Each issue in ExtraView may be associated with a Relationship Group. A Relationship Group is a grouping of issues within the system for the purpose of keeping track of similar or related items. There are a number of types of relationship groups that can be utilized within ExtraView. Each type has different characteristics and different methods of operation. Relationship groups may also differ considerably in the user interface that manages them.
There are several ways in which relationship groups, or related issues, can be displayed and managed. Two of these are shown below.
Consider the following Add screen:
Add screen with a Related Issue Section
When you press the button to add a new related issue (in this case an Adverse Event), you will see a popup window as follows:
Popup to Add the Related Issues
Once you have added data to the Add screen and added a couple of related issues, the screen will look like this:
Add screen with related records added
You may also create new relationship groups, or add issues to existing groups, from the Quicklist report. This has the advantage of allowing you to group issues that have common attributes because of a previous filtered sort. Note that this feature is not turned on in the standard issue tracking installation, as its use will conflict with the previous method of relating issues to each other. Your system administrator will have configured this if appropriate.
After a search on a particular keyword, you might find that there are multiple variants of the same issue in the system, that these are assigned to different people, and that they are at varying stages of completion. Using relationship groups, you could decide to keep them all Open but still group them with the prospect of a common, future resolution. This can be done by producing a Quicklist report, then grouping the issues together.
Quicklist Report screen
A screen similar to the following appears:
Create a New Relationship Group screen
From the previous screen, click on the Merge with existing Relationship Group button.
Adding issues to an existing relationship group
From the list of relationship groups select the existing group to which you want to add the issues. Again, you may alter the list of issues as you update the group.
Once a relationship group has been created, and issues have been associated with it, ExtraView will notify the user of the existence of related issues each time you do a issue update, and give you the opportunity to make batch-level status changes, as needed.
Update Related Issues screen
In addition to the ability to create relationship groups, add issues, and perform batch updates, ExtraView also provides relationship group management features, including merging relationship groups, and splitting relationship groups. Again, your administrator must have configured this option and given you permission to access this feature, before the button appears on the Edit screen.
The following screen appears:
Manage Relationship Groups screen
Merge Relationship Groups screen
To merge the issues in the sort result into a new relationship group, select the desired group from the pick list, and then click the Update button.
Split Relationship Group screen