October 27th, 2021 by Adam Sandman
Sometimes customers would like to have a quick and easy way of getting notified when artifacts in Spira change in such a way that they meet specific exception criteria. For example, they would like to be notified when test cases fail or a test set is overdue. Rather than bombarding users with yet more emails, Spira has a handy feature to bring these notifications right to you via. RSS.
Step 1 - Setting up the Filter
The first step is to go into Spira and set the filter to find the items that you want to be alerted on. For example, we might set a filter to include all the test cases that have recently failed in the current release:
Once you have the filters set the way you want, simply use the option to Save the filter as a favorite:
This filter will now be available as a subscribable widget on the Spira My Page dashboard:
Now we can use these saved filters and the RSS feed icon to use the notification feature:
Step 2 - Using the RSS Feeds for Notifications
Now that we have created the filter as an RSS feed, we can use it in other applications to get notified. We will look at the examples of Microsoft Outlook and Slack, but any application that you use that supports RSS feeds can also be used to notify you.
Using RSS Feeds in Outlook
Firstly, you need to right-click on the Outlook folders on the left-hand side and choose the Add a New RSS Feed option:
Then paste in the URL from the RSS icon inside Spira:
Finally, click the Add button and the Spira saved filter is now available inside Outlook and will notify you when you have any matching items:
Using RSS Feeds in Slack
The process for adding the Spira newsfeed to notify you in Slack is pretty similar.
Firstly, go to the Slack App Directory and add the RSS app to Slack.
Once that's done you can then choose to Add a Feed and paste in the URL from the RSS icon inside Spira:
You also need to choose the Slack channel that this notification will post into. Once you have done that, click the Subscribe to this feed button to completed the connection.
You should now see notifications like the following: