Best Practice: Pinning Information to All Reviews

Author: Patrick Knowles

Date: 6/26/2025

Audience: Organization Admins, Systems Engineers, General Jama Connect Users

Products Applicable: Jama Connect®

Use Case

An organization may have common information they wish to be shared with all reviews. One place this information can be added is to the body of the automated email that is published with each review. However, this template is not currently something that can be globally updated for all users. So instead of copy pasting common information into each new review email that is sent out, the Jama Software Solutions team has developed a best practice that relies on a few of Jama Connect's standard features.

Best Practice

In summary, the best approach to ensure all reviews have shared common information included to help guide the reviewers with respect to process, policies, or other information is to create a source item that can be added to all reviews. This best practice, in conjunction with a few other strategies will greatly improve the team's ability to deliver controlled standard information to reviewers.

Implementation

Basic Setup & Approach

The simplest approach to enable this best practice is to add a Text item to the top of a project. This text item will include all of the standard review information that should be shared with each review and be titled something like "Review Information." Once this is created, users will be able to add this item to their reviews when they are creating reviews going forward.

To accomplish this, please follow the steps below.

1. Navigate to the appropriate project
2. Add a Text item
3. Title the Text item "Review Information"
4. Add additional details to the Text item's Description field
5. Save the Text item
6. Organize the Explorer Tree so that the Text item is at the top (this is key so that users can easily access the item when generating a review
7. Lock the Text item so that users do not accidentally edit it

Going forward, users will start reviews must ensure they add this item to each review so that the information is shared with all of the reviewers.

Synchronized Approach

The above approach is great for a team that operates out of one or two projects. For an organization that is attempting to standardize this approach across all of their projects, this method breaks down and requires manual upkeep of many of these Text items.

To combat this and allow for a configuration-controlled approach to the common review information, the Jama Software Solutions team suggests creating one primary source Text item and synchronizing it to all projects throughout the instance. To accomplish this, the team will complete all of the steps above and then follow the steps below.

1. Select the Review Information Text item
2. Select Reuse

   

3. Select Sync items and share Global ID
4. Select the Target Destination
5. Select Reuse Source Project Hierarchy in Destination Project
6. Select Reuse & Sync

   

7. Lock the Text item in its new location

The Text item should now be synchronized to an additional project. Repeat this from the primary source Text item for all projects that need this information.

When the source item or another item are updated, the information can then be synchronized to all of the other synchronized versions of the Text item allowing for standardized messaging across projects.

Filter or Release Based Approaches

For teams that rely on filters or releases to develop their reviews, the above method can be modified via the following information.

Filter Based Approach

This method relies on the concept of sending an entire filter to review. This can be accomplished by right clicking on the filter in the Filters tab and clicking Send for Review. To ensure the filter is setup appropriately to include the Review Information Text item, please follow the below instructions for setup and deployment.

Setup

1. Navigate to the Filters tab
2. Add filter
3. Create filter logic as shown below, be sure to populate the Global ID of your Review Information Text item

   

4. Save

Deploy

1. Instruct users to Duplicate the TEMPLATE REVIEW FILTER
2. Instruct users to uncheck Make Public
3. Instruct users to select Add Rule to filter on the items they would like to send for review (this is critical to ensure that the users do not edit or remove the Review Information Text item portion of the filter)
4. Instruct users to right click > Send for Review their newly created filter

This method will ensure that users, regardless of what project they are in (in the event you are using the synchronized items approach) will have access to this information in their reviews.

Release Based Approach

This method requires updating the Text Item Type with the release field. This method will modify ALL Text items to include a release field and therefore is not recommended over the Filter Based Approach.

1. Add a release field to the Text Item Type
2. Assign the Review Information Text item to all releases within a project
3. Send each release to review as regularly planned, they will now include the Review Information Text item

References

• Success Programs
• Success Catalog
• Datasheets
• Request a Solution Offering or Training from the Success Catalog

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