Setting a Feature on User Story in UI and WSAPI

Products

• Rally On-Premise
• Rally SaaS

Issue/Introduction

Not able set Feature to a user story: there is no "Feature" field or a tab on User Story editable details page.

Resolution

To set Feature in via Web Services API:

The steps in the UI may create a wrong expectation that to set a Feature on a User Story, a Parent attribute of a HierarchicalRequriement object has to be set. However, in the UI the "Parent" field has a more general, casual meaning.

In WSAPI Parent field on a Hierarchical Requirement(a.k.a. user story) is expected to be another Hierarchical Requirement. It cannot be a Feature. Also, Feature field on a story is read-only, and UserStories collection on Feature is read-only. That leaves us with the option to update PortfolioItem field on a story.

Per WS API object model a HierarchiclaRequirement object has Parent attribute that points to another HierarchiclaRequirement (a Parent story), a Feature attribute that references PI/Feature object that could be either its direct PI/Feature parent or the parent of it's parent user story, and a PortfolioItem attribute that points to its immediate PI/Feature parent.

Here is a Ruby example based on CA Agile Central Ruby REST Toolkit that set's Feature on a User Story. Regardless of your choice of language or a toolkit, your code should follow the same idea, since it is working within the same WS API:

require 'rally_api'


#Setup custom app information
headers = RallyAPI::CustomHttpHeader.new()
headers.name = "My Utility"
headers.vendor = "NM RallyLab"
headers.version = "1.0"

# Connection to CA Agile Central
config = {:base_url => "https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm"}
config[:username] = "<User>@<Company.com>"
config[:password] = "<PASSWORD>"
config[:workspace] = "<WORKSPACE_NAME>"
config[:project] = "<PROJECT_NAME>"
config[:headers] = headers #from RallyAPI::CustomHttpHeader.new()

@rally = RallyAPI::RallyRestJson.new(config)

obj = {}
obj["Name"] = "new story efd"
new_s = @rally.create("hierarchicalrequirement", obj)

query = RallyAPI::RallyQuery.new()
query.type = "portfolioitem"
query.fetch = "Name,FormattedID"
query.workspace = {"_ref" => "https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/workspace/<WORKSPACE_OID>" } 
query.project = {"_ref" => "https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/project/<PROJECT_OID>" } 
query.query_string = "(FormattedID = \"F22\")"

result = @rally.find(query)
feature = result.first

field_updates={"PortfolioItem" => feature}
new_s.update(field_updates)