Merging Working-Set Trackers
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You can merge to a tracker or branch only if you have the Working-Set - Admin permission on the target.
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In some cases, it is useful to get the changes from a Working-Set tracker to another tracker. Consider this example. The Quality team finds a bug in a variant and verifies that the same bug exists in other variants too. Instead of fixing the bug in each variant, it might be useful to fix it in only one of them, and then apply the fix to the other variants. This is where merging is useful.
Every tracker included in a Working-Set (that is,not shared) is associated with a branch of that tracker in the background.
The merging process consists of the following steps:
• Selecting the branch to merge. This means selecting the source branch (in the previous example, this is the branch where the bug was fixed) and the target branch.
• Selecting the changes to apply to the target branch.
• Executing the merge.
Selecting a Branch to Merge
In Codebeamer, you can merge between any parent-child branches. There are two ways to start a merge:
• In the More menu of the branches, use one of the two options:
◦ Merge to Default Working-Set—Uses the current branch as the source, and the parent branch as the target.
◦ Merge from Default Working-Set—Uses the parent branch as the source and the current branch as the target.
• Click an Updated on Working-Set or Updated on Default Working-Set badge to open a Merge dialog box that shows only one item selected
Alternative way to Merge Branches
You can also start a merge through the Tasks Baselines and Branches dialog box , which can be opened using the 
button in the action bar of a tracker page.
button in the action bar of a tracker page.
You can see the above page when selecting the Branches tab. Here you can see all the branches, of the current tracker, even those not associated with a Working-Set. You can select two branches for merging; any two can be selected independently from the current branch, but the current branch is selected by default. If one branch is selected, the other branch must be an ancestor or a descendant branch, and the other branches will be disabled. You can start the merge by clicking the Merge branches link.
Executing the Merge
On the merge dialog box, you can see the differences between the selected branches.
The dialog box shows the different field values and the badges.
To see and merge only relevant changes , choose from the following Filters:
• Report—Select a single report to reduce the displayed merge items. Use this filter carefully because it is possible that the selected report might not contain items from one of the branches. Only the currently visible branches are merged.
• Apply to side: If you selected a report, the filter is locked to the right (source) if Created is selected under Difference type. Similarly, the filter is locked to the left (target) if Deleted is selected under Difference type.
• Difference type: Select from All, Updated, Created, or Deletedto filter based on the displayed items. If Updated or All are selected, the Apply to side filter is not restricted to either side.
• Field: Select from the available fields to filter the displayed items. This filter applies only to updated items. The filter is enabled only when All or Updated are selected under Difference type. The filter is not enabled when the Created or Deleted are selected under Difference type. By default, All fields are selected except the ones marked as Omit Merge. This means that by default, items with the changes only in the omitted fields are not shown.
After you made your filter selections, click GO.
◦ Mark all as merged: If you select this check box, badges are removed from all matching items, not only the ones that are shown on the current page. If you select a report and select this check box, only the items that match the selected report and the filter combination are merged. If you select a different report, any earlier check box selection is cleared.
◦ Copy all created: If you select this check box, all items that are created on the branch and are visible only on the current page, are copied to the target.
For items that were created on the Working-Set, you have only one checkbox. Selecting it will copies the item to the target branch and creates a hidden reference between the copy and branch item. After it is done ,you can track the field changes between the items. For updated items, you can select which fields to copy to the target item by clicking the Apply button for the field. If you want to copy all field values of an item, click on the Apply button in the row of the name. This applies all changes.
If you do not want to merge any field changes between the branches but want to indicate that the change is not important for you, use Mark as merged for each updated tracker item. Clicking this option clears the badge on the document view without merging the changes.
The Swap Branches option changes the direction of the merge: the source branch becomes the target branch, and the target branch becomes the source branch. Clicking Swap Branchesretains your filters.
Click Apply All for a bulk update on the current page, or click Apply to merge specific changes.
When you have selected the changes to apply, click the Merge button for the items on the current page. This applies the selected changes and redirects to the source Working-Set branch. After the selected changes are applied, the badges of the merged items are cleared.
If there are items on subsequent pages, repeat the steps for the merge operation to merge the items on subsequent pages.
To adjust the page size, see "diffView" section.
Updating Downstream References during a Merge
When working on Working-Sets, you might add new downstream references to some items. In some cases is useful to update these references during a merge, so that they also reference the master or parent item. For example, you find a bug related to a user story on one of your branches. You fix the user story and decide to merge the fixes to the Master branch. Since the bug is also present in the Master version, you would like to update the bug during the merge as well.
To make this process easy, use the New Downstream References section :
This section shows all the downstream references of an item that point to the branched version but not to the master/parent item. You can select some of the checkboxes to update those references. You can also update these references without selecting any other changes of the branch item.
Consider these restrictions:
• If you have no permission to update the referring item or the specific field of the referring item then you cannot select the reference.
• This feature only works when merging to the parent branch.
• The added reference always points to the HEAD version of the item on the parent branch.
Skipping Fields During Merge
There are some fields that might change frequently but are not as important to be merged every time. For such fields, you can select the Omit option on the field configuration page.
If this option is selected , then the fields are shown in a separate group. You can open this group and click the Apply button for them as well.
