What is a global attribute?

Global attributes are attributes that are defined for the site as a whole. They can be used in artifacts in any project on the site.

Global attributes (also called general-purpose attributes) can be dates, lists, integers, email addresses, or text entry fields.

Dates: If you add a date-type attribute to an artifact, a date field and a calendar icon appears on the artifact entry page. If you click the icon, you can select the date from a pop-up calendar. You can also enter the date directly in the date field in YYYY-MM-DD format.
Email addresses enables you to enter an email address.
Integers enables you to enter a numerical value.
Single and multi-select lists: For example, an attribute named Operating System may have the following values:
- Mac
- Linux
- UNIX
- Windows
Items in a list are referred to as list elements. List elements can have parent and child elements. For example, an element called "Windows" may have child elements of XP, 2000, and so on. When a project member selects the Operating System attribute, he or she can select from the list of defined operating systems. Parent elements appear on creation pages for queries and reports. Choosing a parent element results in the inclusion of the children. Each list element must be assigned a position within the list.

State attributes enable you to see where an artifact instance is in its lifecycle and to promote it to the next state (for example, from Open to Fixed).
Text attributes enable the entry of arbitrary text strings. Text fields allow you to enter upto 5000 characters. Long text fields wrap the text and provide you with the scrolling facility.

Domain administrators define global artifact types from the Administration tab. Global artifact types and their associated attributes are available to all projects.

Project owners can add global artifacts and attributes to their projects from the Projects tab. Once an element is associated with a project, the project owner can customize the element for the project. Customizations do not affect the global element. Changes that you make to a global element will not affect the customizations made on a project level. If a project owner needs to incorporate changes made at the global level, the owner must delete and re-add the artifact type to the project.

Element positioning

The positioning of list attributes is controlled by the following rules:

Each element is assigned a position within the list.
Only one list element can be assigned per available number of positions. For example, only one element can be assigned the number 1 position, only one element can be assigned the number 2 position, and so on.
The number of available positions in a list cannot exceed the number of elements in that list. For instance, if you have five elements in your list you have positions 1 through 5 available.
There can be no empty positions within a list.

Sometimes you may want to rearrange the positions of elements in your list. You can do so by assigning a new position to a list element and saving your changes. For instance, if you had element C assigned to position 3 but want it in the first position you could reassign it to position 1. Moving a list element to a higher position in the list pushes all other elements down one position.

For instance, if you have the following list:

and you want to put element C in the first position. Assigning C to the first position and saving produces the following list:

If you attempt to put more than one element in one position the relative order of the elements is maintained. For example, you have a list with elements in the following order:

You move element D to position 2. You also move element E to position 2. In this case D will be assigned to position 2 and E to position 3. All other elements will be moved according to the previous rule. The final order will be: