Collaborate

There are a number of ways to collaborate with other stakeholders regarding items in ALM Octane.

Email

You can send emails directly from an ALM Octane item to other users. The email contains information about the item as well as a link to the item in ALM Octane.

To send an email from an item, in the toolbar, click Send by Email .

You can address the email to workspace users and teams. The item's stakeholders, such as Owner and Author, are listed first to help you select common recipients.

You can mark the email as regular or high importance.

You can add the email message as a comment to the item and add the item's attachments as attachments to the email.

Note: By default, the maximum number of recipients per email is limited to 10,000.

If this number is exceeded, the list of recipients is split into groups within the limit. The email is sent to each of the recipient groups separately. Your admin can change the allowed number of recipients by modifying the MAIL_RECIPIENTS_LIMIT parameter. For details, see Configuration parameters.

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Copy links

You can copy links for ALM Octane items, and paste the links in any application.

To copy a link to an item, in the toolbar, click Copy Link .

You can also select multiple items in a grid and copy their links. The links will be pasted on separate lines.

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Comment on items

Users can discuss ALM Octane items by leaving comments.

Also in this section:

To comment on items:

  1. Open an item.

  2. In the comments pane on the right, enter and format your comment.

    If the comments pane is not pinned by default, click Comments .

  3. If necessary, add the following items to your comment:

    Item Steps
    User tag

    Type "@" and start typing a user's name, or select the user from the list. Your stakeholders and recently mentioned people appear top in the list.

    Note: If you are using an IME (Input Method Editor) keyboard, when you type @ or # in a memo field, the IME assumes this is part of a text string and not an indication of a user or link. To add a user or link, either switch to a non-IME keyboard to type the @ or # symbols, or insert a user or link using the toolbar:

    Link to other items

    Type or click #, and add one of the following prefixes:

    • "w" - for a work item
    • "s" - for a user story
    • "e" - for an epic
    • "f" - for a feature
    • "d" - for a defect
    • "t" - for a task
    • "r" - for a requirement

    Start typing an item's name. For example, #dtest searchers for the "test" string in the existing defects.

    Image

    Click in the comment box, and then paste or drag an image you want to add.

    Tip: When a comment is not in the edit mode, you can preview images, added to the comment, in their full size by clicking the images. If the image is added as a link, click the link to preview the image in a new browser tab.

    The image added in an item's comment is also added to the item's Attachments tab. For details on attachments, see Attachments.

ALM Octane includes the comment in the Comments tab of the My Work module. The user receives an alert in the ALM Octane title bar. For details, see My Work.

Perform actions on comments

To edit, reply, or delete a comment, hover over the ellipsis in the upper-right corner of the comment, and click Edit, Reply, Reply all, or Delete.

Action Steps and behaviors
Edit

Edit your comment and click Save.

You can only edit comments that you authored.

Reply/ Reply all

Click Reply to reply to an existing comment. The reply includes a preview of the original comment plus a mention of its author.

Reply all does the same as Reply, in addition to mentioning all other users who were mentioned in the original comment.

Click the comment's preview to jump to the original comment.

Type your reply and click Add.

Delete

Click Delete to confirm the action.

Quick reply

If you are mentioned in a comment, you will receive a mail notification that includes the comment's text. The notification includes a Quick Reply button.

Click the Quick Reply button in the email. If requested, provide your ALM Octane login credentials.

A web page opens listing all the comments on the relevant item. You can reply to the comment that you were mentioned in, or to any other of the item's comments.

Your reply will be added to the item.

Quick reply is supported both on desktop and mobile devices.

Note: Quick replies need to be enabled by a site parameter: EMAIL_QUICK_REPLY. For details, see Configuration parameters.

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Chat with Slack users

If your administrator has set up a Slack integration for your workspace, the Chat w/ Slack button is enabled for backlog items and pipeline run failures. For details, see Set up a Slack integration.

Click Chat w/ Slack to create a Slack channel for an item or open an existing channel. The first time you click this button, Slack requests authentication. This is not required for subsequent Slack chats.

  • In a backlog item, click Chat w/ Slack in the Details tab. ALM Octane opens a Slack channel with this item's author and owner.

  • In a pipeline run's Builds or Tests tab, click Chat w/ Slack . ALM Octane opens a Slack channel with all the users whose commits were included in the pipeline run.

If the administrator approved publishing ALM Octane data on Slack channels, ALM Octane sends information from the backlog item to the channel.

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Discuss on Microsoft Teams

The ALM Octane integration with Microsoft Teams allows you to collaborate with others within your organization, by sharing information on a specific entity.

If your administrator set up a Microsoft Teams integration for your workspace, the Discuss in Microsoft Teams button is enabled for all work items: epics, features, user stories, quality stories, and defects. It is also available for pipeline runs. For details, see Configure ALM Octane for Microsoft Teams integration.

To send a comment to a channel:

  1. Make sure that you are logged in to your Microsoft account within your organization.
  2. In an ALM Octane item, click the Discuss on Teams button . The Discuss on Teams dialog box opens.
  3. If the item has already been discussed on Teams, the previous team and channel are selected by default.
  4. If this is the first time the item is being discussed on Teams, or you want to discuss the item in a different team and channel, select a team and channel. You can select only channels to which the logged in user has access to.
  5. The Message box contains a link to the current entity and a reference to all Related users. Mention users that you want to address, using the @<name> notation that you use in comments. Discuss the item in the message box.
  6. Select whether to add a comment to the item in ALM Octane about the discussion on Teams. A link to the message in Teams will be added in the comment, along with the team and channel names.
  7. Click Post to send the message to the channel, or Post and Open to send the message and open the selected channel in Microsoft Teams.

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Handle simultaneous changes

ALM Octane uses optimistic locking to prevent data loss when users make changes to the same entity concurrently. If your changes include a field that was modified by someone else before you saved, you are prompted to refresh the entity from the server and make your changes again. Click Refresh and restore to reload the entity from the server instead of just undoing your changes.

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See also: