Data export in JSON format for Rally subscription

Products

Rally On-Premise Rally SaaS

Issue/Introduction

Need to export all data from my Rally Subscription.

Environment

Release: AGILE CENTRAL, RALLY SAAS

Resolution

Requesting an Export

A verifiable Subscription Administrator must submit the request. Requests from generic support accounts or shared logins can not be accepted due to the inability to verify the authenticity of the request.

The Rally Support Team can provide a secure download with a full export of the data in JSON format. Note that internal resources will need to be leveraged to translate the data into another format.

JSON Export Details

The exported data includes the subscription's configuration, the artifacts, and timeboxes.

Included in the full subscription export:

Test Case Steps
Test Cases
Test Case Results
Discussion Posts
Tasks
Defects
Defect Suites
Portfolio Items
User Stories
Iterations
Releases
Projects (Open and Closed)
Workspaces
Workspace Configuration

Not included in the full subscription export:

Attachments
Revision History
Milestones
Investments
Test Sets
Risks
Users
Permissions
Schema definition, including custom field definitions

The export process will execute WSAPI queries against these REST endpoints, collect the result pages and store the objects in a series of files in the requested format.

File Format

These files will have a naming convention of "EndPoint_<index>.JSON" where <index> as an incremental integer starting with 0.

The data that is exported within these files is the full details of the objects as they are returned by the WSAPI query.

Notice that collection fields would include their reference. The export will provide the reference to the collection, the included count and the reference to the individual items of that collection. What the export will not do is combine or link together these referenced collections with the parent object. Essentially, this is exactly as what is returned by a WSAPI query. Also received is a reference to the collections' items.

How to Download The Data After Rally Support Has Completed The Export Process

After Rally Support has exported the data a Subscription Administrator can download the export file.

Click on Setup in the upper right side of Rally.
Select the Subscription tab.
Click the 3 dot (kebab) menu.
Select Download Exported Data.

Using Exported Data

The main purpose of providing this export is for a backup, perhaps to introspect the objects in case they are needed to learn about the data more deeply. Further purpose could be to run offline data integrity checks.

The purpose of this export is not to provide a ready-to-go file or set of files, that are ready for import into another product or system. To migrate Rally's data into another platform, we recommend using the supported Rally Connectors and enter the search terms 'rally connectors'. These connectors vary in capabilities/functionality, they are specific to their target system. They provide an online integration between Rally and their targets. They can more easily be used to sync data or migrate data from Rally to other platforms.

The main reason the subscription data export is not best used for such migration is that the cross-references between objects are captured in various files depending on the involved endpoints. For example: to migrate user stories along with their test cases and defects then a program will need to be developed that finds the stories, learns about all applicable test cases and defects, then locates each of those in their own respective exported files - then migrate them as one unit into the target. Essentially, this would be what the connectors will do.

Another challenge with using the JSON data export to migrate data to external platforms is that it will have to be mapped to a digestible format of the target. Again, this is something that's already done by our specific connectors as they were written for this purpose.

Additional Information

agile central; rally; data export; data extract; export all data; Subscription Export; historical backup