How does an integrated application interact with other TeamForge tools?

When you integrate an external application into your TeamForge site, the application can take full advantage object IDs, links and Go URLs.

To look at how this works, we'll use the Pebble applicationas an example. Pebble is a blogging tool that you can quickly integrate with TeamForge.

Prefix

Object ID's uniquely identify a TeamForge object so that you can access and use it in different contexts. For example, to get to artifact artf1234 quickly, you just enter artf1234 in the Jump To ID box. In the Pebble tutorial application, the date of a blog post, in YYYYMMDD format, is used as the object ID.

A prefix is an alphanumeric string attached to the beginning of an object ID that TeamForge uses to manage object IDs from different tools. For example,<prefix>_20100601 gets you a page showing all the blog posts in the project that were published on June 1, 2010.

The prefix for an integrated application is selected when the site administrator first integrates the application.

Go URLs

Go URLs allow a user to get to a particular object ID with a short, handy URL. To use this for Pebble, construct a URL like this: https://mysite.com/sf/go/<prefix>_<date in format YYYYMMDD>.

For example, if the Pebble tool in your project has the prefix PA, and you want to send someone all the blog posts published on app June 1, 2010, send them this link: https://mysite.com/sf/go/PA20100601.

Associations

The object ID can be used to associate objects with other TeamForge objects. For example, if you want to associate a document with the blogs published on June 1, 2010, go to the document's Associations tab and add an association to PA_20100601 as the object ID.

Automatic links

When you type text of the format <prefix> _<date in YYYYMMDDD> in any TeamForge text field, the text is converted to a link. When you click the link you see the blog posts for that date, if any.