Manage XDS sources

Add Extensible Data Sources (XDS) to bring a wide variety of tools into the TeamForge project and traceability context.

XDS sources provide a means to integrate tools that do not fall under the stock activity classes (commit, build, review, and work item). You can add XDS sources to represent a wide range of tools and product domains. See Extending TeamForge EventQ for more on how XDS works.

Create or find an existing Tool to group your XDS source under

  1. From the desired project context, navigate to Project Admin > Tools.
  2. Determine whether a “Tool” exists that represents a logical container for your desired source. if you are adding a Chef source, look for a tool representing the Chef instance in question.
    1. If a Tool exists already, click the Tool’s title to edit the Tool.
    2. If a Tool does not exist, click Add Tool.

Edit an existing XDS source

  1. To edit an existing XDS source, locate the Data Source in question on the Edit Tool screen. You can edit the display name, look and feel, and tags. If you save an XDS source without defining the Associated Source, you may edit the XDS source later and add an Associated Source. Once the Associated Source has been defined it may not be altered.
  2. Click Update to save your changes.
    Note: While editing an existing source configuration, you can toggle a source from Active to Inactive, which will stop TeamForge from collecting data from that source; toggle back to Active to resume data collection from the source.

Create a new XDS source

  1. If this is a new Tool, first select the Tool Type in the drop-down menu. For instance, if you’re adding a Nexus Tool instance, select the matching XDS Schema name from the drop-down. Alternatively, select “Other” if no applicable choice exists yet.
  2. Select the Include Traceability check box. A blank data source appears. If this is an existing Tool with existing sources, click the Data Source + (Add Source) icon to add a new blank source.
    1. Provide a display name for the XDS source that is depicted on all TeamForge EventQ user interfaces. The display name can be up to 100 alphanumeric characters in length.
    2. Select an icon and set the icon background color to differentiate your source visually.
    3. Select an Associated Source.
      • Select a source from the list of existing sources. TeamForge EventQ associates activities from the XDS source to the selected source. For instance, if you want the XDS source in question to associate to builds from job XYZ, select the source corresponding to job XYZ in the Associated Source drop-down list.
      • If you do not select an associated source, no associations will be drawn to the activities coming from this XDS source.
    4. Add tags to the Source as a means to organize and categorize XDS Sources.
      Tags are particularly useful as filters for reporting via the Reporting API.
      CAUTION:
      Tags are shared across the entire site. Exercise caution so that no superfluous tags are created which may make reporting more difficult.
  3. Click Update.
TeamForge EventQ saves the new custom source, and activates it.