Package Groups

A package group consists of two or more packages. You can use package groups to organize types of packages. For example, you could place all packages that affect the user interface of an application in a group named GUI_Project. If some of these packages also require documentation modifications, you could place them in the Documentation package group because a package can be in multiple groups.

The Package Group Properties dialog and the the New Package Group dialog let you define a package group and associate the package group to one or more packages.

Additional characteristics of package groups include the following:

Package groups support filtering operations, such as Find Version, and let you set up different handling processes for different kinds of packages. You can perform almost all operations on a package group that you can perform on a package, such as approving and promoting an entire package group. For example, packages belonging to a documentation package group must pass through a special Documentation state before being promoted to the usual quality assurance (QA) and release states. Packages that do not belong to the documentation package group do not progress through the Documentation state.
Package groups are flexible. You can create and delete package groups and add and remove packages from them at any time. This flexibility lets you group packages dynamically. You can use this type of grouping to define subprojects, which you can manipulate as a unit. For example, assume that all packages in a group named Phase_1 are in the QA state. If a problem is found in one of the packages in that group, you can demote that package to a previous state where more work can be done on it; and then you can promote it to the QA state to join the package group. In this way, you can manage a subproject as a group and manage smaller parts individually.
You can use package groups to generate reports. You can generate reports on the status of packages in a specified group.