Working with related items

Linking helps you establish relationships between items and manage related item changes. You can link related items in a project together in a parent/child or peer relationship. If you only use one Helix ALM area, such as issue management, you can only link the same item types. If you use multiple Helix ALM areas, such as issue and requirements management, you can link different item types. See Adding links.

Your use of linking depends on your team’s processes. For example, many teams do not merge issues because they need to maintain original issue numbers, so they use linking. See Linking examples for examples.

When you link items, you use a link definition to specify the type of relationship between the items. Link definitions may restrict the item types you can link and number of items you can include in a link. The administrator or another high-level user is usually responsible for creating link definitions. See Default link definitions.

If an item with links changes, the related items may be affected. You can mark related items as suspect to indicate they need to be reviewed to determine if any changes are needed. See Working with suspect items.