ALM Limitation with Title Length and Special Characters

Products

• CA Agile Requirements Designer

Issue/Introduction

When trying to export test cases from Agile Requirements Designer to ALM, I am receiving errors such as 'ALM has failed' and 'Bulk operation failed'. 

Actions Taken:

1. Using example flow 'Make Tea' from C:\Program Files\Grid-Tools\AgileDesigner\examples, I modified the flow to have new block titles.
2. From the Path Explorer, I generated test cases and stored them successfully.
3. I then connected to HP Application Lifecycle Management connector and logged in. 
4. I clicked the 'Setup Configuration' button and ensured mappings were correct 
5. In the Path Explorer again, I exported the test cases to HP ALM. 

• Using the ALM REST connector debugging provided a log file with the error messages. Used these directions to enable debugging: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleId=9556
• Using this documentation for creating mapping and export: https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/devops/agile-requirements-designer/3-1/integrations/integration-with-lifecycle-tools/integrate-with-hpe-alm-rest.html
  
  

Environment

ARD 2.10 and earlier
CA Agile Requirements Designer

Cause

The root cause of this issue was an ALM limitation.
ALM was not accepting certain special characters in the Title/Test Case Name field.
   For example: ?,'/!

The reason you do not receive a message with this information specifically is that the ALM APIs are limited, and do not provide a sufficient error message for the problem. 
You may also receive this error message if your Title/Test Case Name is too long.
There is a character limit in ALM which can be increased or decreased by your ALM administrator. 

We found the issue by copying/pasting the test case name into the Title field in ALM.
If you test the title names from within ALM, you will receive a specific error message.

Resolution

Development is currently working on an enhancement to improve this ALM limitation.
In the meantime, here are some workarounds that can be used:

Option #1 
- When creating new test cases, do not add any special characters in the 'Name' field, but instead, add them in the 'Description' field. 
- For example: 
Name: Have Water 
Description: Have Water? 

Option #2 
- Before exporting your test cases in Path Explorer, remove the special characters from the test case name. 

Option #3: 
- In your ALM mappings/configuration, under the Description field's AgileDesigner Field Name, change the drop down option to 'Description of Blocks'. 
- When you export to ALM, in the description field, you will see all the titles/names of blocks as is with the special characters included. 
- This will not be in the main title in ALM, but at least the real titles with special characters will be available in ALM.