Workspaces
IBM DevOps Solution Workbench offers workspaces to organize your projects, that you are working on.
This allows you to focus on certain projects and reduces the time spent on searching for projects. You could for example create a workspace to group projects into workspaces that have a common topic or are simply the ones you are interested in.
Introduction
Workspaces can help you organize your work by grouping the projects you are working on into different views. Therefore, you can create as many workspaces as you need. You can add as many projects to a workspace as you want and these can be of any project type. This means you can add any number of application composition projects or service projects to a workspace. The projects in a workspace don't need to have any relation to each other. It is totally up to you how you define your workspaces.
Every workspace has a name that you can change at any time and also a short description that you can use to give a brief overview of the projects inside the workspace. This can help you organize when you have multiple workspaces and will be displayed on a workspace's card in the overview. Furthermore, a workspace also has a dedicated description area providing a WYSIWYG text editor that you can use to document or describe information related to the projects inside this workspace. This can be your personal notes, implementation hints, requirements or just anything you want to have in reach when working on these projects. You can edit this description as soon as the workspace is created.
Workspaces do not have any effect on the projects they contain. It is a means of organization and does not offer any project-related configuration or similar. If you create a project inside a workspace, it will still be visible on the All projects page for all users who have at least read access to the Git repository in which the project resides.
Create a workspace
To create a new workspace visit the Workspaces page in Solution Designer by using the Workspaces link in the navigation bar and click on the Create button. If this will be your first workspace, you can also click on the dummy workspace card to create a new workspace.
Create an empty workspace
You then have to give this workspace a name (can be changed at any time) and optionally put a short description in the Notes field that will be displayed on the card of the workspace in the Workspaces overview.
When you open the workspace later, you can create or add projects to it at any time.
Create a workspace by selecting the projects
You then have to give this workspace a name (can be changed at any time) and optionally put a short description in the Notes field that will be displayed on the card of the workspace in the Workspaces overview.
The dialog also lets you quickly add projects to the new workspace by selecting existing projects from the table. Every selected project will be added directly, but you can still add projects later on.
Create a workspace based on a token
In case a co-worker shared a workspace token you easily can create a duplicate of the workspace by selecting the second option. In this case you only have to provide the token and the workspace will be created automatically for you. Name, notes, description and all the projects are added to that workspace.
Add projects to a workspace
You can add projects to a workspace at any time by clicking on the Add project button. This will open a dialog where you can choose if you want to
- Add one or more existing project(s) to this workspace
- Create a new project from scratch and add it to this workspace
- Create project from asset and add it to this workspace
- Create project from repository and add it to this workspace
Add existing project(s)
By clicking on Add existing project(s), you can add any kind of existing project to this workspace. You can add multiple projects at once by selecting them from the list of all available projects. When you are done with the selection, click on Save.
Create new project
By clicking on Create new project, you can create an empty project from scratch or a new project based on an asset and add it to this workspace. This can be any project type and any implementation language.
If you need to create multiple new projects simply repeat this step.
Create project from repository
By clicking on Create project from repository, you can select an already existing Git repository to create a new project and add it to the workspace. Just select your Git provider and repository groupo to browse all available projects.
If you need to create multiple projects simply repeat this step.
Edit details of a workspace
By clicking on the Edit details button, you can edit the name of the workspace and also the notes that are displayed on the workspace's card in the My workspaces overview.
Share a workspace
In case you want to share the workspace definition with your co-workers, you can use the Generate Token capability. The generated token will appear and you can copy it to the clipboard and send it to your co-workers.
If you do not longer want to share your workspace definition you simply use the Delete Token capability.
The options mentioned above are only available for workspace you own. Changes to the token are not saved until the save button has also been pressed.
Stop workspace synchronization to a source workspace
In case you no longer want to be in sync with the workspace a co-workerd shared with you, simply use the Stop workspace synchronization capability. After removing the connection you will no longer be able to synchronize with the source workspace.
The option mentioned above is only available for a workspace that was created based on a shared token.
Filtering projects
Custom filters
In all tables within the Solution Designer, you can filter the view to only display the information you need via the Configure filter dialog accessible via the filter icon which is located right above each table. You can set a filter for one column at a time. Select the column you want to filter for, choose an operation and enter your filter value. This is a list of all operations available (note that depending on the column type some operations might not be available):
Standard Text Filters
These operations search for text inside a column without worrying about capital or lowercase letters.
- Includes: Shows rows where the column text contains your filter value anywhere inside it (e.g., searching "apple" will find "Pineapple", "Apples", and "snapple").- Not Includes: Shows rows where your filter value cannot be found anywhere inside the column text (e.g., searching "apple" will hide "Pineapple" but keep "Banana").
- Equals: Shows rows only if the column text matches your filter value exactly from start to finish (e.g., searching "Apple" will find "Apple", but will hide "Apples" or "Green Apple").
- Not Equals: Shows rows only if the column text is different from your filter value (e.g., searching "Apple" will keep everything except rows that say exactly "Apple").
Case-Sensitive Filters
These operations work exactly like the standard text filters, but capitalization must match exactly.
- Includes (case sensitive): Finds the value inside the column, but capital and lowercase letters must match perfectly (e.g., searching "Apple" will find "Green Apple", but will hide "pineapple" because of the lowercase "a").
- Not Includes (case sensitive): Hides rows that contain the exact capitalized value, but keeps rows if the capitalization is different (e.g., searching "Apple" hides "Green Apple" but keeps "pineapple").
Multi-Value List Filters
These operations are used when a column contains a list of multiple items and the user enters multiple values to filter by (only available for data type tags).
- Includes all: Shows rows only if the column contains every single one of the selected values (e.g., filtering for "Red" and "Large" only shows items that are both Red and Large).
- Not includes all: Hides rows only if they contain every single one of your values at the same time; it keeps rows that have only some or none of them.
- Includes some: Shows rows that contain at least one of the selected values (e.g., filtering for "Red" and "Blue" shows items that are Red, items that are Blue, and items that are both).
- Not includes some: Hides rows if they contain any of the selected values (e.g., filtering for "Red" and "Blue" will hide any item that has Red or Blue in it).
Please note that you can only add one filter value per filter (expect for columns of data type tags). If you want to combine filters, add additional filter(s) per value via the Add filter button. They will be combined with a logical OR. That means rows will be shown if at least one of the filters matches a data set.
After clicking on Apply, the table is displayed filtered according to your given values. The filters are additionally displayed above the table, where you can also remove individual ones via clicking their x icon, or clear all filters at once via Clear filters to return to the standard view of the table.
Quick filters
For some tables in the Solution Designer, pre-defined quick filters are available and displayed permanently above the table. These fixed filters can also be combined with additional custom filters as described above.
Edit description of a workspace
By clicking on the Edit description button, you open the WYSIWIG text editor. This editor takes Markdown input and also allows you to draw plantUML diagrams in order to add some notes or important information to a workspace. See documentation for further details on how to use the text editor.
Synchronize a workspace
In case you created a workspace based on a token you can use Synchronize on the top to get the latest updates from the source workspace.
Please note that any changes you have made in the description and projects for this workspace will be overwritten during synchronization. The description and the projects will be displayed according to the source workspace. The option mentioned above is only available for a workspace that was created based on a shared token.
Delete a workspace
Use the Delete workspace button in the top right corner of a workspace's page to delete the workspace. You will be asked to confirm this action.