The Identity attribute type supports automatic generation of integer values according to a Sequence ID that you define in the swArchitect client. The generated values are unique within a specified sequence. 


At some point, a need may arise to reinitialize the values for a particular item type. For example, you may have some requirements that have a value with a particular prefix while others may have another or no prefix. There may even be requirements that have no value at all. This article describes how to reset the values for one or more items of the same item type.


Clearing Existing Attribute Values

Follow these steps to remove existing values from an existing identity attribute for a specific item type. Note though that this is only an example. There are various ways to gather the items that need updating, e.g., you may want to update only a couple of items in a structure in which case you would simply multi-select them as reinitialize the values as described farther down in this article. 

  1. On the Items ribbon, click Open Item and then chose Select Library...
  2. Select the library in which all of the items are assigned and double-click or click OK.
  3. Filter the results by entering the item type you are looking for in the filter box for Type:

    Note: You may want to further filter by Status=Work as shown above since items with a Status of Released, CS Released or Frozen cannot be modified.  By default, the list will include only the last version. If you want to change this, uncheck the Include only last version option at the bottom of the view.
    Tip: If needed, you can customize your filter using the Filter builder by clicking on the Customize... button at the bottom of the view. Also, you can always right-click and Export to Excel if you wish to review the items outside of the system prior to updating.

  4. Once you have your list filtered down to include only those items whose identity attribute you want to remove, select them all (Ctrl+A) and copy (Ctrl+C).


    Tip: If you are handling a very large number of items, you may want to break them down into smaller subsets for the attribute removal.

  5. Expand the Open item drop-down menu and select Open clipboard items.


    The content of your clipboard (the copied items) will display as a list on a new tab.

  6. Select all items in the list (Ctrl+A) and open the Attributes view using the button on the Items ribbon. The view will display the number of selected items and any Default attributes, such as 'ID' in the below example, will appear blank (since it cannot render all of the values for the multiple items):


    Note: If the attribute that you are clearing is not set as a Default attribute, you can add it on-the-fly. However, be aware that if you have a large number of items, this may take a moment. Also, as mentioned earlier, if any of the selected items are NOT in Work status, you will not be able to modify those ones. All others that are in Work status will be updated. 
  7. Right-click next to the identity attribute and select Remove Attribute. This will only clear the values; you are not removing the Default atttribute "field".


  8. In the Delete attributes dialog, click Delete to confirm deletion of the attribute values for the selected items.


    The values have now been removed.

Reinitialize Identity Attribute Values

Prerequisites

Below are the steps for reinitializing the values.

  1. Use the same steps 1-6 above to pull up all of the items of the same item type that you want to set a new value for. 
  2. Open the Attributes view. 
  3. Select all of the items.
  4. Click on the button and click OK to reinitialize the identity attribute values.


What's Next?

Learn more about identity attributes