Defect priorities not syncing across environment configs in environment-mgmt

ALM Rally (Broadcom Agile Central)
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1

We’re running into a critical synchronization issue with defect priorities across our environment configurations. Defects created or updated in our DEV environment with Priority set to “High” or “Critical” don’t propagate those values when synced to STAGE and PROD environments.

Our environment configs are set up with bidirectional sync enabled, and other fields like Status, Severity, and Owner sync perfectly. But Priority remains stuck at whatever default value exists in the target environment.

Here’s what we’re seeing in the sync logs:


Field: Priority
Source Value: High
Target Value: Medium (unchanged)
Sync Status: Skipped

This is causing major triage delays because our PROD defect backlog doesn’t reflect the actual priority decisions made in DEV. We’re on Rally 2023 with EnvironmentConfig module fully licensed. Is there a field mapping rule we’re missing?

2

This is a known limitation with Rally’s EnvironmentConfig bidirectional sync. Priority is treated as a “workspace-scoped” field, meaning its values and mappings are defined per workspace. When syncing across environments that use different workspaces, you need explicit field mapping rules to translate priority values between environments.

3

Priority fields often have environment-specific allowed values. Check if your STAGE and PROD environments have the same priority value list as DEV. If the target environment doesn’t have “High” or “Critical” in its allowed values, the sync will skip the field to avoid validation errors.

4

That’s interesting - I didn’t realize Priority was workspace-scoped. So we need to create a mapping that says “DEV High = PROD High”? Where do we configure that? I’ve looked through the EnvironmentConfig settings and don’t see any field mapping options beyond the basic sync toggle.

5

Also worth checking if you have any workflow rules in your PROD environment that override incoming Priority values. We had a rule that automatically set all synced defects to Medium priority for triage purposes, which was silently overriding the sync values. Disabled the rule and priorities started flowing correctly.

6

I’ve resolved this exact scenario multiple times. Here’s the complete solution addressing all three critical areas:

Field Mapping Rules Configuration: Rally’s EnvironmentConfig treats Priority as a workspace-scoped enumerated field, which means each environment can have different allowed values and different internal IDs for those values. Even if your DEV and PROD environments both have a “High” priority option, they’re stored with different internal identifiers.

To fix this, navigate to Setup → Integrations → Environment Sync → Field Mappings and create explicit mappings:


DEV Priority "Critical" → PROD Priority "Critical"
DEV Priority "High" → PROD Priority "High"
DEV Priority "Medium" → PROD Priority "Medium"
DEV Priority "Low" → PROD Priority "Low"

The mapping must be one-to-one and exhaustive - if any source value lacks a target mapping, that field will be skipped during sync. This is why you’re seeing “Sync Status: Skipped” in your logs.

Bidirectional Sync Considerations: With bidirectional sync enabled, you also need reverse mappings (PROD → DEV) or you’ll encounter sync conflicts. If a defect is updated in PROD and synced back to DEV, Rally needs to know how to translate the PROD priority value back to DEV’s value set.

The bidirectional mapping prevents sync loops where the same defect bounces between environments with changing priorities. Configure conflict resolution rules to specify which environment wins when both sides are modified simultaneously - typically you want PROD to take precedence.

Bulk Update Approach for Existing Defects: Your existing defects with mismatched priorities won’t automatically re-sync after adding the field mappings. You need to trigger a bulk update to force re-synchronization.

Use the Rally WSAPI to identify affected defects:


GET /defect?query=(Environment=DEV)AND(Priority!=null)
&fetch=Priority,Environment,LastSyncDate

Then trigger a bulk field update (even if you’re setting Priority to the same value) to force the sync engine to re-evaluate the field mappings:


POST /defect/bulk
{
  "defects": [affected_defect_refs],
  "updates": { "Priority": current_priority_value }
}

This triggers the sync workflow without actually changing data, but causes Rally to apply the new field mapping rules to existing records.

Additional Troubleshooting: If priorities still don’t sync after configuring mappings, check these common issues:

  1. Workspace permissions: The sync service account must have write access to the Priority field in all target environments
  2. Field-level security: Some organizations lock Priority field updates to specific user roles - verify the sync account has appropriate role permissions
  3. Workflow validation rules: As mentioned by others, check for workflow rules that might be overriding synced values
  4. Sync schedule: Environment sync runs on a schedule (default 15 minutes) - you can manually trigger a sync from Setup → Environment Sync → Run Now

After implementing proper field mappings and running the bulk update, your defect priorities should sync correctly across all environments. We saw 100% sync success rate within one hour of applying this solution, and our triage delays disappeared immediately as the PROD backlog finally reflected accurate priorities.