I'm in the process of customizing Rational Team Concert to include a custom work item type. As part of the testing of the work item type as I created it I populated a few of the custom work items with data. As I enhanced the custom work item type and added additional attributes I was able to use the "Check attributes usages in repository" from the "Types and Attributes" to ensure that the new attributes were propagated to my test work items.

Now I've gotten to the point where I need to create a custom workflow for this work item type. I've defined the workflow and and assigned it to the work item type, but my existing test work items can't seem to use it. Clicking on the "Check workflow usages in repository" link says "There are 9 work items in the repository referencing workflow states or resolutions that are not present in the bound workflow. Do you want to show these items in the Work Items view?".

The workitem view then just says that status = 1 for the test work items.

If I select a work to open in the rich client editor all of the process elements are inactive. If I open it in the web editor, it says that the status is "1", as shown below:

Is there any way to fix this and change the workflow of existing work items? I should add that new work items work just fine, but I'm worried about what might happen if I need to update the process again in the future.

• process
• workitem
• rational-team-concert
• ibm-rational

In the context of work item customization, you have to manually sync existing work item attributes with the most recent version of the PA in order to take your changes into account.

The steps are detailed here in the manual page "Defining work item types and attributes":
(bottom of the page)

To manually update existing work items with new or modified custom attributes:

1. Run a query so that the query results contain all the work items that you want to update.
   Note: Do not select any relationships to be shown in the query results.
   If relationships are shown, the Type icon is not displayed and you cannot complete these steps.
   To clear all relationships shown, in the Work Items view menu, select Relationships, click Deselect all, and then click OK.
2. In the Work Items view, select the work items that you want to modify.
3. In the row of one of the selected work items, right-click the Type icon and select Synchronize attributes.

Thanks. Eric.