HPE Application Lifecycle Management

Readme

Software Version: 12.55

Document Release Date: August 2017

Software Release Date: August 2017

This file provides the following information about ALM 12.55:

• What's New
• Installation Instructions
• System Requirements
• Integration
• ALM Help Center
• Notes and Limitations
• Multilingual Support
• Legal Notices

You can view the most recent ALM help on the Web at ALM Help Center.

For details on ALM add-ins and extensions, see ALM Add-ins and Extensions.

What's New

For a list of new enhancements in ALM, see What's New in ALM 12.55.

Installation Instructions

System Requirements

The following section describes the system requirements for installing ALM.

For the most up-to-date system requirements and supported environments information, see http://alm-help.saas.hpe.com/specs/alm-qc-system-requirements.htm.

This section includes:

• ALM Server-Side System Requirements
• ALM Client System Requirements
• ALM Lab Service for Remote Test Execution System Requirements

ALM Server-Side System Requirements

This section includes the server-side system requirements and configurations for installing ALM on Windows and Linux.

ALM Server-Side Hardware Requirements

The following table lists the minimum hardware requirements for installing ALM on a server machine:

Recommended ALM Server-Side Environments

The following table lists the recommended configurations for each operating system:

Supported ALM Server-Side Configurations

The following table lists all supported ALM server-side configurations.

However, to ensure best performance and quick support resolutions, use one of the Recommended ALM Server-Side Environments.

ALM Client System Requirements

The following are the client-side system requirements and configurations for installing ALM on client machines:

Recommended ALM Client Environments

The following table lists the recommended client configuration:

ALM Desktop Client Supported Environments

The following table lists all supported ALM Desktop client configurations.

However, to ensure best performance and quick support resolutions, use one of the Recommended ALM Client Environments.

ALM Lab Service for Remote Test Execution System Requirements

The following table lists the system requirements for installing ALM Lab Service for remote test execution:

Integration

For details about the supported integrations for ALM, see ALM Integration Support Matrix.

ALM Help Center

When clicking context-sensitive help, ALM now links directly to the online ALM Help Center. This enables you to use the most recent version available of the ALM online help.

If your organization has firewall restrictions that prevent you from using the online Help Center, you can download and deploy the Help Center on your local server.

For more details, see Setting ALM Help Center Modes.

Notes and Limitations

This section includes:

• ALM Installation
• ALM Client Installation
• Project Upgrade
• Site Administration
• Project Customization
• Cross-Project Customization
• General
• Version Control
• Releases Module
• Libraries Module
• Requirements Module
• Risk-Based Quality Management
• Business Models Module
• Test Resources Module
• Test Lab Module
• Lab Management / Server Side Execution
• Text Search / Global Search
• Memo Images
• Defects Module
• Dashboard Module
• TLS
• Integrations
• Open Test Architecture / API and Workflow
• Workflow Backward Compatibility
• Business Process Testing

ALM Installation

• Oracle:

  • Important: Performance degradation may occur in ALM when working with more than 500 projects in Oracle. To improve performance, it is recommended to disable a PAL related maintenance task (a Performance Center feature). For more details, see HPE Software Self-solve knowledge base article KM01357239.

  • Oracle Container DB mode is not supported.

• Microsoft SQL database: When you upgrade the existing Site Administration schema or upgrade a copy of the existing schema on an SQL server with SQL Server Authentication, the td user must exist in the database and be the owner of all user tables.

  Workaround: Use the following SQL command to update the table owner in the database: sp_changeobjectowner '<table_name>', 'td'.

• Trial Version: If you run the HPE ALM Server Configuration Wizard more than once in order to renew a 30-day trial version, you violate the evaluation license policy, and are in breach of compliance. You run the risk of being assessed the full license cost.

• License Administration: ALM has been updated to support management of a new license type, Named License. HPE Quality Center Enterprise Edition continues to support concurrent license types, but does not support the Named License type.

• When a project is restored or imported onto a server with a confidential data passphrase that differs from the one on the server on which the project was originally created, an error occurs. The message, Failed to Get Simple Key Entity, appears when the data encrypted on the database layer is accessed. To avoid this issue, make sure to install the server with the same confidential data passphrase as the original server.

• Install Anywhere is the third party product used for the ALM server installation. The dollar sign ($) is a reserved sign in Install Anywhere. To use the dollar sign ($) in any editable text parameter, replace $ with $DOLLAR$.

• Jetty

  • Starting in ALM 12.20, ALM uses Jetty 9, which no longer supports the AJP protocol. If you have previously used an AJP connection to ALM Jetty from a front-end Web server (Apache or IIS), it is recommended that you switch to an HTTP connector. For more details, see http://wiki.eclipse.org/Jetty/Howto/Configure_AJP13.

  • In ALM 12.20, Jetty is upgraded from version 5 to version 9. Before you upgrade to ALM 12.55, review the settings in jetty.xml (<ALM Server directory>\conf\jetty.xml). If SSL is enabled, obtain a new server certificate, or copy the existing certificate by performing the following steps:

    1. In your pre-upgrade jetty.xml file, verify that the keystore path contains the server certificate and passwords.

    2. Copy the certificate file to the destination server after installing ALM 12.55.

    3. Configure a secure connection on Jetty. Follow the procedure on how to secure Jetty, as described in the HPE ALM Installation and Upgrade Guide.

• ALM installation: The DNS name cannot contain an underscore character "_" in the repository location.

  Workaround:

  • Replace it with an IP address.

  • Alternatively, in Site Administration, click the Site Configuration tab. Then edit BASE_REPOSITORY_PATH and change the default repository location. For more information, see HPE Software Self-solve knowledge base article KM189843.

• Unsupported databases: When installing ALM on an unsupported database, a license validation error occurs. For more information, see HPE Software Self-solve knowledge base article KM02307970

  Note: Installing ALM on an unsupported environment is not recommended or supported by HPE.

ALM Client Installation

• Antivirus software installed on a client machine may interfere with the deployment of client ALM files. Deployment may slow down significantly.

  Workaround: Update the antivirus software and virus definition files. If this does not solve the problem, disable the antivirus software, and then install ALM.

• If a non-administrator user with privileges to install ActiveX controls clicks the yellow information bar to install ALM, client installation fails.

  Workaround: Non-administrator users should be prevented from installing ActiveX controls, and should only use the link on the launch page to download the ALM Platform Loader.

• The following prerequisite applies if there is a forward proxy with Basic Authentication between the server and client machines. Before the first connection to the ALM server, each ALM client must configure the proxy credentials by using the Webgate Customization Tool. To run the tool, on the ALM client machine, browse to the following path and click the appropriate link:
  http://<ALM server name>[<:port number>]/qcbin/Apps/

  In WebGate Customization, navigate to the Proxy Credentials area, select the Use these credentials check box, and type values in the Proxy Username and Proxy Password boxes. Click Save and then Close.

Project Upgrade

• Project Repository Migration:

  • While repository migration is in progress, you cannot export the project, or create a new project by copying data from the existing project.

  • While repository migration is in progress, if you deactivate a project on an ALM server, and restore the project on another ALM server, the project is not synchronized between both servers and may be corrupted.

    Workaround: Instead of deactivating the project, remove the project from the first ALM server.

  • The following limitation may occur when adding a file manually or renaming an existing file name directly in the repository while the repository migration is in progress: The file may remain in the old repository without a record in the repository migration report.

  • Workaround: After the repository migration has completed, remove the file manually from the repository.

  • Repository migration may take a long time due to numerous debug messages.

    Workaround: Set the log level to Warning.

  • While repository migration is in progress, you must not perform a backup of the database or file system.

    Workaround: If it is essential to back up the database or file system before repository migration is complete, first suspend the repository migration, and deactivate the project. For more information, refer to the HPE Application Lifecycle Management Installation and Upgrade Guide.

• To upgrade a project that has extensions enabled, the same extensions must be available in the new version. Before upgrading the project, the availability of these extensions in the new version should be verified. Contact your system administrator for more information.

• Stored Procedures: ALM upgrade fails when trying to upgrade projects which contain stored procedures created by a user who doesn’t have the required permissions for the upgrade project process.

  Workaround: Save and remove the stored procedures before the upgrade and put them back in after the upgrade succeeds. Alternatively, change the DB user of the stored procedures to a user that has the required permissions for upgrade.

• ALM fails to upgrade projects where the ALM repository uses a mapped drive (non-UNC path) as the base repository path.

  Workaround: In the Site Configuration tab of Site Administration, modify the base repository path from an absolute path to a UNC path.

• Project Upgrade Prioritization: When upgrading projects, ALM does not use the priority values defined in the Project Prioritization dialog box.

• Database schema:

  • When the project schema on Oracle contains user defined tables or views that have field names which are the same as the ALM project’s predefined field names, it leads to inconsistent behavior.

    Workaround: Rename the field names of the user defined tables and views so that they are unique.

  • ALM fails to upgrade projects if the size of the field LN_LINK_TYPE is changed.

• Microsoft SQL database: When working with a case-sensitive SQL database, the upgrade process fails if the exception file contains an extra table in which the name is in lowercase.

• Oracle: When you upgrade ALM projects on an Oracle database, the size of the Oracle rollback segment (RBS) may increase when running large transactions. When you upgrade large projects (with a database size greater than 2 GB), it is recommended that you increase the RBS size for the duration of the upgrade so that it has at least 3 GB free. After the upgrade, you can change the RBS size to its size before the upgrade.

• To benefit from ALM's session reconnect feature, use of the Major Change option for saving customization changes should be minimized. After a project is upgraded to ALM 12.55, the project administrator should review the Allow Major Change permission for custom user groups, and adjust accordingly to minimize the number of users who are granted this permission.

• Oracle: After installing ALM 12.x using Upgrade a copy of the existing schema, if ALM succeeded to create a copy of the LAB_PROJECT, the verify report shows missing indexes, triggers, sequences, and constrains. For more information, see HPE Software Self-solve knowledge base article KM00912265.

• After importing a version control-enabled project from a project that has the Enterprise Integration Module for SAP Solutions extension enabled, the user is unable to create tests from the Test Plan module.

  Workaround: Repair the project from Site Administration.

Site Administration

• Templates: When creating a template by copying an existing template or project, or when importing an existing template, the option to enable versioning is mistakenly displayed. ALM creates the template with versioning enabled or disabled based on the source template or project.

• When creating a project, you cannot use the characters °, µ, or § in the project name or domain name.

• Copy Project:

  • When a project is copied, non-default values in the DATACONST table are not copied. For example, the REPLACE_TITLE parameter.

    Workaround: Manually insert the values into the DATACONST table of the target project after the project has been copied.

  • When applying the REPLACE_TITLE parameter to the Management, Test Resources, and Dashboard modules, only the module name in the ALM sidebar is replaced.

  • When restoring a project, you should select the dbid.xml file located in the project repository. This ensures that the project retains its original ID. If a project does not have its original ID, the following cross project features may not function properly: cross project customization, importing and synchronizing libraries, and cross project graphs.

  • In some cases when there is a proxy server between the user and the ALM server, the user may receive an email with the URL of the ALM server instead of the proxy server. The user cannot navigate to ALM based on the URL in the email.

    Workaround: Configure the URL with the ENTITY_LINK_HOST and ENTITY_LINK_PORT site parameters.

  • Importing a QCP file from an earlier major version is not supported. If you try, the error message you receive is not clear and does not provide a failure reason.

  • When adding a non-nullable column to BP_ITERATION (or to it's corresponding BL and HIST tables), the upgrade of the project to ALM fails with an error of "not enough columns".

    Workaround: Drop the extra columns from the table.

  • Starting from ALM 11.x, ALM converts symbolic links to real paths. The physical directories of ALM domains and projects are real paths. They cannot be changed dynamically. For more information, see HPE Software Self-solve knowledge base article KM01002101.

  • If a project copying operation is interrupted (for example, the server becomes unavailable), the source project remains inactive and cannot be activated from Site Administration.

    Workaround: 

    1. Back up the Site Administration database.
    2. Connect to Site Administration using any DB tool.
    3. In the PROJECTS table, locate the corresponding row for the project. Use DOMAIN_NAME and PROJECT_NAME columns to identify the project.
    4. Change the PR_IS_ACTIVE value to 'Y' to activate the project.
    5. Restart the ALM server.
  • The DENY_EXTERNAL_IMAGES parameter has been added as a security enhancement. If this parameter is set to "Y", images from external resources (images that are not stored in the project but that are referenced from resources outside of ALM) are blocked and shown as text, not URLs. Existing images from external resources will also be blocked and shown as text, not URLs.

Project Customization

• The following limitation applies in upgraded projects, where user groups are assigned a Create permission without an Update permission: When trying to create a new entity, all the entity fields are read-only. As a result, the user is unable to create the entity.

  Workaround: For any entity where a Create permission is assigned, assign the Update permission as well.

• Unable to save user properties in Project Customization while the project administrator is modifying properties of another user.

  Workaround: Wait for the project administrator to exit Project Customization.

• Restoring a project that was previously linked to a template onto another server without the template causes Project Customization to be read-only.

  Workaround: Clear the Linked_Template_Items database table, restart the server, and log in to the project.

Cross-Project Customization

• Project customization applied to linked projects from a template project can be edited using Open Test Architecture (OTA).

General

• IPv6 support: ALM can work on IPv6 enabled systems. However, ALM is developed within an IPv4 environment. This means that in ALM:

  • Data communication is possible using IPv4 transport.

  • Management communication can be over IPv4 transport.

  • The presence of the IPv4 network stack is required.

• Logging in to ALM with the same user name on machines with different locales may result in an error upon login, or when navigating between modules or to Project Customization.

• Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 SP. When using the Save As dialog box, if a file is selected, the entered file name is ignored. The file is saved as the selected file name.

• If you are working with the Text Search feature or Advanced Filters, and there is a high load on the system, you may experience an impact on performance. In this case, further iterative tuning and optimization of your environment and specifically your database server is required. If necessary, patches will be provided in the future to address these issues.

• If you use the data-hiding filter to hide data in a particular folder from a particular user group, and subsequently delete the folder, a user that belongs to the group is unable to log into ALM.

  Workaround: A project administrator should modify the data-hiding filter in Project Customization.

• Unicode support. The following ALM features are not included in Unicode support:

  • Workflow script editor: Available in Project Customization.

  • Automatic Runner: Available from the Test Lab module

  • System Information: Available from Attachment views, when clicking the System Info button

  • Screen capture / Snapshot: Available from Attachment views, when clicking the Snapshot button

  • Requirement to Test Wizard: Available from the Requirements module, when executing the Convert to Test command

  • Generate Test: Available from the Requirements module, when executing the Generate Test command

  • VAPI-XP script editor: A control embedded in the Script view in the Test Lab module

  • Excel reports: Available from the Dashboard module, when viewing an excel report

  • Site Administration

• Files that are larger than 4 gigabytes cannot be uploaded to ALM. For example, attachments, test results, or test resources.

• Shortcut keys. To focus on the module menu options, use ALT.

• Service Test Management. The Service Test Management module is no longer included with ALM. For more information, see HPE Software Self-solve knowledge base article KM00748092.

• Web Client. If you are using the 12.00, 12.01, 12.20, or 12.21 Web Client you will need to remain on those versions in order to keep working with the Web Client, as it is not enabled for the 12.55 release.

• After enabling an extension in Site Administration, its associated test type is not available from the test type list in ALM.

  Workaround: After enabling an extension, restart your Microsoft Internet Explorer browser.

• New dialogs cannot be opened if you enable the 'Prevent this page from creating additional dialogs' option in Firefox.

  Workaround: Do not enable the 'Prevent this page from creating additional dialogs' option in Firefox.

• Attachments. When creating a new entity (for example, a defect) you cannot attach attachments with the same name.

  Workaround: Create the entity without the attachments. Afterwards, you can add them. Alternatively, before you create an entity, rename one of the attachments.

• Microsoft Skype for Business. When collaborating from ALM, the entity links are unclickable. Microsoft Skype for Business does not support non-HTTP URLs.

  Workaround: Paste the entity link to a browser to navigate to the ALM entity.

Version Control

• Filtering. If you filter on entities using the Version checked out by and Version owner fields, checked-in entities are still included in the filter.

  Workaround: To exclude checked-in entities, use the Version Status field.

• When enabling version control on an existing project, the first check-in time is set when the first version control action occurs (check-out, check-in, view history of versions, etc.).

• Version control is not supported when working with the following test types: Vuser Script and LoadRunner scenario.

• In a version control enabled project, you cannot copy and paste entities that you have checked out. You also cannot copy and paste entities with related entities that you have checked out.

  Workaround: Check in the entities or undo the check-out before you copy and paste them.

• Microsoft Excel Add-in. When working in the HPE ALM Upload Add-in tab, you cannot upload non-versioned tests (for example, LR-SCENARIO, ALT-SCENARIO, or QAINSPECT-TEST) to a version control enabled project. The following error occurs: "test with id ... is unsupported by version control".

Releases Module

• History is not preserved for release folders, releases, or cycles in the Releases module.
• When working in right-to-left mode in a non-memo type field in the Releases module, the text is left-aligned while the field is in focus.

Releases Module - Project Planning and Tracking

• For projects that have been upgraded, the Test Instances Executed out-of-the-box KPI type contains a KPI analysis graph named Not Executed Test Instances by Responsible Tester. The name of the KPI analysis graph should be changed to Not Run Test Instances By Responsible Tester. This needs to be manually implemented for upgraded projects.
• In the Scorecard tab, the scorecard can contain no more than 600 cells. You must take into account the number of scope items and KPIs defined for each milestone.

Libraries Module

• After importing a library, the roots of the imported library are not marked in the content view when the original filter contained entity IDs.
• Sharing of libraries is not supported between version control enabled projects and non-version control enabled projects.
• When creating a baseline, if an attachment or script is missing from the file system, a warning is written to the ALM log file. The baseline is created nonetheless.
• After synchronizing a source library with an imported library's baseline, you cannot view, in the Imported By tab, from which baseline the imported library was originally imported. In addition, after synchronizing an imported library with a source library's baseline, in the Imported From tab, you cannot view with which baseline the imported library was synchronized.

• In the Comparison Settings dialog box, selecting the Coverage check box in either the Requirements or Tests tab instructs ALM to consider coverage. To ignore coverage, the Coverage check box in both the Requirements and Tests tabs must be cleared. Therefore, if you select or clear the Coverage check box in a library that contains only requirements, for example, this setting is saved and also applied when comparing a library that contains only tests.

• In a version control enabled project, if you synchronize libraries when there are entities checked out by another user, the checked out entities are not synchronized. When you compare the libraries after synchronization, the entities that were not synchronized because they were checked out by another user are not displayed as Modified in the Compare Libraries Tool dialog box, despite the fact that they are different.

Requirements Module

• Traceability Matrix View. Unable to generate a traceability matrix report when the Total number of trace from and Trace From tables have only one row, or when the Total number of linked tests and Linked Tests tables have only one row.

Risk-Based Quality Management

• Version Control. The following limitation occurs when checking out a requirement that is not an assessment requirement, and then it is changed to an assessment requirement: The requirement will not be included in the RBQM analysis until it is checked in again.

Business Models Module

• If you remove a model from the business models tree without deleting the representative requirements and then you re-import the same model, new representative requirements are created with the suffix _1.

• Colors and fonts of model activities are not imported into ALM. Activities are displayed in default colors and fonts.

• If a model path includes a loop, the loop is ignored, and activities are listed only once in the path. Paths that begin or end with a loop are not considered.

• If re-imported models change drastically, paths may not resolve automatically.

  Workaround: An icon indicates unresolved paths. Resolve the paths manually.

• Support for ARIS 9.8 :

  Category	Limitation
  Model Types	When importing models from ARIS 9.8, you can import standard EPC (Event-driven Process Chain), EPC with column-display, and EPC with row-display. Other EPC notations are not supported. FAD (Function Allocation Diagram) can be imported, however it is not officially supported by ALM. VACD (Value-added Chain Diagram) is not supported in ALM. Performance degradation may occur while importing models when a significant number of imported models/activities already exist in your project.
  Assignments	If a node has several model assignments, only the first one will be imported to ALM. Adding an assignment to a connector is not supported.
  BLOB/Pictures/OLE	Importing embedded pictures, OLE objects, and wallpapers are not supported. BLOB type attributes are not supported.
  Combined-type and User-defined Entities	Combined type attributes are partially supported in ALM. System-defined list type attributes are partially supported in ALM. User-defined list type attributes are not supported in ALM. User-defined attributes are partially supported in ALM. User-defined symbols appear as base symbols. To enable mapping attributes to user-defined fields in an existing model, you must delete the model from ALM and reimport it back from ARIS XML.
  Pathfinding	Pathfinding is not supported in cycles.
  Miscellaneous	Automatic creation of requirements for non-activity nodes is not supported. If there are two or more consecutive activity nodes and a non-activity node follows, the generated path will not be connected to the non-activity node. Importing text format is not supported. For example, font size, text color, bold or italic font style. Some visual properties are not supported. For example, 3D format and shadow effects.

Test Resources Module

• When uploading a folder with a file that has the same name as a file in the resource folder, the file is uploaded without deleting the original file.

Test Lab Module

• Test Execution. When non-Latin characters are used for the Domain Name and Project Name fields, the notification email for test set execution summary may contain corrupted characters in those fields.

• Pinned test sets. The following test types cannot be added to pinned test sets: Vuser Script, and LoadRunner scenario.

• Test Board. Unable to display more than 400,000 test instances in the Test Board tab.

Lab Management / Server Side Execution

• Timeslots. If you use a customized version of one of the predefined time formats for your client's system time, timeslots do not function properly.

• Customizing Lab Entities. After customizing an entity in the Lab project, you may receive an error when you log back in to ALM.

  Workaround: Delete the TD_80 folder on the client machine before logging in to the project.

• In the Host module, the Host Purpose values include Quick Test Professional and Service Test instead of UFT (GUI Testing) and UFT (API Testing).

  Workaround: For UFT (GUI Testing) use Quick Test Professional and for UFT (API Testing) use Service Test.

• Functional test sets:

  • If you try to delete a functional test set that contains a test instance with a past run in an active state, an error occurs, and the test set is not deleted.

  • If you create a test set with at least one test instance with a specific host requirement, and that specific host’s purposes include the purposes necessary for the rest of the test instances in the test set, that specific host will be the only host requested for the test set. In that case, if that specific host fails, it will not be replaced by another host, and the test set will not be able to run.

    Workaround: In the Requested Hosts tab, add an Automatch host which includes the purposes of the rest of the test instances.

  • If you try to execute a Functional test set that contains a test with a manual component, an error occurs. See the event log for the full error.

  • Parallel execution of tests on the same machine using server-side execution (Functional test set) and client-side execution (Default test set) is not supported.

• Execution Report:

  • If your project name includes non-Latin characters, the Execution Report does not open.

    Workaround: Rename the project.

  • The Execution report does not support 125% scale or a non-medium font size.

    Workaround: Using the View > Zoom menu in Internet Explorer, reset the zoom to 100%. Using the View > Text Size menu, change the font size to Medium.

  • Users that belong to a group based on Viewer (default user group), are unable to run BPT tests in Server Side Execution.

    Workaround: In Project Customization, navigate to the Groups and Permissions page, select the user group in the group list, and click the Permissions tab. Click the Test Lab tab. Under the Run entity, select Timeslot ID.

  • Automated tests cannot run using server-side execution and client-side execution at the same time.

Text Search / Global Search

• Text Search - Oracle. When you use the Text Search feature in ALM on an Oracle database, note that Oracle has a default stoplist for each supported language containing a list of stopwords. The search does not find words that are in the stoplist for the language in which the search is being performed. For more information, see the Oracle Text Supply Stop Lists (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/text.102/b14218/astopsup.htm#CEGBGCDF).
• Text Search - Oracle. When you use the Text Search feature in ALM on an Oracle database, note that there are some special characters that function as search operators within Oracle. If you use some of them in the search expression, the search may not find the expected results. For example, if you search for the expressions 'a* a' or 'a%a', which contain the operators * or %, an error message may display.

• Global Search. If the search results include Analysis Menu items, the entities cannot be opened from the Global Search window.

  Workaround: Open ALM, on the ALM sidebar, under Dashboard, select Analysis. Click the Analysis Menu tab and locate the entities.

Memo Images

• This feature is only enabled for entities that support attachments.
• You cannot copy and paste images between fields.
• You cannot copy and paste images between entities.

Defects Module

• Entering more than 127 special characters into a defect Summary field causes an error. An empty defect is created.
• In the Defects module, the print defect option is not available.

Dashboard Module

• Project Reports. In attachments, hyperlinks to files with I18N letters in the file name appear distorted. Clicking on the hyperlink leads to an error.

• Project reports generated using the Design Step Tabular Template have the following formatting error: The font of the step names in the Design Steps table changes after the second word. The error is fixed in projects created in ALM 11.51 and later, but persists in projects created in older versions of ALM.

  Workaround: In Project Customization, navigate to the Project Report Templates module. Select Design Steps Folder > Design Step Tabular Template. Click the Download Template button and save it to your file system. Navigate to the file and open it. Highlight the field of the text containing <<Step Name>>, and change the font size to 9. Save the document. Return to ALM, click the Upload Template button, and select the saved template from your file system.

• Graphs. When you generate a Progress Graph in the Dashboard module, the graph may display different information from that displayed in previous versions of ALM. This can occur when the field that you group by does not have the History option enabled in Project Customization, or the History option was not enabled at some time during the period shown in the graph.

• Requirements. When creating a Requirement Coverage report section as a child of a Tests report section, if you include Test fields in the filter for Requirement Coverage, these fields are ignored when filtering the coverage.

• Requirements. When creating a Requirement Coverage report section as a child of a Tests report section, if you include Test fields in the report template, these fields are empty in the generated report.

• Exports to Excel. Images in memo fields are not exported to Excel.

TLS

• Lab Host is not supported when ALM is configured with TLS 1.2.

• ALM Connectivity tool. If an external tool (e.g., UFT, Load Runner, Business Views Excel reports) is using the ALM Connectivity tool, TLS 1.2 is not supported when logging in to ALM.

• Excel add-in: .NET 4.5 is a prerequisite for working with TLS 1.2.

Integrations

• Unified Functional Testing (UFT):

  • After re-saving a UFT test, the broken relations are deleted and the user can no longer view them in the ALM Dependencies tab. If a UFT test has a dependency that is broken (for example, because the dependent asset was deleted), it is displayed, as expected, as a broken relation in ALM. If you later add another dependency to the UFT test, ALM displays the new dependency. The Dependencies tab no longer displays the broken dependency as a dependency at all, even though the action is still referencing an asset that does not exist, and the test fails when it runs. In UFT, the missing asset still shows up as a missing asset, as expected.

  • If the environment variable file associated with your test or component is stored in ALM and you modify it from the ALM Attachments tab, the changes are not applied until you reopen the test.

  • When launching a UFT script from ALM, the user running the script must have read/write permissions for the system cache folder.

  • When installing UFT on a machine with a load generator SA, you must restart the LoadRunner Agent Service to be able to replay UFT scripts.

• Unicode. The integration of ALM with other products is not Unicode compliant. Therefore:

  • When working with tests or components stored in ALM, you should not use Unicode values (such as the name of the test or component, the name of an application area, the default value of a test, action, component parameter, or method argument values).

  • Data sent to UFT from ALM (such as values for test, action, or component parameters) is not Unicode compliant.

Open Test Architecture / API and Workflow

• If you change the workflow script of a created entity, the change does not occur in copied entities.

• When you use an Open Test Architecture (OTA) list, note that list numbering begins at 1. For example, mylist.Item(1) refers to the first item in the list myList. If you have used OTA lists with numbering beginning at 0 in previous versions of ALM, you must manually update them to begin at 1.

• Favorites. You cannot retrieve favorite filters from the OTA connection's common or private settings, or from the COMMON_SETTINGS table. Use the new API for the Favorite entity.

• Creating Users. If LDAP is enabled, you cannot add users with API.

• Defects. When setting defect comments to read-only, the Add Comment button is not disabled.

• Attachments. When deleting an attachment in the New Defect dialog box, an incorrect action is triggered.

• No workflow action is available for closing the requirements tree or Req Coverage tab.

• The NewValue parameter in the FieldCanChange workflow event does not return a value when changes occur to the Target Cycle or Target Release field values.

  Workaround: Run the following script:

  Function <entity>_FieldCanChange(FieldName,NewValue)

  For i = 1 To NewValue.Count

  MsgBox NewValue.Item(i).Name

  Next

  End Function

  where NewValue is a list of ISysTreeNode objects.

• Existing Open Test Architecture applications that change data will fail in a project with Version Control enabled. You must change your code to check out items before you change them in code, and check them in after posting.

• Workflow scripts and Open Test Architecture applications run with the privileges of the logged-in user, not the privileges of the user who created the script. Scripts and applications that use protected objects, like the Command object, may fail, depending on the project security settings and the group to which the user belongs.

• When sending a TRACE request to an ALM server, the "403 Forbidden" status code is returned instead of the "501 Not implemented" status code.

  Workaround: Enable the TRACE method. Add the following security constraint to the web.xml file under <deployment folder>\webapps\qcbin\WEB-INF folder:

  <web-app>

  .....

  <!-- SECURITY CONSTRAINT #1 -->

  <security-constraint>

  <display-name>Allow unprotected TRACE</display-name>

  <web-resource-collection>

  <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>

  <http-method>TRACE</http-method>

  </web-resource-collection>

  </security-constraint>

  ....

  </web-app>

Workflow Backward Compatibility

• The issues described below relate to workflow events, actions, and objects that have been changed. When necessary, instructions for modifying existing scripts for purposes of backward compatibility are provided.

• In Project Customization, the following workflow events are not listed in the Scripts Tree in the Workflow Script Editor. These workflow events are supported for purposes of backward compatibility and are available only in upgraded projects:

  • GetNewReqPageName

  • GetReqDetailsPageName

  • GetNewBugPageName

  • MoveToFolder

  • MoveToSubject

  • MoveToComponentFolder (renamed to ComponentFolder_MoveTo)

  • GetDetailsPageName--now supported for all entities, not just defect entities and replaces

    GetNewReqPageName

    GetReqDetailsPageName

    GetNewBugPageName

• The CanDelete event has been added to tests, test folders, test sets, test set folders, business components, and business component folders. The Quality Center 10.00 syntax is still supported for purposes of backward compatibility in upgraded projects.

• In workflow scripts, the Lists object can be used only with fields that are defined as the Lookup List type in Project Customization of project entities. In previous ALM/Quality Center versions, you could use the Lists object on fields defined as type Lookup List and String.

  Workaround: In Project Customization, change the type to Lookup List. To be able to specify values that do not appear in the defined lookup list, clear the Verify Value check box.

• New HTML tags added in ALM 11.50 might not be supported by Workflow scripts or external tools which rely on a specific Memo fields' HTML structure.

  Workaround: Update the Workflow script/external data tool to the new HTML structure.

Business Process Testing

The issues described below relate to working with business components, flows, and business process tests in ALM. For information on issues related to working with business components in UFT, refer to the relevant product's readme file.

• Version History. The canvas view of a business process test's version history disappears as the mouse cursor hovers over an object, or as the mouse is clicked on elements such as the parameter filter.
• Localization. Localization is not supported for Business Process Testing 12.55.

• When running a business process test from Manual Runner, ALM cannot access the values of global parameters and objects set by the workflow scripts.

  Workaround: For objects, recreate the public object before accessing it in the script.

Multilingual Support

This section includes the following sections:

• Internationalization Limitations
• Localization Limitations

Internationalization Limitations

• To enable multi-language support, the DB and FS servers must support Unicode. Unicode is a feature of MS-SQL that allows multi-language support. In Oracle, multi-language support is defined when installing the server.

• When working with an Oracle UTF-8 database, you can enter text in more than one non-English language. For MS-SQL databases, you can define your projects as Unicode to allow multi-language support. You can also modify existing MS-SQL projects to be Unicode compliant. In addition, you can enter non-English text regardless of the system locale setting on the ALM client machine. However, if the ALM servers are not Unicode compliant, non-English characters entered on the ALM client machine appear as question marks.

• You cannot type Japanese characters in the ALM Login window Password field.

  Workaround: Paste text from the clipboard.

• Opening and updating a project that contains characters different from those set in the ClientOSLocale or ClientOSAdvanceLocale may cause irreversible damage.

• The InputLanguage inserted from an external component to ALM must be the same as the ClientOSLocale and ClientOSAdvanceLocale. For example, you cannot insert a UFT script that contains Japanese characters in a client that runs on an OSLanguage with ClientOSLocale or ClientOSAdvanceLocale that is not Japanese.

• When sending mail that contains non-English characters from the ALM/Quality Center client, it must be sent from the ClientOSLocale and ClientOSAdvanceLocale that are the same as the mail characters locale.

• To send mail that contains non-English characters, the MailServerVersion and MailClientVersion mail server must support non-English characters.

• To display non-English characters, the OSLanguage needs to include the proper fonts for the language.

• The SiteAdminDBCollation and ProjectDBCollation must be set to the same language as the data insert. For example, inserting Japanese characters in a Korean collation is not supported.

• The Spell Checker tool is available only in English.

• Due to a problem in the JDBC driver’s specific version, using Chinese and Japanese collation in MS-SQL may cause an error while executing some actions.

• You cannot create ALM/Quality Center projects with Thai characters in the project name.

• The number of double-byte characters you can enter in an ALM edit box may be more limited than the number of characters specified in the relevant error messages. The number of characters that can actually be used depends on the database definitions and the character set collation that is being used. For example, one character can occupy 3 bytes when using Japanese characters with a database that is defined to work with UTF8.

• ALM/Quality Center versions 9.2 and later support LDAP authentication using non-English character sets. Previously, login failed when passwords for LDAP-authenticated users contained non-English characters. To use non-English character sets, set the LDAP_CHARSET parameter in Site Administration to Default or add the relevant value listed in the Basic Encoding Set list.

• Hebrew locale. On Hebrew locale client machines, to ensure that ALM memo fields (for example, Description, Comments, Rich Text) are displayed properly, configure the settings in the Control Panel > Regional and Language Options window. Set Languages For Non-Unicode Programs (Administrative tab) and Current Format (Format tab) to Hebrew.

• ALM Client MSI Generator. You cannot install the ALM Client MSI Generator to a folder that contains non-English characters.

  Workaround: Install to a folder that contains only English characters.

• ALM installation. The path in which installation files for ALM are located, and the path in which ALM is installed, can contain only English characters.

• Non-English national characters are not supported in project names.

  Workaround: Use English characters in project names.

• Non-English Cyrillic URLs are not supported when creating noise scripts.

  Workaround: Use English characters when creating noise script URLs.

Localization Limitations

• The UI language is defined by the ALM server and only one language can be defined per server.

• ALM Language Pack must be installed and operated on a Windows machine where the Windows native language (MLU*) is identical to the MUI* language.

• An ALM project created in an English edition cannot be upgraded to a localized edition.

• Global Search is not available in a localized version.