In Release Control 6.0 Timeline: Part 1 we learned the basic anatomy of the timeline view and how to access and use the timeline editor. The first post focused on customizing the out of the box Release Train timeline. In this post I will show you how to create a new timeline and add it to work center. The end result of this tutorial will be a new timeline which you can access by URL that is added to a dashboard in work center.

This new timeline will show events scheduled for environments. Release Package deployments will be green and system maintenance events will be red.

Creating the Reports

The first thing we need to do is create or choose the reports needed for our timeline view. For this timeline I created three pretty simple listing reports.

All Environments

This will be the primary items. Below is a screenshot of the configuration that I used. Only the Title and Item Id is required as we will not be adding a range or events from this report.

All Scheduled Maintenance & All Scheduled Release Packages

These two reports will be used as overlays to create overlay ranges for each item. The reports are the same except for the search filter.

Search Filters

All Scheduled Maintenance: Event Type contains any System Maintenance

All Scheduled Release Packages: Event Type contains any Release Package

Creating a New Timeline

To create a new timeline make sure that you have the remote administration system privilege and go to the following URL:

SBM_SERVER/workcenter/tmtrack.dll?stdpage&Template=rlm/customgantt#/?target=TIMELINE_NAME

Where SBM_SERVER is the host and port of your SBM server and TIMELINE_NAME is any unique name for your timeline.  For example, I used:

http://localhost/workcenter/tmtrack.dll?stdpage&Template=rlm/customgantt#/?target=DemoTimeline

Note: This is the same URL that you will use to access your timeline. Once it is created there will be an edit button visible to administrators to make changes.

You should have a blank timeline with a create button.

Configuring the Timeline

First click on the create button to open the timeline editor. On the first field "Choose Report" choose the All Environments report from the list. We will not be adding any ranges or events so just leave them blank and expand the overlays section.

Overlays

Next we need to add two overlays, one for the scheduled maintenance and one for the scheduled release packages. We are adding two different overlays so that we can have the ranges show in different colors. 

All Scheduled Maintenance

All Scheduled Release Packages

That's it! Click save and you will have your new timeline. From now on it can be accessed by the URL and any user with remote administration privilege will be able to edit it.

Adding the Timeline to a Dashboard

You will need to use the URL widget option to add the timeline to a dashboard. First you need to go to any dashboard where you would like to display the timeline and click on the add widget button.

Choose the URL option

Enter the URL to the timeline that you created

Next you just give your widget a title & height and click finish and your new timeline will be on your dashboard. You can also add the widget to forms in composer by using the webpage widget.

Conclusion

The new timeline in RLC 6.0 allows you to create as many timelines as needed and they can pull data from any SBM report. Since you can reference the timeline with a URL you can easily embed them on any dashboard or form.

Release Control 6.0 Timeline: Part 1