A suspect trace relationship is any trace relationship between two items that is marked as suspect.

For example, Bob, an analyst, creates a requirement document ABC and specifies various requirements for upcoming work. Another analyst creates document XYZ to divide those specified requirements into individual tasks, and then creates traces back to the original ABC document. These traces show which requirements from the upstream document ABC were divided into the requirements in the downstream document XYZ.

If any upstream requirements in document ABC are later changed, the associated downstream requirements in document XYZ are then marked as suspect, since they may no longer correctly represent the upstream requirement. Applicable traces are marked as suspect automatically after an upstream requirement is modified.

While traces may be marked as suspect automatically, suspect traces must be cleared manually.

You can clear selected suspect traces from a content item using the Clear Suspect menu command, or you can clear all suspect traces on a content item using Clear All Suspect. When you select Clear All Suspect, you then have the option of clearing all suspect traces on all fields for the content item, or clearing all suspect traces on selected fields for the content item. The commands are available only in the PTC RV&S client graphical user interface (they are not available in the Web interface or CLI.)

After completing your investigation of suspect traces and making any required changes to the applicable content, you can then clear the suspect traces. For more information, see Managing Trace Relationships.