What does it mean for a user to be associated with an artifact?

Associating a user with an artifact means that the artifact can be acted upon by users other than the person who created the artifact.

The administrator may have defined several types of user attributes that allow users to track the artifacts they are responsible for or in which they have an interest. For example, the administrator may have defined 3 user attributes.

Assigned to to indicate the user who is expected to fix the issue the artifact represents
CC for users who need to be kept abreast of activities that the artifact tracks
QA for the Testing Engineer who will verify if the issue has been fixed and track the artifact to closure

All of these user attributes can be inactivated in a project at anytime, and new attributes added to closely define the process, personnel and work flow management your project hopes to monitor.

Users associated with an artifact will receive email when the artifact is altered. If a user attribute is inactivated in your project by the administrator, the users associated through that user attribute will no longer receive email. If the user attribute is later re-associated, the user will once again receive email when the artifact is altered. You can also use user attributes to search for specific artifacts.

When modifying an artifact, you can add, update, and delete users with one submit action. For example, if you have associated three users with an artifact, you can remove the association for one user, change the association of the other two, and associate another user in one step from the Associate Users section of the Artifact Summary page.

If you would like to associate several artifacts with a user, you can run a query that fits all of your criteria to bring up an artifact list that you wish the user to be associated with. When the Query Results page shows up, you can Assign all displayed or you can Assign selected artifacts in the Process results drop down list to assign several artifacts to a user.