1. Spira Platform

Articles
Reporting on Timesheets and Timesheet Entries

We have just released the new timesheet functionality in SpiraTeam and SpiraPlan v8.5. With this new release, timesheets and time entries are stored in dedicated database tables and then used to update the corresponding artifact totals. This means that you can now report on the time entered per-person, per-day as well as per-artifact. This custom report shows you how to access this new data.

How to group data in a custom report using XSLT

You may need to get the report that groups and aggregates the output results. This article explains how to achieve this using XSLT.

Pulling tags using custom reports

Built-in reports in Spira may not have included Tags column in the grid by default.
This can be easily fixed by cloning standard report and slightly editing it.

Quality Metrics: Regression Test Efficiency

The Cost of Quality (CoQ) is about both product quality and process quality. As part of these considerations, quality assurance can focus on additional patterns. In this article, we will discuss how to graphically show the regression test efficiency.

Quality Metrics: Defect Resolution Time

The Cost of Quality (CoQ) is about both product quality and process quality. As part of these considerations, quality assurance can focus on additional patterns. In this article, we will discuss how to graphically show the defect resolution time metric.

Quality Metrics: Software Stability Metric

The Cost of Quality (CoQ) is about both product quality and process quality. As part of these considerations, quality assurance can focus on additional patterns. In this article, we will discuss how to graphically show the software stability metric.

Quality Metric: Test Cycle Time

The Cost of Quality (CoQ) is about both product quality and process quality. As part of these considerations, quality assurance can focus on additional patterns. In this article, we will discuss how to graphically show the test cycle time metrics for test cases.

Quality Metrics: Defect Detection Rate

The Cost of Quality (CoQ) is about both product quality and process quality. As part of these considerations, quality assurance can focus on additional patterns. In this article, we will discuss how to graphically show the defect detection rate.

Quality Metrics: Test Case Coverage Metric

The Cost of Quality (CoQ) is about both product quality and process quality. As part of these considerations, quality assurance can focus on additional patterns. In this article, we will discuss how to graphically show the test case coverage metric.

Quality Metrics: Test Case Reusability Metric

The Cost of Quality (CoQ) is about both product quality and process quality. As part of these considerations, quality assurance can focus on additional patterns. In this article, we will discuss how to graphically show the summary of test case reusability.

Summary graph by test execution status and build

To get a table that summarizes the test run count by status / by build, this article explains how to accomplish this.

How to create a historical report of users getting or losing system admin permissions

For audit or any other purposes, you may need to extract a list of changes to system admin permissions for users. This is possible with a custom report (must be using Spira 8.2+).

Please note that this report is to be used in addition to reviewing the list of users who currently are system admins.

Modifying standard Test Run Detailed report to display each step's start and end datetime

In case you need to get an execution date and time of the test step but keep the standard Test Run detailed report format, the fastest way is to modify the existing one. This article explains how to achieve that.

Displaying a Requirements Test Coverage Report by Release

Several customers have asked for a way to display a grid of all the requirements in a product, showing the test coverage for just a specific release or sprint vs. the whole product. We already have a Requirements Regression Coverage graph that shows this information at summary level, but what if we want to see the individual requirements' names. Luckily, Spira custom reports comes to the rescue!

How do you add all the test cases in a test set to a release

A customer asked us if it is possible to have the test cases in an existing test set added to a new release without having to add them one by one? The answer is yes. Learn how...

How do you add all the test cases in a release to a test set

A customer asked us if it is possible to have the test cases in a release added to a test set before the test set is run without having to add them one by one?

Most common Exception errors in Custom Report queries

Entity SQL uses a little different structure than traditional SQL and sometime, it can be that even if the query is working fine in SQL or T-SQL it may throw an error when creating a custom queries in Spira using ESQL. Here are some of the most known errors that may prevent you from getting a successful result.

Extracting the list of all Products using custom reports

In case you need to create a report that displays the list of projects in the system in Excel, HTML format this article explains how to achieve that.

Quality Metrics: Automated Test Cases

The Cost of Quality (CoQ) is about both product quality and process quality. As part of these considerations, quality assurance can focus on additional patterns.  In this article, we will discuss how to graphically show the summary information on these metrics.

How to get the list of users that have a specific permission in a product

You may need answer questions like: who today is able to see the source code in product X, or who can bulk edit requirements. You can do so using custom reports. The example below answers the first of the above questions.

Cross-Project Risk Management for Secondary Risks

Organizations sometimes maintain a risk register and map risks from the risk register to individual projects. Each project may apply different risk rating scale, such as one project using FMEA and another using the standard Probability/Impact Assessment. This article addresses how this can be done.

How to generate test set report with builds and execution statuses

If you need show the list of test sets with their test cases, execution statuses and related builds, follow this article to produce a custom report to do so.

How to get the list of test cases that need to be re-run

You may need to create a list of test cases associated with a particular incident status to know that those incidents have been fixed and can now be verified by rerunning the tests.


This article explains how to generate a list of the test cases associated with incidents containing this status.

Create a Custom Monthly Business Unit Trend Report

Customers frequently want to review the monthly processing times of requirements across various requirement types in specific Work-in-Progress (WIP) stages like Developed and Tested, categorizing them into four timelines: under 30 days, under 60 days, under 90 days, and above 90 days. This article addresses this request.

Demonstrate the parent-child relationship indentation in a Custom Report

The Spira User Interface allows the indenting of requirements to accommodate the hierarchical thought process people envision in structuring the requirements. When these requirements are documented in a report format, the indentation visible in the user interface is missed. Some customers would prefer to see this indentation replicated in the report. This article addresses this requirement.

Create a Monthly Trend Report of Requirements by Aging Status (<30, <60, <90, >90 Days)

Often, the project stakeholders want to assess the effectiveness of the team’s development processes to prioritize tasks and allocate resources more efficiently. This request requires a time series analysis of time taken to get things addressed in the development state. Such a request looks at breaking the time taken (t) into various cohorts, such as under 30 days (t<30), falling between 30 and 60 days (30 < t < 60), falling between 60 and 90 (60 < t < 90), and more than 90 (t>90). This article addresses these requests.

Task Priority Analysis by Priority of Tasks

Not all tasks are created equal in a project! Some activities may not contribute to the MVP and will be a "nice to have" rather than "must to have." Therefore, the analysis of tasks within a project may also look at the priority types of the tasks. This article addresses this need.

Task Analysis by Type of Tasks

Not all tasks are created equal in a project! Some activities may not contribute to the MVP and will be a "nice to have" rather than "must to have." Therefore, the analysis of tasks within a project may also look at ideas based on the type of tasks. This article addresses this need.

Pareto Approach to Task Overdue Analysis - Option 2

Sometimes, the analysis of tasks may be associated with both known and unknown releases. Simultaneously, analysis may also involve tasks either associated to requirements within a known release or just stand alone without connection to a release. Furthermore, this analysis may be limited only to the tasks in progress or not started at all. This article addresses how to accomplish this request. 

Pareto Approach to Task Overdue Analysis - Option 1

Analyzing tasks is not limited to project releases. Sometimes, tasks may be unassigned to a release further impacting how certain project releases can't even start. So, applying Pareto level (80/20 rule) thoughts can be extended to dig deeper into the tasks. This article helps with this approach.   

Analyzing Overdue Tasks

One of the frequent activities that is monitored in a plan-driven project is the schedule delays due to tasks. This article helps visualizing the tasks across the iterations to evaluate any task delay patterns that can be addressed.  

Risk Burndown Chart

As part of ongoing monitoring of risks, one of the the charts that people monitor is called a risk burn down chart. This article helps with creating a risk burn down chart.

Migrating from Jira Server to Cloud DataSync

This article explains how to properly move from the Spira Jira Server dataSync to the Jira Cloud dataSync without disrupting the previously synchronized data, ensuring the data synchronization continues to function as expected.

 

Forcing a Microsoft Office365 Add-On To Update

This article should apply to any Excel/Word 365 compatible add-on that can be downloaded through the Microsoft Office add-ons store. 

This article is specifically relevant to the Spira Excel Import / Export Tool, the Spira Excel Test Runner and the Spira MS-Word Requirements & Test Case Import Tool.

How to find product membership for a product but in the past

You may want to see what product membership for a product was like historically - what users in what role were able to access the product at a specific point in time.

Starting from Spira 7.13 it is possible to track product membership changes and use custom reporting to review this historical data.

Defect Re-Open/Bounceback Rate Report and Graph

A customer wanted to be able to report on the number of times that a defect had been reopened a product. In addition, they wanted to found out how many defects had been reopened 1, 2, or 3 times since being originally created. The Spira custom reporting functionality makes this very easy.

Report to identify number of days a defect is assigned to a status

A customer asked is how they could run a report on a daily basis to see for how long a defect has been assigned to a specific status and the audit log of the status changes. That is best done by using the History table and the main Incident table together in a custom report

Test Execution Productivity Report

A customer wanted to get a report of the average test execution duration per test case in the system. Now the test case automatically gets updated with the most recent test execution duration when you run the test case. However, instead of the duration of the most recent run, we want the average of all the runs of the test case. That's where a custom report comes in handy.

Test Case Creation Productivity Graph

A customer asked is how they could run a report to display the number of test cases created per day for a specific date range. You can of course just run the test case summary report and export the data to Excel, but using Spira's custom reporting functionality, you can also do it inside the application.

Report of Requirements Test Coverages

A customer wanted to get some specific requirements' test coverage reports covering the following two key metrics:

  • Number of Test Cases per Requirement
  • Number of Test Cases with no mapped requirements (with capability to view specific test cases with no mapped requirements)

You can just run the out of the box test case detailed report and manually filter the data in Excel, but using the power of Spira custom reporting, you can get exactly what you want in a single document.

Report of Requirements that Contain Suspect Test Cases

A customer wanted to get a report of the number of requirements that have changed with mapped test cases that are yet to be updated (with capability to view specific requirements). When a requirement is changed and a test case is not yet changed, the test case has a suspect flag set automatically to True. So, the best way to get this data is to get a report of the number of requirements that are linked to at least one suspect test case.

Custom Graph of Estimated and Last Actual Duration of TestCase by Owner

One of the customer asked if it is possible to create a bar chart of the estimated duration and the actual duration of a test case against the owner. This article addresses the requirement.

Risk Treatment - Treating Risks and Monitoring Risks

This article focuses on the last stages of the risk management prior to rejection or closure. This mainly addresses evaluated and open risks. 

Deeper Insights into Risk Management Lifecycle

As part of the risk management lifecycle, frequently people look at risks in the identified, analyzed, evaluated, open, closed and rejected. While this is still a very good way to look at the risk management lifecycle, are there other things to monitor. This article reviews that thought process in depth.

Risk Management LifeCycle Query

As part of the Risk Management Life Cycle, the Risk Evaluation stage reviews unresolved risks for subsequent analysis. There are many types of risk evaluation that can be done but some of the common ones are evaluating by probability and impact assessment done on the risks. This KB article discusses the approach to evaluate the unresolved risks.

Risk Analysis - Checking in on Accepted and Unresolved Product Level Risks

The second stage of risk management lifecycle involves analyzing the risks identified. This involves expert judgement or first level subjective analysis to evaluate which risks are worth spending more time on. This article addresses how to report on such an analysis done.

Identifying Number of Product Level Risks

One of the frequent questions that the product or project teams face is knowing the number of risks across the risk breakdown structure.  This risks identified metric not only helps with the team's ability to ensure their commitments are met but also increase the confidence that the product or project team is managing the project effectively. This article addresses how to report this metric.

Creating a Report of Test Results by Configuration Including Inline Graph

We had a customer that was looking to display a table of the different test configurations that were tested and looking to display the results of all the test cases in a test set / release by configuration. Ideally they wanted an small inline bar graph as well. Using the custom reporting functionality of Spira, this is possible.

Custom Report to display the build's status name

Standard custom report table for builds contains only the build status ID field, no status name included in it.
This report clarifies how that can be resolved and get the status names instead of the status IDs (or both).

How to eliminate "The server method 'GlobalNavigation_RetrieveWorkspaces' failed" error

If you have an on-premise installation of Spira that displays a GlobalNavigation error popup message on certain pages, it may be due to a configuration issue on the server preventing setting the insecure connections to HTTPS.

What's the Best Way to Test Out the Source Code Features During a Trial?

When you sign up for a trial of either SpiraTeam or SpiraPlan you can add our TaraVault source code management system as a free add-on.  This lets you initialize a new Git (or Subversion) repository, commit files, make changes and also view the branches and changes. In addition, trials of SpiraTeam/SpiraPlan also come with a built-in dummy test provider that simulates a source code repository. This is useful to see how the features work without needing to actually commit any code yourself.

This article explains the two different options you have for trying out Spira's code management features and provide guidance on which is best for you.

How to add most recent comment to the Task summary report

This article explains how to get the most recent comment and add it as a column for an artifact summary report (if it is not already displayed).

Graphing the Lead Time and Cycle Time - Part 3

When the data for creation date, start date, and end date are good, we can aggregate the data in a graphical format. This article will demonstrate how to write a simple query to show the trends of these lagging metrics.  

Addressing incorrect data before graphing Lead Time and Cycle Time - Part 2

When aggregating lead time and cycle time graphically, it is important to ensure correct data is present in the required date fields that mark the appropriate workflow status required for computing the lead time and cycle time metrics. This article explains how to perform some diagnostics before aggregating data in the graphs using the task module.

Creating the Report for computing the Lead Time and Cycle Time - Part 1

One of the frequent questions that the Agile Project teams face is computing the cycle and Lead time.  Depending upon the team's practices, this computation may be applied for Requirements, Tasks, or Defects. This article addresses how to create a report for lead time and cycle time based on tasks.

Retrieving requirement associations

This article describes how to retrieve artifact's associations due to the dependency type that become challenging.

Defining the Custom Graphs for Program Capabilities and Milestones

This article provides instructions on creating Custom Graphs for Program Capabilities and Milestones.

How to retrieve incidents associated with a requirement using Custom Reports

Sometimes you may need to get the list of incidents associated with a requirement but that can be challenging in case an implicit association exist.
This article can help you to get these associations.

Migration to New Atlassian Centralized Administration - Impact to Integrations

Beginning on February 15, 2024 and continuing into March, Atlassian will be migrating its customers to a new, centralized user management experience called Atlassian Administration. These changes will change the default permissions and roles in Atlassian's products. These changes may require you to update your permissions to ensure the integration between Jira and SpiraTest works uninterrupted.

How to extract large amount of artifacts from Spira using Excel or OData

Import/export tools (including Custom reports ) are limited on row handling, due to performance issues it may cause. To get more than 10000 rows at the time, you will need to do it in batches or filter the report in some logical way.
This article explains how to override that limitation with minimum manual efforts.

Making Sure Your IIS .NET Trust Levels Are Not Preventing Spira from Loading

We had a customer that was installing Spira (this article applies to SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, and SpiraPlan editions) on a new server that had recently been hardened by their IT department and it would not load Spira or display the login page. After much debugging, the customer helped us realize it was the .NET Trust Level that was the culprit.

Custom Report of Test Sets, Test Cases, and Test Steps

One of our customers recently asked about creating a report that brought the test set, test  case, and test step in a specific format to help them with their test planning.  This KB article explains how this can be done.

 

Troubleshooting Eclipse IDE Plugin Installation on Eclipse 2022-12

When you are installing the Spira plugin for Eclipse on workstations running Eclipse 2022-12, sometimes it won't install because of missing/invalid dependencies. This article provides information on fixing this issue and also how to deploy the fixes for customers where their Eclipse instance is not able to download packages from the Internet.

Create a custom report of all users with their role in each product

If you want to get a report of all the users in the system split by their role per product then this article helps you to achieve that. The custom reporting module in Spira allows you to create a custom report to extract that information.

Creating a Link to the Spira Artifact Item in ESQL

One of the customers recently asked about including a link as an additional column in the tabular report so that it is easy for the receiver to directly access the link instead of navigating through the system. This article provides the query to accomplish this request as part of their query.

EVM - Leading Indicators for Forecasting

In a series of EVM articles, part 1, part 2, and part 3, we discussed about implementing the earned value management (EVM) lagging indicators. In this article, we will discuss the forecasting metrics.

Implementing EVM - Schedule and Summary of Task Based Cost Metrics in Spira - Part 3

This is the final extension to the Earned Value Management. The main difference here is that the the task module contains the details of the costs that needs to be aggregated and added to the cost of time at the blended rate. 

Implementing EVM - Schedule and Cost Metrics in Spira - Part 2

This is an extension of the earlier EVM article on implementing schedule metrics alone. In this article, let us explore adding cost metrics, such as the cost variance and the cost performance index, with summarized costs tracked at the release level.

Implementing EVM - Schedule Metrics in Spira

Recently, an attendee in a conference asked me how Spira can support the earned value management (EVM) for project tracking. The question came up as cost is not part of the standard Spira setup. This article addresses this need. 

Creating a custom report to display all artifacts owned by users

If you need to report against the artifacts owned by one user, but across multiple products - this article helps you to achieve that. The report example focuses specifically on incident and tasks, but can be changed to include more or different artifacts.

How to show the Jira ID on the artifact list pages and in reports

This article describes the steps to do so you can display the Jira ID field in certain reports and on list pages.

Accommodating New Requirement Statuses

Spira currently limits the statuses available for the requirement artifact due to the support the requirement status level automation. One request, despite infrequent, is to address how to accommodate excluding requirements at a release level or reporting on requirements in this 'required but currently unavailable' requirement status. This article addresses this requirement.   

How to get a list of all Requirements associated to a Release or all Risks associated to Requirement

This article shows examples of how to find all artifacts of one type associated to another artifact. For example, getting the list of Requirements associated to a Release, or showing all Risks associated to a Requirement. This mimics what a user may see in the corresponding Associations tab but in a report.

Creating a Risk Register at Portfolio Level

A customer recently asked how to get a list of all risks across all projects within a portfolio. This article explains how to create such a report.

Data Export Options from Spira & KronoDesk After Termination of Service

In the Inflectra Cloud Hosting Terms of Service (ToS), it mentions: "In the event this Agreement is terminated, Inflectra will make available to Organization a file of the Data within thirty (30) days of termination".  Some customers have asked what format the data will be in.

How to make custom reports for program level artifact associations

This article explains how to create several different example custom reports for program level artifacts and their associations.

How to add and an image (logo) to the header or footer of a custom report

While custom images in custom report headers and footers are not directly supported this article explains a workaround so that you can embed an image or a  logo inside the custom report.

Сreate a report to filter Parent Requirements only based on a Custom Field

From the UI the Parent requirement won't be retrieved if none of its children match the filter criteria.
This article shows you how to create a custom report that retrieves parent requirements that meet the filter criteria, even if none of their children meet it.
For example, if you need to create a custom report for requirements filtered by a custom property - here are the detailed instructions how to achieve that.

Summary report of all products with information about their programs

Sometimes you need to get a report of all the Programs and Products available in your Spira instance.
This article explains how to do that.

Remove IIS Server version HTTP Response Header

By default, the IIS web server used by Spira and KronoDesk will include an HTTP Header that discloses the name and version of the web server being used. It is often recommended by security experts that this header be hidden to make it more difficult for potential hackers to know what platform is being used by the application. This article explains how you can hide this header.

What is Copied when an Artifact is Cloned

Several customers had questions about the "copying of  artifacts", specifically looking for information about which linked data and dependent data elements are copied. In this article we clarify this information.

Purpose behind a Release Clone Option

We had a customer ask recently why this clone option at the release level in Spira did not make a copy of all the artifacts associated in the previous release. This article addresses this question.

Impact of Bulk Edit Privilege in Spira

A customer recently asked about the impact of turning off the Bulk Edit privilege in Spira. This blog addresses the specific areas this Bulk Edit privilege influences.

What's Migrated from Jira into Spira?

We have a migration tool that makes it easy to move from Jira (cloud, server and data-center editions) to Spira (SpiraTest, SpiraTeam and SpiraPlan editions). This article provides some more information on exactly what is migrated in each module.

Using a Custom Report to Find Test Cases Not in a Test Set

We had a customer ask us how they could find all the test cases that are NOT part of a specific test set. Now there is unfortunately not a way to do it directly in the Spira UI. However that is where the handy custom reporting functionality comes in!

Best Practices for using Test Sets in Spira

Customers often have questions about the best way to use test sets in SpiraTest, SpiraTeam and/or SpiraPlan. In this article we cover some of the most common ways that test sets are used in projects.

Create a Summary Report of Test Cases and Defects using Power BI

This article explains how to generate a simple test execution report that includes the list of test cases, execution dates and raised defects using PowerBI.

Creating a list of comments for any users in the system

If you need to extract comments for artifact, for a period of time or filtered by comment creator - you can easily do that using Custom Report tool or - if you're using SpiraPlan you can use OData or (PowerBI Desktop) to visually create reports and analysis.

How to Fix Embedded Spira Image URLs When You Change Server URLs

You may come across a situation where the base URL of your Spira instance has changed and the embedded image URLs no longer match. This will cause a broken image to display inside the various rich text editors in Spira. This article explains how you can use SQL to do a bulk update of the offending URLs.

Creating a Custom Requirement Summary Graph using ESQL

A customer recently posted on the forums that they wanted to create a similar graph to the built-in Requirements Summary one using Spira custom graphs and ESQL. In this article we include an example.

How to encrypt Spira login credentials when using the DataSync Service

When you use Inflectra's DataSync Service with your on premise installation of Spira, the credentials are stored in a config file. By default, these credentials are not encrypted to help users troubleshoot the connection. This article explains how to encrypt the credentials, to increase security.

Using SubQuery (nested SELECT) in ESQL

You’ve probably encountered cases where it looks like you need another SELECT statement inside your main statement.
Is it possible to use nested SELECTs in ESQL? 
Yes, it’s possible!
In this article, we’ll explain the nested query (SELECT) and how to use it efficiently.

How to share a query from PowerQuery (Microsoft Excel or PowerBI)

If you're using SpiraPlan's OData to extract data, Power Query helps with extraction and transformations steps that are represented as queries with share options to be used by other users.
This article covers the general mechanisms to share a query in Power Query.

Graph of requirements by status in open releases

This article explains how to create a graph of the number of requirements by status, assigned to any open release in a product, using the custom graphing engine.

Extracting Custom List value names using OData

If you're using SpiraPlan you can use OData to visually create reports and analsyis. In this example, we are getting an artifact's and product's multi-select custom property value names using Excel Power Query. The build in custom repoort views for artifacts and products show all custom fields, but only their raw values. That means that for custom lists only the ID of the custom list value(s) are shown and not the actual names. Here is what to do to find  and display the names.

How to get the names of Custom List values instead of their IDs

In this article we will show how to get an artifact's and product's multi-select custom property values. Report views for artifacts and products contain all custom fields, but for those custom fields that use custom lists, only the ID of the custom list value(s) are shown. Here is what to do if you want to find the text that matches those IDs.

How to format .md documents - MarkDown language basic syntax

If you have created a Spira document with  .md extension, you can add formatting elements (headings, bulleted lists, URLs) to plain text without the use of a formal text editor or the use of HTML tags. Please note that Spira supports all original markdown syntax and does not support any extended syntax (like tables, footnotes, checklists)

Creating a Risk Exposure History Report

 In this article we will show you how to create a risk exposure report to help product managers evaluate changes to risk exposures over time.

Frequently Asked Questions About Inflectra Support

We often get asked by our customers about the types and level of support we provide, as well as details on how we host their information (for cloud customers). This article provides an overview of our support, cloud hosting and the option to deploy on-premise.

Creating a report for failed Test Cases with no linked Incidents

A customer of ours asked for a custom report for displaying the list of  failed Test Cases that do not have any incidents attached or created during testing.

Modifying the Test Set Summary Report to Exclude Folders

When you run the Test Set Summary Report and filter by a specific test set or a very narrow filter, you will often see the matching test sets and all of the folders in the product. This article explains how you can modify the report to exclude the folders from the output.

Creating a Bar Chart to visualize historical delivery of requirements and incidents

Custom graphs let you see powerful and meaningful summaries of your data. One example of this is seeing how many requirements or incidents were delivered historically, broken down by the year of their release. In this article we will show you how to create such a graph to help Product Managers see delivery over time, to help them assess and manage their current and future work program.
 

Create a report of the number of Incidents and Requirements in past releases

Some customers may want to see the summary delivered outputs of their past releases. To do so, in this example, we create a custom report that shows a table of the total number of Incidents and requirements assigned to each past releases (releases with an end date in the past).

Integrating Spira On-Premise with KronoDesk - Add Incident Request Fails

We had a customer that was integrating Spira that was hosted on-premise with a cloud instance of KronoDesk. When they used the feature to log the incident in Spira from a KronoDesk ticket, the incident was created in Spira, but the information did not reflect back in KronoDesk, and an error message was displayed.

Create a report to display all artifacts across the system owned by a specific person

You may want to extract all the artifacts that have a specific person is assigned across all products, to see their current work. 
This article provides an example of such a report.

Synchronizing Spira with Microsoft Azure DevOps - error adding work item

When you integrate Spira with Microsoft Azure DevOps you might get error records generated in your Event Log, while all expected artifacts are being synced.

This guide explains the meaning of the error codes and possible causes.

Creating a Custom Report to display a list of Incidents with their linked Test Cases

Some customers have asked how to create a custom report that lets them trace back from Incidents to Test cases (information about each incident with all the IDs of the test cases associated to that Incident). This is the opposite to Test Case Traceability report.

This article explains the process.

Formatting Dates in Custom Report in ESQL

A customer recently asked how to format the date format removing the time component in the custom report. This article address how it can be done.

Adding Document Version to Test Case Attachment Grid

We had a customer that was looking to add the current document version to the grid of attachments shown in the standard Test Case Detailed report. This article explains how you can easily add this field.

Connecting the ALM 11.5 Migration Tool to HP ALM Without Using IE

When you want to migrate your requirements, test cases, defects and other data from HP/Micro Focus ALM to SpiraTeam, you will need to make sure you have all of the ALM client components installed. However the ALM Components are normally loaded using the insecure Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) web browser. To avoid needing to use this browser, you can use the Micro Focus ALM Client Launcher instead. This article explains how.

Report of Incidents Associated with Blocked Test Cases

One of our customers asked us how to extract the defects/incidents linked to the blocked test cases in a report. This article shows you how to do this using a simple custom report.

Displaying a Test Case - Risk Exposure Report

With SpiraPlan, you have the ability to create and manage risks, requirements and test cases in the same system. You can use the Associations feature to link the requirements to risks, and the test coverage feature to link requirements to test cases. However, as part of a risk based testing methodology, you will often want to see which of your test cases have the greatest overall, aggregate associated risk; if you are limited in time, these are the most critical tests to execute. This custom report generates such a view for you quickly and easily.

Displaying a Requirements - Risk Exposure Report

With SpiraPlan, you have the ability to create and manage both risks and requirements in the same system. You can use the Associations feature to link the requirements to risks. However, as part of a risk based testing methodology, you will often want to see which of your requirements have the greatest overall, aggregate associated risk. This custom report generates such a view for you quickly and easily.

Displaying a Test Case - Risk Traceability Matrix Report

With SpiraPlan, you have the ability to create and manage risks, requirements and test cases in the same system. You can use the Associations feature to link the requirements to risks, and the test coverage feature to link requirements to test cases. However, it is often useful to be able to generate a traceability matrix between test cases and their associated risks. This custom report generates such a table for you quickly and easily.

Displaying a Requirements - Risk Traceability Matrix Report

With SpiraPlan, you have the ability to create and manage both risks and requirements in the same system. You can use the Associations feature to link the requirements to risks. However, it is often useful to be able to generate a traceability matrix between requirements and risks. This custom report generates such a table for you quickly and easily.

Information on Requirement Types and Statuses

A customer recently asked for assistance requirement  documentation on the Inflectra website about help on the various fields available when creating requirements in Spira. 

Specifically, the columns such as Type (List of values = Design element, Epic, Feature, Need, Quality, Use Case, User Story). They needed to understand what was the intended use of each of these fields.  and also the meaning of list of values under the status fields (Planned, Requested, developed etc). They wanted to see if we could provide a more detailed explanation or guide what each list of values means? They did not want to make any incorrect assumptions.

Jira Server 9.0 and Later Breaking API Changes

For performance reasons, Atlassian has made breaking changes to the Jira Server API in version 9.0 (and later). This means that is you are using the Spira data synchronization plugin for Jira Server, you need to download the most recent version from our website. This also affects Jira Data Center.

Note: this does not affect Jira Cloud.

How to create a manual test run using the Spira API

To create new manual test runs in SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam, or SpiraTest through the API, you need to make two connected API calls. The first creates the Pending Test Run, and the second finalizes and logs the test run. The Pending Test Run call allows for the manual API test run process to support key features users experience in the UI of the app itself. These include multiple test cases in one test run pending, linked test steps, and test parameters.

How to use these two API calls is explained below, using the v6 REST API as an example. 

Update LDAP Distinguished Name of Existing User

Spira and KronoDesk let you import existing users from LDAP into the system. That will bring over the users, and also link their user profile to their LDAP user by means of the LDAP Distinguished Name (or DN). However if you move a user in the LDAP folder structure, it may break the link with Spira, resulting in that user not being able to login.

How to Change Web Application Name in IIS

Spira (SpiraTest, SpiraTeam and SpiraPlan) and KronoDesk all use the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) web server. A common need is to be able to change the IIS application name / virtual directory. For example, you may need to rename "SpiraTest" to "SpiraTeam" after you have upgraded your edition.

Synchronizing On-Premise Spira Sync with Microsoft Azure DevOps (TF400324)

Recently (starting in March 22nd, 2022, but later for some customers) Microsoft removed support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 endpoints. If you are using an on-premise version of Spira, or a cloud version that uses an on-premise data-synchronization utility, you may get the TFS error: TF400324

Web Server Performance - IIS Worker Process Current Requests

Most on-premise Spira and KronoDesk installations will be using the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Server to serve the application to users.  If you are experiencing performance problems or slow page load times (and you cannot move to our cloud version), this article will help you troubleshoot IIS worker process requests.

Company's Firewall Blocking Spira HTTPS Traffic

We had a customer that was using a VPN / Firewall to access our cloud instances of Spira. Most firewalls simply pass through the HTTPS traffic on port 443 unaltered. However some more stringent ones actually decrypt the HTTPS traffic, inspect the packets and then re-encrypt it for the user. In one case, this was causing an ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED error.

Creating a Velocity Comparison Chart for Agile or Scrum Product Delivery

A customer once asked how to create a velocity comparison chart for their Scrum Team to measure planned versus actual velocity across the releases. This article addresses how this chart can be created.

Creating a Custom Graph based on a set of values in a Custom List

A customer recently asked about creating a custom graph based on a set of values in a custom list on an artifact. This article explains how this can be done. 

Implementing Sorting and Filtering on Tasks using XSLT

In one of the training sessions on reporting, a request came up on how data in the XSLT can be sorted similar to ordering results using the ORDER BY clause in ESQL. Both ESQL and XSLT offer its own power which is beyond the scope of this article. But, this article explains a simple way to sort the folders and the tasks in these folders by filtering out the tasks in the root folder and filtering tasks that do not have a name filled in.

Custom Report to pull Custom Properties with Data

A customer had a list of custom properties on the requirement artifact. Some of these custom properties on some requirement had data filled in. When they pulled a report of these requirements, some of these empty custom properties took up much of the report space. So, the customer wondered about reporting only those non-empty custom properties on the artifact. This article explains how this can be achieved.

Creating a Custom Report of Electronic Signature Approval on Test Cases

A customer once asked how to create a list of all test cases that have electronic signature approval recorded.  For example, let us say that you have electronic signature turned on for a specific transition operation in the Test Case. Then, how do we create a list of all the test cases that have electronic signature recorded? 

How to fix Jira synchronization issues - mapping errors

Sometimes when integrating Jira with Spira, you might receive errors that refer to artifact mappings, statuses, or even users. This can happen  even if the synchronization status is marked as ‘Success’ and highlighted in green. In this article we have combined certain synchronization errors that might appear while configuring integration with Atlassian Jira.

How to fix Jira DataSync error codes – 400, 401, 404 and 500

Sometimes during the Jira plugin configuration to sync with Spira, you might get an error that is not self-describing and the errors do not point to an obvious solution. In this article we provide guidance on how to resolve some common synchronization errors with specific error codes (400, 401, 404 and 500)

VersionOne REST API Fields needed by Spira datasync

VersionOne is a very customizable tool. If you followed all the steps configuring it, but you still don't see data in Spira, please make sure your instance is using the built-in fields as part of your user stories. You can find a list of all of the fields that the VersionOne API uses (and that the Spira data sync therefore uses) below.

Custom Use Case Requirements Report using Custom Reports

We had a customer that was looking to use the Custom Reporting feature in Spira to generate a simple use case report that matched their existing template and format. This article shows how you can do this yourself.

Get Area ID from Microsoft Azure DevOps (ADO)

In order to synchronize SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, or SpiraPlan with Microsoft Azure DevOps (ADO) formerly known as Microsoft Team Foundation Services (TFS) you may need the IDs of the Areas inside ADO. This article describes how you can get this from cloud instances of ADO where you do not have access to the database.

Report of Incidents by Program

A customer asked us if we could provide a report of all the incidents across all projects and programs. In SpiraPlan you already have a Program Incidents list page that shows this information.  However sometimes you want the information in a report format.

How to use the Excel365 addin if you are not able to use the official Microsoft Office Marketplace

Our Office365 addin let's users easily and quickly send data to Spira, or get data out of Spira, across different products and artifacts. We distribute this addin from within Microsoft's Office marketplace. This gives users convenience and confidence: the addin is easy to install, and has been vetted by Microsoft's marketplace team. Some organizations do not allow users to use this marketplace. How do you use this addin in such cases? 

Displaying a Graph of Requirements Test Coverage by Custom Property

Imagine you have a situation where you want to display a requirements test coverage graph for requirements organized by a multi-select custom property. In this article we show how you can use that property to display a custom graph in the Spira reporting dashboard.

Accessing the Spira 6.0 REST API using C# .NET

We have had several requests for sample code illustrating how to access the Spira 6.0 REST API in C# code. You can of course use the SOAP API instead where Visual Studio auto-generates the C# code for you, but since we have a complete REST Unit Test framework in C#, we are sharing the sample code

Specifying Heading Styles in Spira Custom Reports

A customer wanted to know the way to correctly format their reports so that they would look correctly in HTML and MS-Word in terms of the headings.

Custom Report of Test Sets, Test Cases, Test Runs by Folder and Release

We had a customer looking for a consolidated report of the test sets and their test cases, grouped by release and test set folder. The report needed to have the individual test case instances in the test set along with the associated test runs.

Fixing the 'The URL-encoded form data' is not valid. Error

Sometimes when you have very large pages of data in the administration screens inside Spira you may receive an error due to exceeding the default number of allowed form elements posting back data. This article provides a fixed for the issue.

What changes to requirement types for parent requirements in 6.13 means for you

With the release of SpiraPlan 6.13 we changed how parent requirements work. 

In previous versions, when you had a requirement that contained children, it would automatically have its type set to either Package (v5.x) or Epic (v6.x). This was regardless of its original type before it became a parent. This approach was not flexible enough for different use cases and could lead to confusion.

Now with version 6.13, we have changed the way requirements work to allow you to make a requirement a "summary" type (with children) and keep its original type. This lets you have a more flexible hierarchy of requirements with different types. In addition, it will make synchronization of requirements with tools such as Atlassian Jira and Microsoft Azure DevOps (ADO) easier because you can now map the specific types.

To simplify the process for new product templates, when you create a new product template in Spira, it will come with an additional requirement type called Epic

Upgrading Spira Editions - What is The Process?

Customers often ask us about the process for upgrading from SpiraTest to SpiraTeam / SpiraPlan or from SpiraTeam to SpiraPlan. In this article we address some of the common questions for both cloud and on-premise customers.https://spiradoc.inflectra.com/Spira-Administration-Guide/System/#license-details

Generating a Report of Artifacts that have Invalid Dates

Sometimes you will load in data into SpiraTeam using Excel, Google Sheets or other methods where you end up with dates that are invalid, for example tasks that have an end date before their start date! This article explains how you can use a custom report to quickly find them.

Creating a Graph of Automated vs. Manual Test Execution Durations

Sometimes you will want to get an idea how fast your manual and automated tests are taking. You can use the custom graphing feature to create a custom graph for this.

Creating a Report of Requirements Test Coverage Percentages

SpiraTest comes with a built in graph for displaying the requirements' test coverage information. However sometimes you want the raw data and percentages rather than just the graphical form. This KB article shows how you can use the custom reporting functionality to do this.

Uploading Screenshots to Spira using the v6.0 REST API

We have had some customers looking to upload files to Spira using our REST API. This article provides some sample code.

How to connect to Git repositories in TaraVault over SSH

You can readily connect to TaraVault repos on your local environment using HTTPS. Details of the required URLs are available in the relevant SpiraTeam or SpiraPlan product under the source code pages. You can additionally connect over SSH by following the below instructions

We Can't Load This Add-In Because We Couldn't Connect to the Catalog

If you are using our Excel 365 addin you may see the error message:

ADD_IN ERROR

We Can't Load This Add-In Because We Couldn't Connect to the Catalog

The steps to take to resolve this are below

"Column does not allow NULLS" system error after upgrading to v6.8

After upgrading to v6.8, you may get a system error with the text in it that states that the task can not be completed. This can affect creating users, copying Products, creating new Products, among other activities.

IIS Application Pool Identity and Windows Integrated Security

When using Spira or KronoDesk on a separate web and database server, the easiest configuration is to use SQL Server authentication to connect between the web server and database. However that means hard coding a password in the web server (in the Web.config file). So in this article we explain how to use Windows Integrated Authentication instead.

Using the Spira REST API to Remove Test Cases from a Test Set

We had a customer that was looking for a more automated way to remove test cases from a test set. The good news is that our REST API makes this easy.

Creating a Program Requirements Traceability Report in Spira

Some customers have asked us how they can create a program-level requirements traceability report (RTM) in Spira using the custom reporting functionality. This article explains the process.

Is SpiraPlan IEC 62304 Compliant?

ISO 13485 Medical devices -- Quality management systems -- Requirements for regulatory purposes is an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard published for the first time in 1996; it represents the requirements for a comprehensive quality management system for the design and manufacture of medical devices.

Displaying Custom Properties at the Test Step Level

Spira allows custom property at the test step level. This functionality allows testers additional flexibility. When custom reports are designed, some customers prefer to show the custom property at the test step level. This article discusses how to structure the ESQL query to accommodate this need. 

Purging out Large Batches of Old Automated Test Runs in SpiraTest

We had a customer that was looking for a way to easily purge out a large set of older automated test runs that were no longer needed in their project to free up space.

There is not currently a built-in tool to do this, but we thought it might be useful to provide a way to do it using a SQL Server Agent Job.

Entering Mathematical Equations into Requirements

We had a customer ask us what was the recommended way to enter mathematical equations into a requirement in Spira. There are a couple of options depending on several factors:

  • You want to do it 100% natively in Spira, vs. using an external tool with Spira
  • How complex the equation is
  • Does the equation need to be editable after the fact
Importing from DOORS, Should I use importer or ReqIF File?

A prospective customer asked us to elaborate on the pros and cons of importing into SpiraTeam using either ReqIF or the DOORS importer plug-in?

Fixing 'Access is denied' and 'Invalid Login' error messages with Perforce Integration

When you use the Perforce Provider for Spira you may sometimes run into a Windows folder permission error. This is due to the Perforce API running as a specific user that does not have access to the Windows temporary profile storage area.

Building a Spira Web Farm with IIS Servers

This document contains an overview of how to setup and configure SpiraTest, SpiraTeam or SpiraPlan in a load balanced web farm scenario. It contains links to additional information from Microsoft, and community resources related to the scenario.

Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'TASK_WORKFLOW_ID', table

During the upgrade of an older version of Spira v6.x to the latest version of Spira v6.x the installer logs the following:

Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'TASK_WORKFLOW_ID', table 'SpiraTest.dbo.TST_TASK_TYPE'; column does not allow nulls. UPDATE fails.  The statement has been terminated. [System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException]

Architecture Diagrams for SpiraTest, SpiraTeam and SpiraPlan

A customer recently asked us for some diagrams that illustrate the logical system and application architectures for use in their documentation of the system. We thought these diagrams might be useful for our other customers.

HP ALM Migration Custom Field Import Errors

When you are running the import from HP / MicroFocus ALM into Spira, you sometimes come across error messages that look like the following:

Error "The field <RQ_USER_17> cannot be used with requirement type <Non Functional>"

How do I get the System Names of Microsoft Azure DevOps Custom Fields

When you integrate Spira with Microsoft Azure DevOps (formerly known as Team Foundation Server or TFS) you have the option of matching up the custom properties in Spira with the user defined fields in Azure DevOps. This guide explains how you get the 'system names' for custom vs. standard fields.

Inflectra Cloud Standard Maintenance Schedule

This article provides some information on the maintenance activities we do on our cloud platform

Connecting the HP ALM 11.5 Migration Tool to HP ALM

When you want to migrate your requirements, test cases, defects and other data from HP ALM to SpiraTeam, you will need to make sure you have all of the HP ALM client components installed.

Creating a new Test Run in Spira using the v6.0 REST API

Although we have comprehensive documentation published on our website regarding the Spira REST API, sometimes users need some additional examples. In this article we publish an example of how to record a new test run using our REST API.

Using the Spira REST API to Update Artifacts

One of the most common needs when using the Spira REST API is the ability to update an item in the system (e.g. test case, requirement, task, defect, etc.). This article explains how you can use the REST API to do this.

Spira PDF Reports Downloading Not Opening on Chrome

You may find that SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, SpiraPlan reports sometimes don't open on Google Chrome, but instead try and download instead, which can be annoying. This article explains the setting you need to change in Chrome to fix it.

Using RemoteLaunch to Execute a Powershell Script

This guide will cover how to initially install and configure RemoteLaunch (not RemoteLaunchX) and the Command-Line execution engine as well as creating and scheduling PowerShell script executions.  It will also cover how to pass data into PowerShell and receive test results.

RemoteLaunch v5.1.0.0 was used to create this guide.

 

Integration with Jira - Basic auth with password is not allowed on this instance

If you are integrating Spira (SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, or SpiraPlan) with Atlassian Jira, you may get this error message if you have not updated the integration for a while:

Basic auth with password is not allowed on this instance

Using the WcfBaseUrl to Override Default SOAP WSDL Locations

When you are self-hosting Spira on your own Windows Server using the IIS web server, it will generate standard URL locations for the Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) files used to consume SOAP services. This article explains how you can override the URL to use a different one.

Enabling Trace Logging on Sparx Enterprise Architect Importer

When you run the Sparx Enterprise Architect (EA) importer it should import requirements from Sparx EA into Spira (SpiraTest, SpiraTeam or SpiraPlan). If that doesn't happen then you may need to enable trace logging to see what's going on.

Fixing Embedded Spira Image URLs When You Change Server URLs

You may come across a situation where the base URL of your Spira instance has changed and the embedded image URLs no longer match. This will cause a broken image to display inside the various rich text editors in Spira. This article explains how you can use SQL to do a bulk update of the offending URLs.

Data Synchronization with JIRA - What Synchronizes

A customer recently had some questions about what synchronizes between Spira and Jira, so we thought that this article would help clarify things.

Defaulting Your System to use TLS 1.2 for .NET Applications

As you move your web applications (such as SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, SpiraPlan, or KronoDesk) to newer encryption protocols such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2, you will need to make sure the client applications are configured to use the latest version of TLS. Specifically applications using Microsoft .NET may not use the latest version by default.

Pie Chart of Incident Status for a Specific Component

Sometimes customers need to show a Graph with all the Incidents by status for a specific Component in Spira. This article explains how to use the custom graphing engine to achieve this.

Links in Jira to Spira no longer visible in new Jira UI

One of the features of the Spira synchronization service for Atlassian Jira is that it automatically adds relevant links to the user story and issue pages in Jira to make it easier to navigate from Jira back to SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, or SpiraPlan. Some users have reported these links are no longer visible.

Can we limit access to our Spira or KronoDesk Instance to Specific IP Addresses?

For additional security, customers may want to limit who can access their cloud instances of SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, SpiraPlan, or KronoDesk to specific networks and IP addresses. This article describes why you would want to do this and how we support this.

Using SpiraTest on BDD Projects

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is an Agile software development process that encourages collaboration among developers, QA and non-technical or business participants in a software project. It encourages teams to use conversation and concrete examples to formalize a shared understanding of how the application should behave. This article outlines how you can use SpiraTest to manage BDD style requirements and test cases.

Troubleshooting TestNG integration with Spira

Here are a few things to check when you are integrating TestNG with Spira.

Using the new Spira Reports API

In version 6.2.1 of SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam and SpiraTest we have added a new reporting API that lets you access the reporting capabilities of Spira programatically.

Sending Custom Properties to Spira using the API

When using the API to do post a new artifact, for example, you may want to also set custom properties for that artifact. You need to pass in an object with an array of objects, one object for each custom property. For each object you need to specify two fields: the custom property id, and the new value.

Troubleshooting Emails Not Being Received from Spira or KronoDesk

Sometimes when you use Spira or KronoDesk and perform actions (e.g. assigning bugs, test cases, etc.) email notifications are not received correctly. This article provides some common reasons and solutions

Tuning SQL Server Databases using SQL Engine Tuning Advisor

The SQL Server Database Engine Tuning Advisor examines how queries are processed in the databases you specify, and then recommends how you can improve query processing performance by modifying database structures such as indexes, indexed views, and partitioning. This can be used by on-premise customers to improve the performance of their Spira and KronoDesk instances.

Folder List in Chrome 76 corrupted, unclickable - FIXED IN CHROME 77

With a recent update to Google Chrome (v76), Chrome had the CSS engine was modified which would make the sidebar navigation folder tree to become unusable. This issue was resolved by Google with the release of Chrome 77

This article is now obsolete.

How to move a Spira or KronoDesk installation to another Server

Sometimes it is necessary to move a SpiraTeam, SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, or KronoDesk installation to another server, without wanting to lose all of your data. This KB will guide you through the steps of transferring the install over, and optionally upgrading the application. This guide will walk you through the recommended steps when needing to move both the application and database to new servers.

Upgrade from v5.4 to v6.0 blocked by missing FullText Index Error

Sometimes when running the Spira v6.0 installer to upgrade from v5.4.0.4 to v6.0 you get the following error:

Table or indexed view 'TST_ATTACHMENT' does not have a full-text index or user does not have permission to perform this action.

This article describes the cause and provides the solution

Integration with Jira Cloud/Server - Atlassian has depreciated use of passwords

When you are integrating Spira with Jira cloud (hosted by Atlassian) and Jira server (locally hosted) you need to to connect to Jira using a login and Jira API Key. Previously (prior to June 3rd, 2019) you could also use a Jira login and password, that is no longer allowed by Atlassian.

Definitions of Spira Artifacts

SpiraPlan has a range of artifacts. These  are the building blocks of a product or program and contain all of their data. Each artifact holds different data and is used in different ways. For instance, requirements are one artifact, and releases are another. They work differently, and are not interchangable. There are artifacts to help you test, plan, track bugs and tasks, and more.

Creating a Summary Report of Test Cases and Defects

Sometimes you want a simple test execution report that includes the list of test cases, execution dates and raised defects, without all the ancillary information in the standard Spira reports. This article provides an example of such a report.

Installing Spira or KronoDesk with a large SQL Server model database size

When you are installing SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, SpiraPlan or KronoDesk on a database server with a large 'model' database sometimes the install will fail because the initial Spira/KronoDesk database is not large enough to contain your model database. This article provides the solution

Upgrade from v5.4 to v6.0 Blocked by Foreign Key Constraints

When you upgrade from v5.4 to v6.0, unlike previous versions of the upgrader, we don't delete the entire database and recreate it. The upgrader makes the changes to live database in-situ. However if you have missing foreign key constraints in the v5.4 database it can lead to bad data that breaks the installer.

The 'TestCaseWorkflowId' property on 'TestCaseType' could not be set to a 'null' value

When you upgrade from v5.4 to v6.0 upon opening a test case detail page you receive the error: "The 'TestCaseWorkflowId' property on 'TestCaseType' could not be set to a 'null' value". This article explains the cause and provides the solution

Jira API Fails with IllegalStateException: Duplicate key Error

When SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, or SpiraPlan connects to the Jira API to synchronize defects and user stories it relies on the Jira API working correctly and not having internal issues. This articles explains a common issue that some of our clients have found inside Atlassian Jira.

Sometimes You See "Multiple controls with the same ID" Error after Migrating Projects

You can use the Spira Project Backup & Migration Tool to move projects between one instance of SpiraTest and another pretty easily. However there is a known issue that can sometimes occur if you have deleted custom properties.

Integration Spira with Active Directory and Multiple Base DNs

Sometimes users have more complex LDAP configurations. For example, users may have two different "Base DN"s where the users are located. They want to know - if there a way somehow to define two different "Base DN"s ?

Simple Requirements Document Report

Customers sometimes ask us for a way to generate a report that would be a human readable requirements document. The built-in requirements detailed report often has more information that is needed in such a report.  This article describes how to create such a report.

Integrating Spira with a Cucumber-Based Java Automation Framework

Many of our customers are using SpiraTest / SpiraTeam with their own in-house test automation framework. In this article we explain how you can use our REST API and/or our sample jUnit code to integrate your own framework easily with Spira.

Enable TLS 1.2 in Internet Explorer 8, 9 or 10

If you have disabled TLS 1.0 and 1.1 encryption protocols on your IIS web server, you may run into issues accessing the web interface of Spira or KronoDesk from older versions of Windows and/or IE.

Deleting the Sample Users in Spira (for versions 6.4 and earlier)

Sometimes you want to delete the sample users in SpiraTest, SpiraTeam or SpiraPlan. This article explains the steps for doing this.

You can manage and delete all sample data from the "Manage Sample Data" system admin page. 

If this page is not available (for instance you are on a version older than 6.5) you can delete the sample data manually. 

Creating a Report of Incidents' Reopen Count

One of the metrics that customers often find useful is the number of times that a specific incident has been reopened. We plan on adding some built-in dashboard widgets for this metric, but in the meantime, we have a custom report that you can use to report on this metric from Spira.

Creating a Report of Incidents' Aging

In Spira we have a nice incident aging graph that you can use to see the count of incidents per aging range. However sometimes customers are looking for more customizable reporting around incident aging data. This article provides some sample custom reports.

Using SpiraTeam with Microsoft Azure DevOps

When using SpiraPlan, SpiraTest or SpiraTeam with Microsoft Azure DevOps instead of a local installation of Microsoft Team Foundation Server there are a couple of differences in the integration configuration that you will want to be aware of. This article describes those differences.

How to migrate or downgrade a SQL Server database to a lower version

This post shows you how you can migrate or downgrade a SQL Server database from one version to a lower or earlier one. E.g. 2016 to 2014, 2014 to 2012, 2012 to 2008 etc. This can be useful if you maintain a heterogeneous environment of SQL Server instances and you have a backup from a newer version that needs to be hosted onto an older version. This happens to us quite a bit when customers installed a trial on SQL Server Express (latest version) and we need to host it on one our cloud servers.

SpiraTeam Visual Studio Explorer AddIn gives error on Installation for VS2017

When trying to install the Add-In SpiraTeam Explorer for Visual Studio for VS2017, the install may fail, or prevent installation due to an error.

Example of using Spira v5.0 SOAP API to Filter Test Sets

A customer asked us for some sample code that illustrated how you can retrieve a filtered list of test sets using the Spira API. This example includes sample code using the Spira v5.0 API.

How to Migrate a SpiraTeam Database from On-Premise to Cloud

This article explains the process for making a backup image of your "on-premise" SpiraTeam (or SpiraTest, SpiraPlan) instance and preparing it so that it can be sent to Inflectra to host on our cloud environment. This can happen when you have been using SpiraTeam on-premise, but now want to migrate to the cloud.

When executing a test set with a configuration, an error occurs.

This article explains what to do if you are attempting to execute a test set and get this error message: "There are no test runs in this pending set to be resumed." 

SpiraTest - GitLab Integration, What Synchronizes?

When you use SpiraTest with GitLab, the synchronization plugin synchronizes some fields unidirectionally and other fields bidirectionally. To clarify the details, this article illustrates which fields are synched and in which directions.

Fixing "The maximum recursion 100 has been exhausted" error in Spira 5.0 and 5.1

Customers running Spira v5.0 or v5.1 may experience an issue where the system will let you create test case folders that point to one of their children as parent. This causes an infinite loop which will break the system. This article provides a solution to fix the issue (though we recommend upgrading to v5.4 to prevent it happening in the future).

This article is obsolete.
The infinite loop issue was fixed in later versions of Spira.

Creating a Report of Documents in SpiraTeam

A customer asked us this question:

My team is using SpiraTeam 5.4 as a storage vault for all software documents. The documents are placed in a specific project "System" that has been created for this specific purpose.

The documents are placed into several subdirectories: Requirements, Risks, Design., General, etc

Can we generate a report that lists the name of the document, folder, author, and current version.

jUnit or TestNG Plugins Receive a 502 Connection reset by Peer error

One of our customers was reporting that their instance of our TestNG plugin was reporting a 502 Connection Reset by Peer error. We did some debugging with them, and the issue appears to be a bug inside some versions of the Java Virtual Machine (VM) itself.

Test Set Execution Status Not Updating When I Run Test Cases

Sometimes customers will contact us regarding questions as to why the execution status indicator of their test sets is not being updated (i.e. everything still looks as not run) even after running some of the test cases. This article explains why this might be the case and provides solutions.

How To Build A Custom Data Sync Solution

We provide the source code for a number of the data sync solutions we provide (eg Jira). This gives customers the ability to tweak the precise behavior of the sync to their specific business needs. The open source code does not run in isolation and this article explains how to make sure you have everything you need to build and test your custom code.

Anonymizing Users To Ensure Data Privacy

Sometimes you create user accounts in SpiraTeam for real users to login and test the system. For example you may have a UAT (user acceptance testing) phase, or a crowdsourced testing event (like our Software Testing Bowl). You then want to turn over the data to a third party supplier, but you need to anonymize the users' personal information

TeamCity Spira Plugin Does Not Save Global Settings

When you are first using the SpiraTeam plugin for JetBrains TeamCity, you may run into the issue where the settings for TeamCity are not being saved correctly.

Writing a Custom Report to Display the Count of Incidents By Project and Priority

A customer of ours asked for a custom report / graph for displaying the count of incidents by project and by priority.

Troubleshooting the "Report ID" Does Not Exist Error in Spira

Sometimes when you try and run certain reports you may get an strange error message "The passed in report ID or report format ID does not exist". This message is unfortunately a red herring, and there is a different reason for this error.

Requirement - Test Step Traceability Report

Of the unique needs of a requirements and test management system when working in the Defense industry, specifically when designing, building, and testing mission systems, is the ability to link individual test steps to the requirements.  This article provides you with a custom report to use to display such a traceability matrix.

Mapping Spira Requirements to Test Steps in Bulk Using Excel and Rapise

Of the unique needs of a requirements and test management system when working in the Defense industry, specifically when designing, building, and testing mission systems, is the ability to link individual test steps to the requirements. Since v5 of SpiraTest, this has been possible inside the Spira user interface, however many customers have been looking for a way to map test steps to requirements in bulk using Excel.

Error Saving Item Due to Old Custom Property Records in Spira 5.x

If you have recently upgraded to Spira v5.x from an earlier version and get an error message saving artifacts that mentions 'XPKTST_ARTIFACT_CUSTOM_PROPERTY' then you may have some old artifact custom property records that are blocking the new item saving

What permissions are needed to create new artifacts?

From v5.4 of SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, and SpiraPlan, to perform any edit on the list pages for artifacts requires different permissions. Let's explore how to create new artifacts based on these new permissions.

How do I Recover a Deleted Project in Spira?

Most of the artifacts in Spira are "soft deleted", i.e. they are simply marked with a deleted flag, and can be recovered easily by a project administrator using the Project History Changes option to review the changes, filter by deletes and revert the change. However when a system administrator deletes a whole project, it physically deletes the project and cannot be undone.

What Happens to Folder Contents When A Folder is Deleted

A number of artifacts have folders to help you organize your items. Folders can be created and deleted and items moved into and out of them. What happens when you delete a folder?

What's Migrated from HP ALM into SpiraTeam

We have a migration tool that makes it easy to move from HP ALM (aka Quality Center) to SpiraTeam. This article provides some more information on exactly what is migrated in each module.

Using the Spira v5.x Custom Reporting with Custom Properties

The custom reporting functionality in SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam v5.4 (or later) includes the ability to write complex reports, joining various tables, using SQL aggregation (COUNT, SUM, etc.) functions and other advanced reporting features. A common needs is to display a list of artifacts (requirements, test cases, etc.) and join against the custom property definitions so that you get the custom fields displayed with the names of the value not just the IDs. This articles explains how to do this.

Editing the language in report templates

Within the standard reports included with SpiraTeam (Test/Plan),  some words exist, such as the 3-letter month abbreviations. These items are in English, even if you have chosen a different language for your Spira user interface.  The report templates can be edited to change these words to a different language. This article explains how to do that.

SpiraTeam Simplified Test Execution Report

We had a potential customer that was looking to generate simplified test result reports from SpiraTeam that had more details for each of the executed test steps, with full size screenshots displayed, rather than the small table cells that are in the small reports. This article contains an example of such a report.

Overriding Rapise Settings from SpiraTest

Sometimes you want to override certain Rapise settings (e.g. the Command Interval) from within SpiraTest. For example you might to run one test set more slowly than other test sets because the environment is slower. This article explains how you can easily pass settings values from SpiraTest to Rapise.

Uploading Screenshots to Spira using the v5.0 REST API

We have had some customers looking to upload files to Spira using our REST API. This article provides some sample code.

How to Control Upgrades of Cloud Spira in Life Sciences

Many of our customers work in the life sciences and healthcare industries. They want to use cloud hosted versions of SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, or SpiraPlan, but they need to be able to control the updates and also be able to have a staging and production environment. This article explains the options we provide

Long Running Import Tasks into Spira Failing

Many of our customers are importing from other tools, such as HP QC, HP ALM, Microsoft Test Manager, TestRail, etc. We have convenient import tools for these products. However sometimes these import tasks can fail due to interruptions. This article provides some solutions

Releases and Iterations - What Rolls Up?

Customers sometimes contact us with questions about how the Releases and Iterations in Spira work, specifically what kinds of data (test status, task progress, etc.) roll up from an iteration to a minor release, and from a minor release to a  major release. Also they want to know whether iterations are included when you filter by release. This article provides some clarifications.

GET an automated test script using Spira's REST API

An automated test case stores its test script as a standard document inside of the SpiraTest/Team/Plan application. To GET the current script using our REST API you need to make 2 calls: 1 to get the document ID and the other to retrieve the script itself.

Finding Old Projects to Purge for GDPR Compliance

With the establishment of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you now may need to find old SpiraTeam projects that are not active any more so that you can delete them and reduce unnecessary storage of personal data.

Preventing DesktopDataSync from Going to Sleep

This article is kindly provided by one of our customers - Boris - who has been using the Desktop Data Sync and JIRA to integrate his on-premise JIRA instance with a cloud instance of SpiraTeam.

Which artifacts can be shared across projects?

By default, all projects are completely self-contained; artifacts in one project can only be linked or associated with artifacts in the same project.  However, there is a way for the project admin to selectively allow other projects to access artifacts in the current project.  (Administration -> Project Associations)

The cross-project functionality is being introduced gradually.  As of Spira version 6.0, it applies only to requirements, test cases, tasks (SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam), and incidents.

This article explains how and where the artifacts from another project can be used.

How to filter a REST API search by a DateRangeValue

When using Spira's REST API, there are a number of calls that let you create powerful filters to query for only the specific information you want. These use a POST request with the filter in the body as either JSON or XML. Here's how to correctly formulate JSON to get only artifacts that fall between two dates.

Fixing the database when you have incidents linked to values from other projects

The incidents in Spira are able to have customizable incident types, statuses, priorities and severities. This means that each project has unique IDs for the various attributes. Sometimes when you incorrectly load in data using our Excel Add-In, you can link incidents to attributes from other projects. This article describes the problem and the solution.

Receiving database constraint error when trying to execute a test case or test set

If you are trying to run a test case or test set and you receive the following error:

Messages:
   Database constraint violation occurred [APPLICATION.Business.EntityConstraintViolationException]
   An error occurred while updating the entries. See the inner exception for details. [System.Data.UpdateException]
   Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint 'XPKTST_ARTIFACT_CUSTOM_PROPERTY'. Cannot insert duplicate key in object 'dbo.TST_ARTIFACT_CUSTOM_PROPERTY'.
The statement has been terminated. [System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException]

Then this article provides the solution for you.

Removing News Feed Widget from On-Premise Spira Installations

Some of our customers who have SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, and SpiraTeam installations wanted to know how you can remove the "News Feed" RSS widget from all users' dashboards since it was causing Spira to access the www.inflectra.com domain.

Order of Database Table Deletes when Projects Deleted in Spira

Some of our customers wanted to know that we delete the data in the SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, and SpiraTeam tables when we delete a project.
This article outlines that approximate order of the data being deleted

Best Practices for Configuring Microsoft SQL Server for use with SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, and KronoDesk

When you install SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, SpiraPlan, or KronoDesk on premise, you have a choice in different ways to configure SQL Server. Every situation is different, but this article presents some recommendations.

Increasing the Maximum Upload File Size in IIS

By default, IIS web server allows for limited file size to be uploaded to the web server. For IIS 6 and IIS 7, the default maximum file upload size is 4 MB and 28.6 MB respectively. IIS 7 returns a 404 error (HTTP Error 404.13 - CONTENT_LENGTH_TOO_LARGE) if someone uploads something larger than 30MB. In order to allow for larger file size uploads, a few server changes are required.

Troubleshooting LDAP & ActiveDirectory Integration

Integrating SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam with your LDAP or ActiveDirectory direcory server makes a lot of sense. It allows you to have a single user authentication system, with all logins and passwords centrally managed. Spira includes integration out of the box with LDAP and this article provides help for some common issues that we have come across.

Setting up a test scenario in which different steps need to be performed by different people

Sometimes you want to test a process which requires a handoff between departments and would involve different testers to complete the full range of functionality. This article describes how to set that up, using a test set.

When creating a release, an error states that the version number has already been used.

Sometimes, when you try to create a new release, a error message says that "You need to choose a Version Number that's not already been used." But you cannot find a release with that version number.

Sample Release Notes Custom Report

Customers sometimes ask us for a simple Release Notes report that can be used to display the list of new features and enhancements / fixed bugs in a specific release. We use a report like that ourselves to generate the Release Notes for our products (Rapise, SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, etc.). This article describes how you can create a similar report yourself

Best Practices When Using SpiraTeam for V-Model Projects

SpiraTeam has been designed to work with a variety of different software development methodologies, including several different flavors of agile, waterfall and hybrid. This articles describes one of the more popular waterfall methods called the V-Model and gives best practices for how to use SpiraTeam on such projects.

Troubleshooting the Data-Synchronization between SpiraTest and Jira

This article describes some basic troubleshooting steps that you should take when the data-synchronization service between SpiraTest and another bug tracker (in this example Jira, but much of this also applies to other data syncs) does not appear to work correctly.

Rebuilding the Database Indexes - Advanced Version

With the latest version of SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam, we have provided a simple button in the Data Tools section that lets you rebuild the database indexes using the same script that we published in KB10. However sometimes the database is so large that the execution takes longer than the 30 minutes allowed by the application, or you want more control over the fragmentation levels that trigger a rebuild. This article provides guidance and a more advanced script for power users.

Displaying the Value of a List Custom Property in Spira Custom Reports

In the standard reports that come with SpiraTeam, we have the 'Detailed' reports that are designed to include a primary artifact (e.g. requirements) and then include tables that display lists of related items (e.g. Tasks, Incidents, etc.). By default, we only show some of the fields in these tables. This article explains how to display the value of specific custom fields in the tables when you customize the standard reports.

How to Install a SpiraTeam Database from our Cloud Servers Locally

This article explains the process for taking a SpiraTeam (or SpiraTest, SpiraPlan) backup image from Inflectra's cloud servers and installing it on a local "on-premise" instance of SpiraTeam. This can happen when you have been using SpiraTeam in the cloud, but now want to host it locally.

How to generate a HAR file in Chrome or Firefox

Sometimes, when troubleshooting complex issues with SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk, it's necessary for us to get some additional information to troubleshoot the issue further. For example, when we receive a report of performance trouble when using our cloud services, there are a lot of different factors that may contribute to the problem. To narrow down the cause of the performance problem, we need more data.

Setting up Incident Workflow Transitions and Notifications

A workflow is a predefined sequence of incident statuses linked together by “workflow transitions”.  Incident statuses and workflow transitions are highly configurable. This article gives an overview of workflow transitions.

Accessing the SpiraTeam Graph Data Grid as CSV

When you display a graph in the SpiraTeam reporting page, you can download a graph as a CSV file. Some customers have asked about ways to get the data making a REST call. This article explains the components of the API.

How Are the Attachments in SpiraTeam Stored?

We often get questions about how the attachments in SpiraTeam are stored, and what the relationship is between the X.dat files on the file system and the original filenames. This articles provides information on this.

Creating a SpiraTest custom report with date values (no time component)

Sometimes you want to create a new custom report with a list of fields from SpiraTest that includes the date that a test cases was executed or the date that a defect was logged, but you don't want to clutter the report with the time part. Alternatively you want to join two tables on a date-time field where only a date comparison is needed.

Sending XML data using Spira's REST API

SpiraTeam lets you send data for POST requests in our REST API using either JSON or XML. To ensure that data is saved correctly, when using XML all fields must be in alphabetical order.

How the Test Set Execution Status is Calculated in Spira 5.0+

One of the limitations in SpiraTest and SpiraTeam v4.x was that for performance reasons we could not handle test sets with very large numbers of test cases and that the system was not able to display the counts of the test cases and the execution status for test set folders.

Synchronizing JIRA 5.0+ with Spira version 4.x

The plugins listed on our website for integrating with JIRA are compatible with the latest major version (5.0 at time of writing) of SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam. This article provides older versions of the JIRA data-synchronization plugin for customers that are using older versions of Spira.

Installing the Excel Add-Ins on a machine that has a newer version of Microsoft VSTO

When you install the Spira MS-Office Add-Ins to help import data into SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam from Excel, Word or MS-Project the installer will check that you have the Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) pre-requisite installed. Sometimes if you have this already installed with a newer version it will prevent the install from completing.

This article is obsolete, since there is a new version of the import/export tools available. To import data using SpiraPlan Excel Import/Export Too l/ SpiraPlan MS-Word Requirements & Test Case Import Tool it is not required any more to have Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) installed as a prerequisite.

Spaces are being removed from Rich Text Editors in Chrome 54

When using rich text editors in SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk with Google Chrome 54, users are seeing spaces not being accepted.

This article is now obsolete.
All issues with rich text editors have been resolved.

How Do I Import From Excel 2010+ into SpiraTeam v4.x

We recently announced the release of an updated MS-Office plugin for Spira v5.0 that makes use of the new API in Spira 5.0. However some customers still need the older MS-Office 2010+ plugin for older versions of Spira (v4.x).

This article is obsolete.
Our Excel365 plugin can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store from the add-ins menu. More details about the Excel365 addin can be found here.

Why are Months in Czech & Slovak Cultures Sometimes Shown in Roman Numerals

When running Spira or KronoDesk on certain versions of Windows, when using the Czech or Slovak culture settings (or using Server default when Windows is installed in those languages) you may get unusual formatted dates.

This article is obsolete.
There is a new Style Guide for Czech and Slovak - can be found here: https://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/5/7b57e4a1-d299-4238-9997-f3ac51d6f763/ces-cze-StyleGuide.pdf

Using SpiraTeam with Visual Studio Online

When using SpiraPlan, SpiraTest or SpiraTeam with Microsoft Visual Studio Online instead of a local installation of Microsoft Team Foundation Server there are a couple of differences in the integration configuration that you will want to be aware of. This article describes those differences.

Database Changes Between Spira v4.2 and v5.0

As part of the v5.0 update to SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam, we made major changes to the database structure to improve performance and usability as well as lay the foundation for v5.1, v5.2 and v5.3 due out later this year. Customers using custom reports that relied on the old v4.2 database structure will need to modify their custom reports.

This article is obsolete.
This only applies to upgrading to v5.0 which was released in 2016.

Fixing Security Issue that Prevents Excel Reports from Opening in Spira
The symptom is that whenever a user tries to open an Excel format report in SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam, the report will download. When the user clicks on it to open, Excel opens but the area where the report should be is blank and gray. It affects all reports types in Excel format. Other formats (HTML, XML, etc.) work fine.
Make sure you can use all verbs in our API for self-hosted customers - fixing a 403 error
On-premise / self-hosted customers who have Spira installed on older versions of Windows (eg Windows Server 2003) may be using an old version of Internet Information Services 6 (IIS 6). IIS 6 can restrict by default which API verbs it allows throwing a 403.1 error.
Spira Icons Don't Appear When Running on Internet Explorer 11.0 in v5.x

A couple of our customers have run into a situation where the new font-based glyph icons that we're using in Spira 5.0 don't display. This is usually due to a configuration issue within IE itself, this article provides the recommended solution.

What to do When Upgrading to Spira 5.4 (or below) Fails?

When you upgrade an older version of SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam (hereafter referred to as Spira) from an older version to the latest version, the installer has to upgrade the application and database at the same time. This article provides some solutions to cases where the installer throws an error or fails to upgrade the database for some reason.

Best Practices for Test Folders and Test Sets
Several customers have asked us for recommendations and best practices for how to organize their test cases / folders and test sets / folders. This article provides some suggestions.
Running Selenium WebDriver Scripts using RemoteLaunch and NUnit
This article explains the process for running Selenium WebDriver test scripts written in C# using NUnit, RemoteLaunch and SpiraTest.
SpiraTeam MS-Excel Reports Give Message when Opening

When opening the SpiraTeam MS-Excel (printable) reports in MS Excel you may get a message displayed - "The file you are trying to open 'xxx.xls' is in a different format than specified by the file extenstion". This article explains why this message appears and how to deal with it.

DOORS Import DXL Runtime Error
Sometimes when you are using the SpiraTeam Importer for IBM Rational DOORS, you will get a DXL Runtime Error. This article explains the cause and provides the appropriate solution.
SpiraTeam and KronoDesk have IDs that occasionally jump by 1,000

When using SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk with SQL Server 2012 or later, you may occasionally have a situation where the ID for an artifact (test cases, incident, ticket) suddenly jumps by exactly 1,000 values (e.g. from 214 to 1214 instead of just incrementing to 215).

Creating a Report of Test Sets, Test Cases and Test Steps in Hierarchical Order

Sometimes you want to get a report of all the test sets with their included test cases along with their test steps with the tests organized by the order in which they are displayed in SpiraTest. The custom reporting system in Spira allows you to create a custom report of all the test cases (by test set) and test steps sorted by test case order. This articles describes the process for creating such a report.

(There are different versions of the ESQL query to use based on the version of Spira that you are using)

Resolving 'Unable to cast COM object' errors when using MS-Office Add-Ins

Sometimes when using our MS-Office Add-Ins (for Excel, Word and Project) on a new computer you will see an error message of the type:

Unable to cast COM object of type 'System.__ComObject' to interface type 'Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel.Worksheet'. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID ...

This article explains the cause of these types of error and provides some common solutions
 

Creating a custom report to display test step execution counts

The build in reports in SpiraTest / SpiraTeam are primarily geared to display the # passes, # fails, etc. from the perspective of test cases. It assumes that even a single fail / block / caution of any of the steps constitutes a failure of the entire test case. However some of our customers were looking for ways to display the execution information at the test step level. This articles describes how to create a simple custom report to display this.

Migrating from Cloud/Hosted Trial to On-Premise
We sometimes get customers that have signed up for a hosted/cloud trial of our products but want to migrate their trial data to an on-premise installation for production use (instead of just having us move it to our production cloud servers). This article outlines the process for such a migration.
Running Queries Using SQL Server Management Studio

During the course of investigating a technical support issue for SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk , the need may arise to run a query against your Microsoft SQL database. To do so, you will use Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. If you did not install this when you installed SQL, you can install it from the original source.

Exporting Event Logs for Support

This article describes how to export server Event Logs when requested by support.

Creating a report to display test cases with execution counts in Spira v4.2

This articles describes the steps to create a custom report that displays a table of test cases with the following fields:

  • Test Case ID
  • Test Case Name
  • Last Execution Date
  • Last Execution Status
  • Number of Test Runs
Configuring MS SQL Server for Remote Access

When connecting from Spira or Krono installed on a separate application server to a remote SQL server, you may have difficulties connecting. This article describes the steps for making sure that your SQL Server can be accessed remotely.

Useful constants when calling the Spira API
Sometimes when using our SOAP or REST APIs there are constants that are useful for some of the filters. In many cases they are included in the build-in API documentation, but sometimes they are not listed. This article details some of the release/requirement ones that may be useful:
Fixing 'Unable to cast object of type 'System.DBNull' to type 'System.String'' errors in Spira v4.x

Sometimes when you are saving Rapise test scripts into some early versions of Spira v4.2.x.x (e.g. Spira v4.2.0.1 - v4.2.0.5) you can start getting these errors on the Test Case details page. You may also get the error for other reasons in earlier versions of Spira v4.x.

Accessing the Spira v4.2 REST API to get test cases in a release

This article describes the process and provides an example for accessing the Spira v4.2 REST API to get a filtered list of test cases in a release.

Some of my users are receiving 'Invalid Viewstate' errors. How do I resolve this?
Ask the user to clear out their browser's cache of cookies and stored internet pages/content. After they do this and then close and reopen their browser, the issue should be resolved.
After restoring a backup of my database, I keep getting unable to login to database errors?

This usually just means that the restored database just needs to be linked to the existing database server login. This can be done by executing the appropriate SQL command listed below:

How do I migrate data from a trial installation of Spira or KronoDesk to the production one?

This is a common need, since you may have installed SpiraTest, SpiraPlan,  SpiraTeam, or KronoDesk  on a workstation to evaluate its capabilities and now need to install it on a production server for real use, but you don't want to lose all your existing data.

Hosting Questions - SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam & KronoDesk

You already know the advantages of us hosting your application in our cloud:

  • Focus on managing your projects not hardware
  • Flexible pricing and contracts by # users
  • Backups and all maintenance handled by our staff
  • Globally accessible using just a web browser
  • Get up and running in minutes with no installations
  • Choice of hosting locations (USA, EU, Canada, India, Singapore, Australia)               

However you may have questions about our hosting service. This article provides important information about our cloud hosting services, including security, privacy and reliability information.

SpiraTeam & KronoDesk - Common Installation Questions

Our web-based products: SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam and KronoDesk make use of the Microsoft IIS web-server and Microsoft SQL Server database platforms.
This KB article explains some of the more common error messages that can occur after installing one of our products and the steps to remedy them.
Article was initially written specifically for versions v3.0 - v4.2 of Spira and versions v1.x of KronoDesk, but some of the issues applicable to the recent versions as well.

SpiraTeam and KronoDesk - Upgrade Questions

One of the benefits of using Inflectra software is that you get unlimited upgrades for the first year and as long as you maintain an active service plan. This articles describes the process for upgrading your installation of SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk to the latest version. It also answers many common questions about the process.

How should I backup my installation of Spira or KronoDesk?

This article describes the process for backing up instances of SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk (hosted on-premise). The example is written using SpiraTeam, but applies equally well to SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or KronoDesk, you just need to change the database name in the SQL files.

Common Email Sending Issues when using SpiraTeam or KronoDesk
It is a common need to be able to connect our products (SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam and KronoDesk) to a mail server. If we are hosting it in our cloud, then we take care of this for you, however if you are hosting it yourselves, you need to connect Spira or KronoDesk to an SMTP mailserver. This article provides answers to some common mail questions.
Running Selenium WebDriver Scripts using RemoteLaunch and TestNG
This article explains the process for running Selenium WebDriver test scripts written in Java using TestNG, RemoteLaunch and SpiraTest.
Creating a Custom Spira Report for Comparing Test Results

A customer asked us the following question:  "I run an automated test suite consisting of the same 250 tests every night.
I'd like to be able to run a report in the morning that shows me the tests that failed, but had passed the previous night.
How can I accomplish this using the reporting mechanism ??"
 

Integrating SpiraTest and RemoteLaunch with Cucumber

Cucumber is a software tool that computer programmers use for testing other software. It runs automated acceptance tests written in a behavior-driven development (BDD) style. Cucumber is written in the Ruby programming language. This articles explains how you can use SpiraTest and RemoteLaunch to integrate with Cucumber.

Finding deleted requirements when you only know a child item's ID

Sometimes you have a situation where a user deletes an entire tree of requirements and you only know the ID of one of the child items and not the parent ID that was actually deleted. This KB article provides a query that lets you find all the deleted parents of a specific requirement.

Creating a Report of Test Cases and Test Runs in Hierarhical Order

Sometimes you want to get a report of all the tests executed along with their test cases with the tests organized by the order in which they are displayed in SpiraTest. The custom reporting system in Spira allows you to create a custom report of all the test runs and test run steps sorted by test case order. This articles describes the process for creating such a report.

SpiraTeam and KronoDesk Javascript Not Loading Fully on Windows 8+

If you install SpiraTeam or KronoDesk on Windows 8 or later, you need to make sure that the various IIS Roles and Features are installed. If not, you may find that various Menus don't display correctly or that the pages do not display any data.
This article describes the features and roles that need to be included.

How to Change the Date Format in the Spira Reports

To save space in the various SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam reports, the default report templates use the format  xxxxx. Often times it will be required to display a different date format either across the entire report or in part of the report. This article describes how to change the date format in one of the standard reports by changing the XSLT template used to generate the report.

Creating a Report of All Users in the System

Sometimes you want to get a report of all the users in the system. The custom reporting system in Spira allows you to create a custom report of all the users. This articles describes the process for creating such a report.

HPQC 9.0 Importer Fails to Import Users
Sometimes when importing users from HPQC using the SpiraTest / SpiraTeam QC 9.0+ importer, it will fail to import the users.
Writing Custom Entity SQL Reports in Spira

Our Spira platform (SpiraPlan, SpiraTest, SpiraTeam) has powerful custom reporting capabilities that let you build custom reports using the Microsoft Entity SQL language. This article provides some pointers on writing such reports.

Performance issues with IE9 running apps under ASP.NET 4.5

If you face performance issues with Spira or KronoDesk when the users use Internet Explorer 9.0, there is a known issue in ASP.NET 4.5 that can cause the client to disconnect and all subsequent AJAX calls do not get processed. This article describes the symptoms and the solution.

This article is now obsolete.
Internet Explorer 9 is no longer supported by Spira or KronoDesk.

How to adjust the logging levels in Spira and KronoDesk

Sometimes to diagnose issues with SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk it is helpful to increase the logging level to log all trace activity in the system. This KB article describes how to enable this feature.

Getting 'X' is not a member of type 'Inflectra.SpiraTest.DataModel.IncidentView' after 4.2 upgrade

After upgrading to Spira v4.2, if you get either of the following error messages:

  • 'Width' is not a member of type 'Inflectra.SpiraTest.DataModel.IncidentView'
  • 'DisplayMode' is not a member of type 'Inflectra.SpiraTest.DataModel.IncidentView'

Please follow the instructions in the article to solve the issue that happens when you try and use a saved filter that gives this issue.

This article is obsolete.
It is referring to the old bug fixed in later versions and applies only to that particular case when upgrading to Spira v4.2.

How to email everyone in the system

This article explains how you can use a custom report to get a list of all the email addresses of the users of a Spira installation:

Hardening SSL on IIS 6 - IIS 7

If you are running a web application (such as SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk) on an IIS web server using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), you will want to harden the environment by removing the older versions of SSL and TLS that are no longer considered secure.

These steps apply to:

  • Windows Server 2003 R1 & R2
  • Windows Server 2008 R1 & R2

Usually Windows Server 2012 and later are already configured to be secure.

Embedding Image Attachments in a Report

This article describes how you create / modify the XSLT report templates in Spira to include embedded images without having to manually embed them in the artifacts. It uses the ability of the XSLT reports to have an <IMG> tag in the report template that references the attachment URL.

List of Possible Filterable Field Names in Spira when Using API

When you use our SOAP or REST web service APIs you will often times want to retrieve a filtered list of data. This is done by using the RemoteFilter that lets you query the list of requirements, test cases, tasks, incidents, etc. and pass in the field to be filtered. This article includes the list of standard fields that you can use in the RemoteFilter.

Modifying the underlying MS-Word Templates in Spira 4.1+
The web-based custom reporting system in Spira v4.1 (or later) is designed to let you easily change the layout and contents of the various reports (and to create your own reports). It works in a format-agnostic manner, so that the same templates and layouts can be used regardless of whether the final report will be in PDF, HTML, Excel or MS-Word format. However sometimes there is a need to modify the specific template used to generate a specific format (e.g. MS-Word). This article describes the process.
Spira or KronoDesk displays 404 page not found error on certain pages

If you have an installation of SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk that displays a 404 page not found message on certain pages, it may be due to a configuration issue on the server preventing the URL rewriter from functioning correctly.

Upgrading SpiraTeam v4.1 from older version fails due to .NET 4.0 check failing

Sometimes when running the SpiraTeam v4.1 installer to upgrade from an older version of SpiraTeam (same also applies to SpiraTest and SpiraPlan) you will get the error message:
You must install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.30319 even though .NET 4.0, 4.5 or 4.5.1 is installed.

This article is now obsolete.
Current framework requirements listed here.

A DLL required for this install to complete could not be run

If you run one of our installation packages (.msi) and receive the following message:

A DLL required for this install to complete could not be run

Enabling Windows Installer (.msi) Trace Logging
Sometimes when installing our products you get error messages during the installation and it's necessary to provide Inflectra support personnel with detailed trace/logging information so that they can better support you. This article describes the steps necessary to enable Windows Installer (.msi) trace logging.
Ways to Optimize Spira and KronoDesk Performance

Sometimes we get help desk tickets from on-premise customers regarding the performance of our web-based applications (SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam and KronoDesk). Whilst every situation is different, this article provides some common best practices that should help having a high-performing system.

Changing Requirement Status in Spira v4.1 to match v4.0
In v4.1 the status of requirements was changed so that requirements set to 'Completed' in v4.0 will now be shown as 'Developed' with two new statuses Tested and Completed available.
Using the Spira v4.x Custom Reporting with Custom Properties

The custom reporting functionality in SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam v4.1 (or later) includes the ability to write complex reports, joining various tables, using SQL aggregation (COUNT, SUM, etc.) functions and other advanced reporting features. A common needs is to display a list of artifacts (requirements, test cases, etc.) and join against the custom property definitions so that you get the custom fields displayed with the names of the value not just the IDs. This articles explains how to do this.

List of reportable entities in Spira 4.1-5.4

Spira 4.1 onwards includes the ability to write custom reports against various reportable entities.
This article provides a list of reportable entities that were available in Spira version 4.1 through to 5.4

MSDTC Causing Issues Creating Requirements & Use Cases on Spira 4.1
If you are running Spira v4.1 and you have the situation where you cannot create requirements or use case steps, please read this article for instructions on how to fix the issue.
Issues using the KronoDesk and Spira Screenshot Java Applet

SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam versions older than v4.1 and KronoDesk versions lower than v1.1.0.7 use a screenshot capture utility written using the Java development platform. This lets the web browser capture a screenshot and attach it to items in the system without having to first save the item. This article describes some issues using this applet and outlines the replacement plan we have implemented to use HTML5 instead of Java going forward.

Executing Test Cases on Multiple Platforms

Sometimes you will have a situation where you want to run the same test cases on multiple different platforms (e.g. Windows/Linux, IE/Firefox/Chrome, MySQL/Oracle/DB2), and be able to distinguish the results. This article describes several different ways to do this.

Exporting all incidents out of the system into Excel

Several users have asked - if it is possible to extract all incidents logged in a SpiraTest server no matter what the project is.
Using the built-in Incident reports or Excel Add-In, you have to extract incidents for each project and then move into one spreadsheet however they wanted to know if it was possible to do this as one extract from within the tool.

Troubleshooting the MS-Office 2003 Add-Ins

If you have installed the MS-Office Add-In for SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam and the necessary prerequisites (VSTO and the Primary Interop Assemblies if using the MS-Office 2003 Add-In) but it won't display the Add-In in your instance of MS-Excel, MS-Word or MS-Project, follow these instructions to help us troubleshoot.

Fixing I/O request taking longer than 15 seconds SQL Server errors

If you ever see the following message in the Application Event Logs on your SQL Server database server:
SQL Server has encountered X occurrence(s) of I/O requests taking longer than 15 seconds to complete on file [Path to either your database's MDF or LDF files]
It can often mean that the Size/Shrink settings for the database files are not correct for the size of database. This articles suggestions some techniques for fixing this error message.

This article is obsolete.
The error was most common for SQL Server 2008/2008R2 editions and indicates SQL Server I/O Bottlenecks, as well as serious problems with your storage hardware you need to fix. These SQL Server editions are no longer supported.

Integrating SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam Hosted with JIRA On-Demand

This article describes the steps in integrating a hosted instance of SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam with Atlassian's JIRA On-Demand (hosted). We recommend using our cloud hosted data synchronization service that means you don't need any special tools or downloads to use both products together. Let us do the work for you!

Java Security Warning on appSupa when pasting screenshot attachment

When using some versions of Java with SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk you may get the following warning message when pasting in screenshots or images:

When I click to paste a screenshot attachment, get Java security warning (see screenshot) which says " Block potentially unsafe components from being run?  Application: appSupa  Java has discovered application components that could indicate a security concern. Contact the application vendor to ensure that it has not been tampered with" with options to Block and Unblock.   "The application contains both signed and unsigned code".

This article is obsolete, due to the fact Java has been disabled for most of the browsers.

Trouble with drag and drop when using Google Chrome browser

When attempting to drag and drop items to rearrange list pages, it does not work.

This article is obsolete.
Google Chrome and other browsers are fully compatible with Spira functionality.
How to access Spira v4.x SOAP web services using Java

This knowledge base article describes how to connect to the SpiraTest, SpiraPlan & SpiraTeam 4.x SOAP web services using Java code. It assumes that you've generated the SOAP proxy classes using JAX-WS. If you need to download pre-compiled versions of the classes, they can be downloaded from this knowledge base article.

Note: We now recommend customers use our REST web service instead as Java has removed a lot of the JAX-WS classes from the newest versions of the JRE: https://api.inflectra.com/Spira/Services/v7_0/RestService.aspx

Sample code is here: GitHub JUnit Sample.

This article can be considered as obsolete, we now recommend customers use our REST web service instead as Java has removed a lot of the JAX-WS classes from the newest versions of the JRE: https://api.inflectra.com/Spira/Services/v7_0/RestService.aspx

How to access Spira v4.0 SOAP web services using Java

This knowledge base article describes how to connect to the SpiraTest, SpiraPlan & SpiraTeam SOAP web services using Java code. It assumes that you've either generated the SOAP proxy classes using JAX-WS or are using the pre-compiled ones attached to this KB article.

This article is obsolete, we now recommend customers use our REST web service instead as Java has removed a lot of the JAX-WS classes from the newest versions of the JRE: https://api.inflectra.com/Spira/Services/v7_0/RestService.aspx

Fixing error where uploading attachments gives missing folder or types message

This articles provides the solution to the following error messages that you may receive in Spira if you have missing default project attachment types/folders for a project:

APPLICATION.Business.Attachment::Insert: Inflectra.SpiraTest.Business.ProjectDefaultAttachmentTypeException, Can't locate the default project attachment type for project X
or

APPLICATION.Business.Attachment::Insert: Inflectra.SpiraTest.Business.ProjectDefaultAttachmentFolderException, Can't locate the default project folder for project X

This article is obsolete, since new versions of Spira have this issue already resolved and do not require any manual intervention to correct the possible error message.

Installing MS-Office Add-Ins for multiple users

Since our MS-Office 2007 Add-In for SpiraTeam uses the Microsoft VSTO technology, it's limited to being installed for a single user on a given PC.
However if you need to be able to have multiple users access it, there are some registry keys that you can manually add.

Setting the Proxy Server for Spira to Connect to External Resources

In situations where your SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam server is located on a company network that does not have direct Internet access (and connects through a proxy server), some of the integration features of Spira may not work correctly:

  • The weather widget on the My Page
  • The list of recent builds if your Jenkins server is hosted outside your network
  • The RSS feed widgets on the My Page
  • Data synchronization with bug-trackers that are externally hosted

This article outlines the step necessary to tell the Spira server to use the proxy server for its Internet connections.

Article can be considered as obsolete.
Described fix applies to outdated versions of the application only.

Errors occur when trying to attach a screenshot or display "My Profile" page

SpiraTeam uses Java (tm) for attaching screenshots to artifacts and for adding a user logo or avatar on My Profile page.

If a current version of the Java Plug-In is not installed in your browser, problems can occur. 
Depending  on your browser, the source of the problem may not be clear.  For example, sometimes IE will report that  there is a problem with the page. This article explains how to update your browser's Java Plug-In.
 
This article can now be considered as obsolete.
The most of the browsers have removed Java applets from the standard functionality due to vulnerabilities, performance degradation, and other complexities.
 
SpiraTeam and KronoDesk Javascript Not Loading Fully on Windows Server 2012+

If you install SpiraTeam or KronoDesk on Windows Server 2012 (or later), you need to make sure that the various IIS Roles and Features are installed. If not, you may find that various Menus don't display correctly or that the pages do not display any data. This article describes the features and roles that need to be included.

All the settings and prerequisites required for proper operation of the Spira instance can be found here in our documentation: https://spiradoc.inflectra.com/Spira-Administration-Guide/Installing-SpiraPlan/#system-prerequisites

How to embed images into SpiraTeam artifact descriptions

When you need to embed an image inside the description of a requirement, test case, task, etc. you need to follow the process outlined in this article. With the release of SpiraTeam 4.0 you can then have these images appear in the PDF, HTML and MS-Word 2003 format reports.

This article is now obsolete.
It is not required anymore to first upload the images and then specify the URL to display it in the description of the artifact (and then report) - all description fields are now rich text and screenshot images can be copied directly from the clipboard - the file will be automatically added to the description of any artifact.

List of reportable entities in SpiraTeam 4.0

The new release of SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam 4.0 includes the ability to write custom reports against various reportable entities. This articles provides a list of the available entities.

This article is now obsolete.
Currently Spira has a number of views available that helps to create powerful custom reports using ESQL queries. Each available table is listed with all of their exact field names. In our documentation you can find a full list of available custom report tables.

Unable to create a new project after upgrading to v4.0
If you have upgraded from Spira v3.2 to v4.0 you may receive a Foreign Key violation error message when you try and create a new project. We have identified the cause and will be adding a fix to patch 003. This article describes an immediate workaround.
WebPart Error on Reports Page After Upgrading from v3.2 -> v4.0

After upgrading from v3.2 to v4.0 you may receive this error message when you access the Reports home page on certain projects:

PageLayout:: OnError:
Cannot deserialize the blob of personalization data associated with the current page.
Parameter name: data [System.ArgumentException]
The serialized data is invalid. [System.ArgumentException]
Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: enumType [System.ArgumentNullException]

This article describes the solution to fix this issue.

Resolving Issue When NUnit doesn't return results back to SpiraTest/Team
When using the Spira Add-In for NUnit that allows you to have NUnit tests report back automatically against test cases in Spira you may run into an issue where the results do not report back and no errors or warnings are displayed. 
Using SpiraTeam Importer for QualityCenter with HP ALM 11

When you try and connect to HP ALM 11 using the Spira Importer for HP QC 9.0+ you may receive the following error message:

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80040154): Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {C5CBD7B2-490C-45F5-8C40-B8C3D108E6D7} failed due to the following error: 80040154 Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG)).

This article describes the steps necessary to resolve this issue.

Installing SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam v3.x on SQL Server 2012
When installing Spira on SQL Server 2012 (any edition) using Windows Authentication, you may receive an error message "Cannot Create User" (or similar) during the installation. This is because of a configuration change in SQL Server 2012 (as opposed to earlier versions). This article explains the step needed to prepare SQL Server 2012 for installing Spira v3.x. Newer versions of Spira will not need this step as the installer has been updated.
Writing Custom Reports in SpiraTeam v2.3 - v3.2
Using SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam versions v2.3 - v3.2 you can create custom reports that can be displayed in the Reports tab of the system. This article explains the process for creating such reports. Note that the reporting system is being updated in Spira v4.0 and these instructions will not apply to v4.0 or later versions of the system.
How do I move my SpiraTest/Plan/Team database to another server

This article describes the process and steps for moving your SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam database from one computer to another.
The article will refer to SpiraTeam, but it applies equally to the other products.

Incident Custom Properties are Disabled

In SpiraTest, when you create a new custom property in the incidents section, they are disabled by default. Unlike other parts of the system, the incident tracker has a customizable workflow. This article describes the steps necessary to enable the new custom properties in the workflow (which will make the custom property enabled).

This article is now obsolete.
Custom Properties are now always active and do not require separate activation.

Using SpiraTeam Data Synchronization with ADO/TFS on a 64-bit system

SpiraTeam is designed to work on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems, taking advantage of the extra memory and power available if you have a 64-bit operating system. However Microsoft's Azure DevOps Server (ADO) also known as Team Foundation Server (TFS) - only runs in 32-bit mode. Therefore when using our integration there are a couple of steps you need to perform.

How do I create a new Spira plugin for a bug-tracker
We have many different plugins available for different bug-tracking tools (see https://www.inflectra.com/SpiraTeam/Downloads.aspx) however there may be cases where you need to integrate SpiraTest, SpiraPlan or SpiraTeam with a bug-tracker we do not currently support. This article explains the process for writing such a plugin.
Rebuilding Database Indexes

This article has a couple SQL commands that can be run to optimize database speed and performance.  This article applies to on-premise instances only.  If your instance is cloud-hosted, please create a Help Desk ticket.

How to Import Data into SpiraTest/Team from MS-Excel

This article describes the steps for importing data from an Excel spreadsheet into SpiraTeam. You can use this to import requirements, test cases, tasks, incidents and releases.

Writing Custom Reports for SpiraTeam v2.3 - v3.2

This articles describes how to write custom reports in SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam. It also can be used to modify the layout and styling of the various built-in reports.
This information applies to the following versions of Spira:

  • v2.3
  • v2.3.1
  • v3.0
  • v3.1
  • v3.2

This article is obsolete. To create a new report it is not currently necessary to populate the tables, all applicable tables are already populated and available as ‘views’. To find more about available custom report tables, getting started tutorial, information about using dynamic tokens in reports, custom reports, custom graphs, OData (SpiraPlan only), please refer to our documentation here.

Application Dropdowns and Other Controls Not Displaying Correctly
When installing SpiraTest/Plan/Team or KronoDesk on a Windows 2008+ server, some of the controls or content in the application does not display correctly.
How to resolve PageHandlerFactory-Integrated Bad Module errors

This article describes how to resolve the following error message that can occur on new installations of SpiraTest, SpiraPlan, SpiraTeam or KronoDesk when ASP.NET is not correctly configured. This message typically only occurs on Windows Vista, Windows7 or Windows 2008 Server.

HTTP Error 500.21 - Internal Server Error
Handler "PageHandlerFactory-Integrated" has a bad module "ManagedPipelineHandler" in its module list.

How to access Spira v3.x SOAP web services using Java

This knowledge base article describes how to connect to the SpiraTest, SpiraPlan & SpiraTeam SOAP web services using Java code. It assumes that you've generated the SOAP proxy classes using JAX-WS. If you need to download pre-compiled versions of the classes, they can be downloaded from our website at: JavaSoap30Classes.zip

Note: We now recommend customers use our REST web service instead as Java has removed a lot of the JAX-WS classes from the newest versions of the JRE: https://api.inflectra.com/Spira/Services/v7_0/RestService.aspx

Sample code is here: GitHub JUnit Sample.

How to access SOAP web services using C# with WCF

This knowledge base article describes how to connect to the SpiraTest, SpiraPlan & SpiraTeam SOAP web services using .NET code written in C#. The code assumes that you're using Visual Studio 2008 or later and are using the newer .NET 3.0+ Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) "Add Service Reference" rather than the older .NET 2.0 ASMX web service client.