Items are related to other Dimensions CM objects, such as requests, items, baselines, and releases. Item relationships enable you to trace the creation and release of various components in a product.
An item revision can participate in the following types of relationships:
Items are owned by a single design part and can be used by other design parts. Item-design part relationships apply to all revisions of an item.
Item revisions are related to the projects/streams, baselines, and releases that include them.
Item revisions are related to the items used to build them or the items built from them. For example, a source file is related to the object file built from it, and an executable file is related to its object files.
Item revisions are related to the earlier revisions that were merged or altered to create them.
Item revisions are related to the requests that affect them, such as bug reports and change requests.
NOTE If you have configured Dimensions CM to accept requests from an external IDM (Issue Defect Management) tool, item revisions will be related to these requests in the desktop client instead of internal Dimensions CM requests. These requests can be viewed in the desktop client Manage Relationships dialog box for a selected item by selecting External Requests. You can also have them displayed in content windows for a selected item by including External Requests for the item view using the Customize Views menu. See Customizing the Content Windows.
An item revision can participate in user-defined relationships, which are defined in the process model. For example, a design specification document can be related to a source file, or a chapter can be related to a book.
You can view item relationships and, for some relationships, change or unrelate them.
Related Topics
Relating and Unrelating Objects