Synchronizing Requirements

Enabling synchronization of requirements between Silk Central and an external RMS enables Silk Central to receive changes that occur in the external RMS whenever a synchronization is executed. If a project has external RMS integration enabled, the master system for requirements is automatically the external system. This means that synchronization is always from the external RMS tool to Silk Central. Requirements can no longer be edited in Silk Central.

Property mapping functionality allows you to map property fields between Silk Central and external requirement tools. For example, a custom field in Silk Central called User might be equivalent to a property field in Caliber called Field_2. The property mapping feature ensures that changes to requirement-property fields are accurately refreshed between projects. If you don't use the property mapping feature, only the name and the description of the requirements are mapped. For more information, see Editing Property Mapping.

Requirements can be synchronized in one of several ways:

Manual synchronization: Click Synchronize Changes at the root folder level on the Properties page to synchronize only requirements that have changed since the last synchronization.
Forced manual synchronization: Click Synchronize All at the root folder level on the Properties page to force synchronization of all requirements.
Automatic scheduled synchronization: Based on globally defined Silk Central schedules.
Automatic online synchronization: Changes to requirements are automatically propagated between tools. This option is available for Caliber only. It requires Caliber client installation on the application server and MPX enabled on the Caliber Server (refer to the Caliber Installation Guide for detailed information on enabling MPX). To enable automatic synchronization between Caliber and Silk Central, add the file ss.jar to the application server at Program Files\Silk\Silk Central <version>\lib and restart the application server. Contact customer care to obtain the file. Requirement data is automatically updated in Silk Central when changes are made in Caliber and traces in Caliber are updated when test assignment changes are performed in Silk Central. This type of online synchronization is only available when projects are configured with the current baseline.

Automatic synchronization of requirements between Silk Central and external requirements management tools can be configured to occur based on global schedules. For details on configuring global schedules, see the Administration topics in this Help.

Note: The Open Caliber buttons open whatever program is registered as the default program for opening files of extension .crm. On some machines, this may be the requirement viewer, rather than Caliber. This behavior can be changed by your administrator. The client program is called caliberrm.exe. When properly configured, the program opens to the requirement that is selected in Silk Central.

The binder icon on the project node of the Requirements tree indicates the status of RM integration for the project:

No configuration: RM integration is not available.
Manual configuration: Requirement import, upload, and synchronization can be done only by clicking the corresponding buttons on the project node in Requirements > > Properties.

At the project level, the Properties page includes the following properties:

Property	Description
System	The external tool with which integration has been enabled.
Status	Whether or not integration has been enabled.
Project Name	The name of the external project that the Silk Central project is associated with.
Requirement Types	The requirement types that are shared between projects.
Last Synchronization	Date and time of the last synchronization.
Last Synchronization Status	The status of the last synchronization including the number of created, updated, and deleted items.

Note: When integration between Caliber and Silk Central with automatic online synchronization has been enabled, the project node displays the current status of the online requirements change listener. The three possible statuses for such projects are: Connected (synchronized), Reconnected (synchronization recommended), and Disconnected.