About Software Items

A software item, created and managed by the Connected Software application is a versionable engineering item that refers to objects that are managed by an external revision control system.

This page discusses:

See Also
In Other Guides
Revision Explorer
Administering Connectors
Changing Maturity

The software item can be logical or physical. A logical software item is an abstraction; a collection of ideas, such as source code where the development work occurs. Other types of logical software items include: planning documents, specifications, testing plans and other types of planning and abstracted concepts managed by revision control. A physical software item is the physical form of the software expressed in compiled executables, libraries, and other types of physical elements.

When you start the Connected Software application, you see a list of software items of interest. Software items become interesting when you create them, create a new item version, or add a software item. You can add a software item by searching for the object and dragging it to the page.

For more information, see Creating a Software Item.

Software Items Context Actions

Right-click (down arrow) on each of the software item versions to perform these actions:

Action Description


Open		 Opens the version allowing you to view the contents from the data source repository. For more information on viewing the version, see Software Item Page.
Tip: You can open the version by double-clicking the software item version.


Maturity 		View and advance the selected software item object through the lifecycle. When specifying the maturity of a Software Item to Frozen or Released, Connected Software automatically captures the static release version of the data content in the connected repository at the time of the operation. This ensures that the version in that state is always the expected version. For more information, see Understanding the Resolution of Dynamic Content when the Software Item is Promoted.


Revisions 		Starts the Revision Explorer.
New Revision Launches the create New Revision form.
New Branch Launches the create New Branch form.
New Revision From Launches the New Revision From form.
Duplicate Duplicates the software item.


Delete 		Deletes the selected version.
Repository Information Displays the full URL path to the connected repository associated with the software item.
Remove Connection Disconnects the software item from the connected repository.


Remove from List 		Removes the software item from the display, meaning it is no longer considered an item of interest. To add the item back to the display, search for the item and drag it to the landing page.

Page Actions

Action Description


Search		 Filters the list of available software items displayed to match the characters entered in the field. For more information on searching, see Searching in Connected Software.


Search Filter		 Restricts the search to a specific field, reducing the possibility of false matches for a string in an unrelated field.


Unselect All 		Clears any selected objects.






Tile/List 		Changes the item display view. Options are:
  • Tile View using small icons (Default).
  • Thumbnail View using larger icons.
  • Textual Tile view showing the properties of each item.
/Sort by: Sort the list of objects alphabetically by specific object properties, such as Title or Maturity State.

Working under Change Action

Connected Software supports integrated change tracking for Software Items using Change Management functionality. For more information about working under a change action, see Work Under a Change Action.

Note: The versioned content managed by the external SCM repositories is not under Change Management control.