Excel Import: Add external requirements to RY

Owned by Adrien Ragot
Last updated: May 30, 2024 by Mileva Briand
4 min read

Requirement Yogi 3.6 and above

Since this version, we’ve replace the Excel tab with External Properties. The Excel import is mostly needed to export requirements from Confluence, send them to your stakeholders for validation, and then import them back in Confluence with added comments. We were not able to do that, Excel requirements were only visible and not editable. You can still import requirements from Excel, here’s how:

This feature is designed to help you import requirements from other systems. Attach the file to a page, configure the import configuration, click "Import" and they're uploaded.

  • We import requirements in files attached to pages, you cannot edit those requirements directly in the app;

  • The Excel file must remain attached to the page,

  • When someone updates the file, re-upload the file so the requirements are updated. If the columns are different, we skip this importation.

  • When someone removes the file, the requirements are removed.

  • It supports importing the key, the description, and the properties.

  • Requirements in pages can mention a requirements of an Excel file, but it's not possible to put dependencies in Excel files.

  • You can create baselines from your Excel requirements (just remember that we do not baseline external properties).

 

View our quick tutorial to for a quick insights into the feature:

https://youtu.be/jJnfyxRNTmE?si=d6Q9aR1ffwWTOhgz

 

Uploading an Excel document

Steps

Screenshot

Steps

Screenshot

In the External Properties tab, click on “Legacy Excel Import” at the bottom of the page.

You are redirect to the Excel tab:

  • This tab is visible if the user has the permission for expensive actions, which means having the EXPORT permission on the space (It is not lexically related to an export, but the Export permission is often used to allow/prevent users from performing the expensive action of exporting a space),

  • Or if someone directly clicks on the link of an Excel file,

  • It is not visible if an administrator disabled the Excel import at a system level (using the system property
    -Dplaysql.disable.Excel.import=true).

New uploads must be attached to a page.

  • It is also possible to use an existing attachment, you simply need to add the label 'ry-Excel-import'.

  • Once mapped and indexed, future uploads of the same attachment will also be reindexed by default. If the reindex fails (if columns have changed, etc), the import will be suspended until someone updates the configuration.

The file is uploaded. Map the columns.

  • Each column can be defined as "Key", "Description", a property, or not imported at all,

  • It is possible to import a worksheet and ignore others.

  • Click Import when you're done.

Success!

  • The file is imported,

  • Requirements are available in the search with a query using the ID of the attachment : Excel = '123456789' (click "List" to generate this query automatically),

  • All links to those requirements will lead to this page.

 

What about dependencies?

  • It is possible to link to an Excel requirement,

  • But it is not possible to mention other requirements in Excel spreadsheets.

  • When clicking on an Excel requirements, it leads to the import page, with the row highlighted in yellow:

 

Note that the last uploaded file is displayed, although it may not be successfully imported. If the data doesn't match, check the column mapping and hit "Import" again.

Limits

The Excel import applies the "Import limit" from the Global limit. The default is 2000 requirements.

"Big" files can lead to an out-of-memory error:

  • If you wish to disable the Excel import on a single file, remove the "ry-Excel-import" label. Requirements from this spreadsheet will be marked as deleted.

  • If you wish to disable the Excel import on the whole instance, use the system property -Dplaysql.disable.Excel.import=true

  • If you wish to limit the number of requirements, change the Global limit,

  • It is not possible to limit the file size, because we've noticed that file size wasn't an accurate indicator of the number of rows and columns in a file.

We've mentioned this advice on the Release Notes 2.0.