Watching items to be notified about changes

You can watch items to stay informed about all changes to them. If you are watching an item, you will receive an email about each change and a notification is displayed in Helix ALM Web if you are logged in to the project. You will also receive a browser notification if they are enabled for Helix ALM. See Viewing the watched items list and change notifications. For example, you may want to watch an issue that impacts a task you are working on.

You can watch issues, requirements, requirement documents, test cases, and manual test runs. You cannot select items to watch while working in an open requirement document.

Before users can watch items, an administrator needs to make sure the required email and notification options are configured. See Requirements for watching items.

If you want to be notified about items that change based on specific criteria, you may want to configure user notifications instead. For example, a user notification is a good way to stay informed when issues are fixed. You can configure these notifications in the desktop client. See the Helix ALM help for information about configuring user notifications.

You can view a list of all items you are watching and see items that changed since you last viewed the list. See Viewing the watched items list and change notifications.

1. In an open item, click Watch. The button changes to Watching.

In an item list, select the items to watch, click the gear icon , and choose Watch.

You will receive email and be notified in Helix ALM Web when the item changes.

2. To stop watching items and receiving notifications about changes:

In an open item, click Watching. The button changes to Watch.
In an item list, select the items to stop watching, click , and choose Stop Watching. You can also stop watching items from the watched items list.

The number of users watching the item is displayed next to the Watch or Watching button. Click the number to view the list of watchers. Depending on your security permissions, you may be able to add and remove watchers in the list. See Managing users watching items.

Requirements for watching items

To allow users to watch items, an administrator needs to make sure that:

Users or customers have a valid email address specified in their user record. See Managing user and customer contact information
Email sending is enabled in the Helix ALM Server Admin Utility and in the project options in the desktop client. See the Helix ALM help for information about setting email options.

Email templates to use for notifications sent about watched items are set in the Notification project options in the desktop client. See the Helix ALM help for information about setting notification options.