Using lookback API to find deleted defect suites

Products

• Rally SaaS

Issue/Introduction

If a user accidentally deletes a defect suite, it can be difficult to know the work items that were affected.  This article shows a method to generate a list of the artifacts that were associated with that defect suite.

Resolution

The following steps are intended for the Chrome browser, however, they may be adapted for other browsers with advanced request diagnostics like Firefox.

Install the Lookback API Query custom app available here

A video walkthrough is available to show how to install a custom app here

This walkthrough assumes that you know when the defect suite was deleted

First, we will want to query for all defect suites deleted within your timeframe with a query as follows, replacing the highlighted dates with your own:

{
 "_TypeHierarchy": "DefectSuite",
 "_SnapshotType": "DELETE",
 "_ValidFrom": { "$gt": "2021-04-01" },
 "_ValidTo": { "$lt": "2021-04-09" }
}

Additionally, set the Fields value to true

Open Developer Tools and click the Network tab

Click Search on the Lookback API Query tool

Go back to the Developer Tools window and look for a line that starts with query.js

Click this entry and click the Preview tab

Expand the Results collection.  There may be multiple numerically sequential entries listed here. 

It may be necessary to expand each entry in order, looking at attributes of the defect suite such as the Name to identify the defect suite that was deleted.

Once you have located the defect suite, expand the _PreviousValues object

The Defects object will list the Rally object IDs of the defects that were associated with the defect suite at the time of deletion.

Right-click on the Defects object and choose Copy Object

Next, craft a new lookback API query, replacing the highlighted yellow text below with the content copied in the previous step.  The query will appear as follows:

{
    "ObjectID": {$in:
    [
        <OBJECT_ID>,
        <OBJECT_ID>,
        <OBJECT_ID>,
        <OBJECT_ID>,
        <OBJECT_ID>,
        <OBJECT_ID>
    ]
    },
    "__At": "current"
}

Click Search on the Lookback API Query tool

The defect IDs will be shown as the numeric portion of the defect in the _UnformattedID column.  Prepend DE to the number for the full formatted ID.