. In the Host module, the Host Purpose values include Quick Test Professional and Service Test instead of UFT (GUI Testing) and UFT (API Testing). Workaround: For UFT (GUI Testing) use Quick Test Professional and for UFT (API Testing) use Service Test. Functional test sets: If you try to delete a functional test set that contains a test instance with a past run in an active state, an error occurs, and the test set is not deleted. If you create a test set with at least one test instance with a specific host requirement, and that specific host’s purposes include the purposes necessary for the rest of the test instances in the test set, that specific host will be the only host requested for the test set. In that case, if that specific host fails, it will not be replaced by another host, and the test set will not be able to run. Workaround: In the Requested Hosts tab, add an Automatch host which includes the purposes of the rest of the test instances. If you try to execute a Functional test set that contains a test with a manual component, an error occurs. See the event log for the full error. Parallel execution of tests on the same machine using server-side execution (Functional test set) and client-side execution (Default test set) is not supported. Execution Report: If your project name includes non-Latin characters, the Execution Report does not open. Workaround: Rename the project. The Execution report does not support 125% scale or a non-medium font size. Workaround: Using the View > Zoom menu in Internet Explorer, reset the zoom to 100%. Using the View > Text Size menu, change the font size to Medium. Users that belong to a group based on Viewer (default user group), are unable to run BPT tests in Server Side Execution. Workaround: In Project Customization, navigate to the Groups and Permissions page, select the user group in the group list, and click the Permissions tab. Click the Test Lab tab. Under the Run entity, select Timeslot ID. Automated tests cannot run using server-side execution and client-side execution at the same time.
Dashboard | Project Reports. In attachments, hyperlinks to files with I18N letters in the file name appear distorted. Clicking on the hyperlink leads to an error. Project reports generated using the Design Step Tabular Template have the following formatting error: The font of the step names in the Design Steps table changes after the second word. The error is fixed in projects created in ALM 11.51 and later, but persists in projects created in older versions of ALM. Workaround: In Project Customization, navigate to the Project Report Templates module. Select Design Steps Folder > Design Step Tabular Template. Click the Download Template button and save it to your file system. Navigate to the file and open it. Highlight the field of the text containing `<<Step Name>>`, and change the font size to 9. Save the document. Return to ALM, click the Upload Template button, and select the saved template from your file system. Graphs. When you generate a Progress Graph in the Dashboard module, the graph may display different information from that displayed in previous versions of ALM. This can occur when the field that you group by does not have the History option enabled in Project Customization, or the History option was not enabled at some time during the period shown in the graph. Requirements. When creating a Requirement Coverage report section as a child of a Tests report section, if you include Test fields in the filter for Requirement Coverage, these fields are ignored when filtering the coverage. Requirements. When creating a Requirement Coverage report section as a child of a Tests report section, if you include Test fields in the report template, these fields are empty in the generated report.
Business Process Testing | The issues described below relate to working with business components, flows, and business process tests in ALM. For information on issues related to working with business components in UFT One, refer to the relevant product's readme file. Version History. The canvas view of a business process test's version history disappears as the mouse cursor hovers over an object, or as the mouse is clicked on elements such as the parameter filter. When running a business process test from Manual Runner, ALM cannot access the values of global parameters and objects set by the workflow scripts. Workaround: For objects, recreate the public object before accessing it in the script. Version Control. To enable you to run tests using data from the Test Combinations Generator after changing a project to a version controlled project, you must first check-out and then check-in the Test Combinations Generator data.

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## Site Administration

Customer tab | When you change the Tenant ID field of a customer to blank, an error message pops up. When you switch to an owner or end customer, and update the customer, a Quality Insight user alert message pops up even when you don't make changes to the Quality Insight user. You should restart the ALM server after changing the ENABLE_SAAS_ADDON_ALM_LICENSE_DISTRIBUTION parameter.

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## Text Search / Global Search

Text Search - Oracle | When you use the Text Search feature in ALM on an Oracle database, note that Oracle has a default stoplist for each supported language containing a list of stopwords. The search does not find words that are in the stoplist for the language in which the search is being performed. For more information, see the Oracle Text Supply Stop Lists (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/text.102/b14218/astopsup.htm#CEGBGCDF). When you use the Text Search feature in ALM on an Oracle database, note that there are some special characters that function as search operators within Oracle. If you use some of them in the search expression, the search may not find the expected results. For example, if you search for the expressions `'a* a'` or`'a%a'`, which contain the operators * or %, an error message may display.

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## Open Test Architecture, API, and workflow

REST API | When working with REST APIs, if the response code is unsuccessful (for example 401, 404), the body of the response will be empty, which means no error message in the body. Workaround: Add “text/html” to the Accept header of the request. Creating Users. If LDAP is enabled, you cannot add users with API. Defects. When setting defect comments to read-only, the Add Comment button is not disabled.
- Workflow | If you change the workflow script of a created entity, the change does not occur in copied entities. No workflow action is available for closing the requirements tree or Req Coverage tab. The NewValue parameter in the FieldCanChange workflow event does not return a value when changes occur to the Target Cycle or Target Release field values. Workaround: Run the following script:
      Example: Function <entity>_FieldCanChange(FieldName,NewValue)
      For i = 1 To NewValue.Count
      MsgBox NewValue.Item(i).Name
      Next
      End Function
where NewValue is a list of ISysTreeNode objects.
OTA | When you use an Open Test Architecture (OTA) list, note that list numbering begins at 1. For example, `mylist.Item(1)` refers to the first item in the list myList. If you have used OTA lists with numbering beginning at 0 in previous versions of ALM, you must manually update them to begin at 1. Favorites. You cannot retrieve favorite filters from the OTA connection's common or private settings, or from the COMMON_SETTINGS table. Use the new API for the Favorite entity. Existing Open Test Architecture applications that change data will fail in a project with Version Control enabled. You must change your code to check out items before you change them in code, and check them in after posting. Workflow scripts and Open Test Architecture applications run with the privileges of the logged-in user, not the privileges of the user who created the script. Scripts and applications that use protected objects, like the Command object, may fail, depending on the project security settings and the group to which the user belongs.

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## UFT Mobile extension

- Unable to update a UFT Mobile field value directly from the Execution Grid tab or the Test Instance Details dialog box. To update, you must click the UFT Mobile button to open the UFT Mobile wizard.

- UFT Mobile related fields are visible in ALM from the Execution Grid tab and the Test Instance Details dialog box only.

- UFT Mobile related site parameters need to be defined manually in ALM Site Administration.

- When switching between a project without the UFT Mobile extension and a project with the UFT Mobile extension, the UFT Mobile Configuration view in ALM Project Customization appears empty.

  Workaround: Close you Microsoft Internet Explorer browser and log in to ALM.

- Unable to connect to a UFT Mobile server from ALM if the proxy requires credentials.

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## General

- IPv6 support: ALM can work on IPv6 enabled systems. However, ALM is developed within an IPv4 environment. This means that in ALM:

  - Data communication is possible using IPv4 transport.

  - Management communication can be over IPv4 transport.

  - The presence of the IPv4 network stack is required.

- Logging in to ALM with the same user name on machines with different locales may result in an error upon login, or when navigating between modules or to Project Customization.

- If you are working with the Text Search feature or Advanced Filters, and there is a high load on the system, you may experience an impact on performance. In this case, further iterative tuning and optimization of your environment and specifically your database server is required. If necessary, patches will be provided in the future to address these issues.

- After enabling an extension in Site Administration, its associated test type is not available from the test type list in ALM.

  Workaround: After enabling an extension, restart your Microsoft Internet Explorer browser.

- Attachments. When creating a new entity (for example, a defect) you cannot attach attachments with the same name.

  Workaround: Create the entity without the attachments. Afterwards, you can add them. Alternatively, before you create an entity, rename one of the attachments.

- Memo images. This feature is only enabled for entities that support attachments. You cannot copy and paste images between fields or entities.

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## Multilingual support

Internationalization Limitations | To enable multi-language support, the DB and FS servers must support Unicode. Unicode is a feature of MS-SQL that allows multi-language support. In Oracle, multi-language support is defined when installing the server. When working with an Oracle UTF-8 database, you can enter text in more than one non-English language. For MS-SQL databases, you can define your projects as Unicode to allow multi-language support. You can also modify existing MS-SQL projects to be Unicode compliant. In addition, you can enter non-English text regardless of the system locale setting on the ALM client machine. However, if the ALM servers are not Unicode compliant, non-English characters entered on the ALM client machine appear as question marks. You cannot type Japanese characters in the ALM Login window Password field. Workaround: Paste text from the clipboard. Opening and updating a project that contains characters different from those set in the ClientOSLocale or ClientOSAdvanceLocale may cause irreversible damage. The InputLanguage inserted from an external component to ALM must be the same as the ClientOSLocale and ClientOSAdvanceLocale. For example, you cannot insert a UFT One script that contains Japanese characters in a client that runs on an OSLanguage with ClientOSLocale or ClientOSAdvanceLocale that is not Japanese. When sending mail that contains non-English characters from the ALM/Quality Center client, it must be sent from the ClientOSLocale and ClientOSAdvanceLocale that are the same as the mail characters locale. To send mail that contains non-English characters, the MailServerVersion and MailClientVersion mail server must support non-English characters. To display non-English characters, the OSLanguage needs to include the proper fonts for the language. The SiteAdminDBCollation and ProjectDBCollation must be set to the same language as the data insert. For example, inserting Japanese characters in a Korean collation is not supported. The Spell Checker tool is available only in English. Due to a problem in the JDBC driver’s specific version, using Chinese and Japanese collation in MS-SQL may cause an error while executing some actions. You cannot create ALM/Quality Center projects with Thai characters in the project name. The number of double-byte characters you can enter in an ALM edit box may be more limited than the number of characters specified in the relevant error messages. The number of characters that can actually be used depends on the database definitions and the character set collation that is being used. For example, one character can occupy 3 bytes when using Japanese characters with a database that is defined to work with UTF8. ALM supports LDAP authentication using non-English character sets. To use non-English character sets, set the LDAP_CHARSET parameter in Site Administration to Default or add the relevant value listed in the Basic Encoding Set list. Hebrew locale. On Hebrew locale client machines, to ensure that ALM memo fields (for example, Description, Comments, Rich Text) are displayed properly, configure the settings in the Control Panel > Regional and Language Options window. Set Languages For Non-Unicode Programs (Administrative tab) and Current Format (Format tab) to Hebrew. ALM Client MSI Generator. You cannot install the ALM Client MSI Generator to a folder that contains non-English characters. Workaround: Install to a folder that contains only English characters. ALM installation. The path in which installation files for ALM are located, and the path in which ALM is installed, can contain only English characters. Non-English national characters are not supported in project names. Workaround: Use English characters in project names. Non-English Cyrillic URLs are not supported when creating noise scripts. Workaround: Use English characters when creating noise script URLs.
Localization Limitations | The UI language is defined by the ALM server and only one language can be defined per server. ALM localized build must be installed and operated on a Windows machine where the Windows native language (MLU*) is identical to the MUI* language. An ALM project created in an English edition cannot be upgraded to a localized edition. It is recommended that both the ALM server and client use the same native language, to avoid possible inconsistencies in the strings. Global Search is not available in a localized version. In Windows 2019 or Windows 10 (version 1803 and later), if you select the Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support checkbox in the Region Settings of your ALM client’s machine, you will encounter the following issues: • You cannot open ALM Site Administration in the Korean or Chinese language session. • Some characters are not displayed correctly in the Korean, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Russian, or Brazilian Portuguese language session. Workaround: Clear the checkbox in the Region Settings of your ALM client's machine. Open Control Panel > Clock and Region > Region. In the Administrative tab, click the Change system locale… button. Clear the Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support checkbox.

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See also:

- What's New in ALM 16.0.1

- ALM Readme

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