The Process Practice

We released iFix3 for IBM Rational Method Composer 7.2 on Friday. We recommend that all 7.2 users apply this upgrade as it fixes a couple of bugs and even provides some enhancements to existing features that people were urgently asking for. See a summary of the key changes below. As always download and install it by just starting your IBM Installation Manager from your Start menu, clicking the Update button and following the wizard for downloading and installing the patch. After the patch is applied checkout the release notes in the installation directory: “<install_dir>\rmc\readme\readme_ifix3.html“.

The most import changes/fixes:

• Added missing online help sections around Workspace libraries and Birt report design.
• The configuration editor now does not perform a consistency check (that would result in info, warning, and error messages in the Problem view) every time you make a change, which was really degrading performance. Now the check is performed only when you save or press the “show configuration errors” button on the top-right of the editor.
• Several additions to the way copying of process resolves variability relationships on activities as well as the underlying method content. For example, if you perform a deep-copy of a pattern or activity to another process that it also performs an automatic synchronize to pick-up contributors or replacers valid in the target process’ configuration. In particular in the Tailoring perspective you can select a process that has several valid configurations with any of these and get all contributions/replacements that are valid in that configuration. Before this release you could only work with the process’ default configuration.
• The tailoring perspective now supports adding attachments to method elements that show with the respective process elements.  A wizard walks you selecting the attachment and then performs some magic under the covers of creating a contributor and synchronizing the process without the user having to do anything.
• Several fixes around using international characters and fonts in names. Despite those fixes, make sure that when you deploy RMC Web sites that use international characters such as umlauts in the names to configure your web servers to support the respective character sets used.
• Improved loading times of the published Web site, in particular when loading the first page.
• Fixed the issue that the rich text editor’s cursor and scroll area would jump to the top of the text every time you would save, indent text, or drag elements into the editor to create links.
• Fixed miscellaneous bugs around Search in RMC, roll-ups in the published site, contributing attachments, broken report templates introduced in ifix2, missing roles imported from WBM, and many more.

The iFix2 patch for Rational Method Composer 7.2 will be released on the update server in the next couple of hours. To download and install it just start IBM Installation Manager from your Start menu, click the Update button and follow the wizard for downloading and installing the patch.

This patch includes some important fixes and minor enhancements so that we generally want to encourage all RMC users to install it. Most important changes:

• Added the ability to select a base configuration when creating a Tailoring Session. This allows you now, for example, to start your tailoring session not only based on the default RUP configuration, but any configuration that includes the RUP processes. Hence, you can now start with the Small RUP for RAD and tailor it to your needs.
• The tailoring wizard will not ask your for a configuration project anymore, but just automatically create/use one specific project for tailoring sessions.
• Added the ability to extend activities from the same process, i.e. applying the same activity more than once in a process.
• Fixed migration and import bug reported here.
• Fixed publishing issues with Activity and Activity Detail diagrams as well as when using activity partitions.
• Fixed the ability to run a report against the whole method library, i.e. without selecting a configuration.
• Fixed issues in which the editors became dirty by just opening an element (such as Steps).
• Fixed the missing links from Guidance pages back to the referencing Activities.
• Resolved some localization issues in Reporting.

Also make sure to check-out the readme file for some remaining open issues.

Using IBM’s new installer technology with RMC gives us the capability to roll-out bug fixes much, much quicker now to our customers. Our team has just released the first of these so-called iFixes via the IBM Installation Manager to fix a problem RMC 7.2 had with its Microsoft Project export.

If you are still using MS Project with RMC (and not the advanced integration with Rational Portfolio Manager ) then get this fix by just starting the Installation Manager and clicking on the “Update Packages” button. It will then guide you through downloading and installing the fix.