Setting up a new artifact type

When you find the need for a new artifact type, it is a good idea to follow these steps before you create a new one in the system.

Define the artifact type offline

First, start documenting the definition of the artifact type and the attributes offline. You can use that document as a reference when you actually create the artifact type in the system.

Look for a similar artifact type

Go through the definition of existing artifact types in the system and check if any of them would meet your requirements. You can avoid creating a new type if you find a suitable artifact type. If none of the artifact types exactly meet your requirement but you find one that closely matches your requirement, you can copy that artifact type and save it as a new one. You can then modify it the way you want by adding/removing attributes and thereby avoid defining a new artifact type from scratch.

Look for similar attributes

If you do not find a closely matching artifact type, look for attributes that are defined similar to the ones you wanted to use in your artifact type. You can reuse these attributes in the artifact type that you will create.

Create a new artifact type

Start creating new attributes for your artifact type by choosing the right input type for the attributes. You can check the help docs to know how different attribute types behave. When you choose an attribute name, try to make sure it sounds distinct and it is self-describing. Then create the new artifact type, define attribute groups, and add the attributes under different groups.

Do not make the artifact type as 'active' until you have completely set it up and it is ready to be used in projects.

1. Configuring artifact types

Configure state models

If you had added a state attribute in the artifact type, make sure that the state transitions are set for all the user roles. By default, none of the state transitions will be set and you will not even see the attribute in artifact entry page if you do not set the state transitions correctly.

Configure relationship between attribute options

Check if you can set up parent-child relationship between the options of a list attribute. For example, if you have a list attribute 'Operating System' and if you have set up Windows XP, Windows 2K, and Windows ME as its options, you can add another option called 'Windows' and make that as the parent for all these options. When you want to search for artifacts having Windows XP, Windows 2K, or Windows ME as the value for 'Operating System,' you can simply use a criteria, "Operating System=Windows". When you use the parent option as the criteria for an attribute, the search will automatically include all its child options in the criteria.

Configure base permission for user attributes

Make sure you have configured the right base permission for the user attributes so that you can control how users with different roles should interact with the artifacts.

Configure artifact identifier

Configure a short text attribute, whose value would uniquely identify an artifact, as the 'identifier' attribute. For example, if you have a 'Summary' attribute in the artifact type, you can set it up as identifier and ask users to use that attribute to provide a short summary of the artifacts.

Configure duplicate check

It is a good idea to disable duplicate check and leave it to the project owners to appropriately configure it at the project level. The owner of a project is the best person to decide if duplicate check is really required or not for an artifact type in the project. Also, a project owner can best decide on the correct set of attributes that need to be considered for identifying duplicate artifacts.

Automatically add artifact types to new projects

If you want an artifact type to be used by all the Project Tracker enabled projects that will be created, you can configure the artifact type as 'Default.' This setting will automatically add the artifact type to a project when it is created and the project owners need not manually add the artifact type to projects.