Listing the Participants

Each step has its own set of participants. For example, someone in development may have to address a change request during the implementation step while someone in QA may have to address that same change request during the testing step. You identify the team members who are allowed to modify the item at a given step in the workflow. You also determine whether they are asked simultaneously or one-at-a-time to accept responsibility for a particular item as it reaches a particular step.

The Participants tab on the Edit Step dialog box has two lists. The Step Notification list specifies team members who will receive notification that the workflow has transitioned to the current step. Members of these lists receive the message defined on the Step Notification tab or a default message from StarTeam Notification Agent if no message is provided.

The Authorized list specifies team members who are authorized to modify an item at this step in the workflow. For example, suppose you are authorized to edit change requests with the Open status but not with the Fixed status. If you select an Open change request and change its status to Fixed, you can still click OK because the authorization for Fixed does not go into effect until a new revision is created with that status. After you click OK, you cannot reopen the change request because you are not authorized to modify an item that is fixed.

For proper operation of the workflow, everyone on the Step Notification List must also be on the Authorized list. In addition, you might want to add some supervisory team members to the Authorized list. For example, a QA team leader might not be assigned items to test, but might need to assist other testers as they perform their jobs. Having the ability to edit items during the testing steps may make both persons’ jobs easier.

To specify who can edit an item at a particular step:

1. Double-click an existing step The Edit Step dialog box opens.
2. Click the Participants tab.

3. Select one of the following types of notification from the Notification Type list:

   Blast	Instructs the StarTeam Notification Agent to notify everyone on the list at once. If a step is critical and must be done in a very short time period, you might prefer that everyone be notified immediately. If StarTeam Notification Agent will be sending a responsibility notification message that requires no response, the Blast option is recommended. Otherwise, after the amount of time set for users to accept responsibility passes, the next participant will receive the message. This goes on until all participants receive the message, and then an exception notification is sent.
   Ordered	The default, instructs the StarTeam Notification Agent to notify users one-at-a-time in the order they appear in the list By default users in a group are listed alphabetically by their logon names. If certain users are better equipped to perform this step than others, you might want the users asked to accept responsibility for an item at this step to be listed in a different order.
   Random	Instructs the StarTeam Notification Agent to randomize the list and then notify users one-at-a-time in the randomized order. If anyone in the list can perform this step, you may not want the first person is the list to be bombarded with requests while a user at the bottom of the list is rarely asked to perform this step. If this is the case, random comes closest to balancing each user’s workload.

4. Before you create the Step Notification list, select the Use Same Names As Step Notification List check box.

   Note: This ensures that all the users and groups in the Step Notification list also appear in the Authorized list.

5. Add any number of individual users, user groups, and references to the Step Notification list. Specifying a reference adds to the list one or more user ID fields. The user whose ID appears in the referenced field at the time an item enters this step will be added to the list. These users and groups are from the server configuration. To add one or more users:

   1. Click the Add Users button next to the Step Notification list to add users to the list. The Select Notified Users dialog box opens.
   1. Select one or more users.
   2. Click OK.

6.  To add one or more user groups:

   1. Click the Add Groups button next to the Step Notification list to add a group to the list. The Select Notified Groups dialog box opens.
   2. Select one or more groups.
   3. Click OK.

7.  To add one or more users by reference:

   1. Click the Add References button next to the Step Notification list to add users to the list. The Select Referenced Fields dialog box opens.
   2. Select one or more user ID fields.
   3. Click OK.
8. (Optional) If you want to add additional users or groups to the Authorized list so that those users can also edit items at this step, clear the Use Same Names As Step Notification List check box.

9. The users, groups and references currently in the Authorized list remain there, but the Add Users, Add Groups, and Add References buttons beside the list become enabled.

   Tip: Use these buttons to add any number of additional individual users, user groups, and references to the Authorized list. It is common to add a reference to the responsibility field to ensure that anyone who has been assigned responsibility to the item at this step, for whatever reason, can edit the item.

10. Click OK or another tab.

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