Rally: Images and attachments no longer visible or accessible on a work item

Products

• CA Agile Central On Premise (Rally)
• CA Agile Central SaaS (Rally)

Issue/Introduction

An image or attachment that was previously visible or accessible on a work item no longer shows.  Either the image is gone entirely, or a broken image placeholder is shown.  Revision history on the work item may also show a broken image placeholder.

This can be caused under the following circumstances:

• A work item is copied and the original work item is deleted
• A work item was copied and the original work item is in a project the user doesn't have access to
• A single image is copied from one work item and pasted into another work item and the original work item is deleted

Cause

This is caused due to the method Rally uses to internally maintain attachment references.  The attachment becomes linked to the original work item and permissions and accessibility are based on that original work item.  If the original work item is deleted, or the original work item exists in a project that a user does not have access to, then the attachment in the copied work item will not be accessible.  This can affect inline images within description fields as well as attachments such as documents associated with the defect.

Resolution

In order to ensure this is not an issue when copying a work item, it is necessary to upload the attachments to the new work item as a separate step.

If the original image is no longer available on disk, it may be possible to recover the original work item from the Rally recycle bin, save the image from there and then use that saved image to upload to the new work item.

If the original image is in a work item that is in a project that the user doesn't have access to, then either copying that image from the original work item to the new work item, or granting the user access to the source project will resolve the issue.