Work Item Recycle Bin

When some Document content is marked as a Work Item, a Work Item artifact of a specified type is created in the underlying repository. During editing of a Document, authors or editors may decide to unmark some content so that it is no longer a Work Item, or (more likely) to merge one Work Item paragraph or section into the preceding Work Item content. In such cases, the Work Item content either no longer appears in the Document, or it no longer appears as a separate Work Item. However, the artifact still exists in the underlying Repository. This means that it is subject to workflow, planning, auto-assignment, or any other Work Item and process management features and actions. In the early stages of the Document's development, having such orphaned Work Items in a Document may be perfectly acceptable because you might still want to do something with them — put them back into the Document later, or put them into another Document, for example.

The Document Sidebar's Recycle Bin panel shows any Work Items that exist in the repository, but are no longer present in the Document. (You will also see these items in the Table view of the Document. This view contains a button Open in Document's Recycle Bin which alerts any viewer to its state, as well as providing access to it in the Recycle Bin.) The Recycle Bin provides you with some options for handling these stored but unused Work Items. When you think a Document is complete, or nearing completion, it is a good idea to check the Document's Recycle Bin and clean up any Work Items shown there so as not to clutter the integrated Tracker with Work Items that are not intended to be processed.

View the Recycle Bin

  1. In the Document toolbar, click the Sidebar icon to invoke a drop-down menu.

  2. On the drop-down menu, choose Recycle Bin to display the sidebar's Recycle Bin sidebar.

Manage Recycle Bin items

The Recycle Bin panel provides several options for cleaning up Work Items in the Recycle Bin:

  • Reinsert Work Item(s) into the current Document

  • Move Work Item(s) to another Document in the project

  • Disassociate Work Item(s) from the Document but keep them in the project, to be accessed only via the Work Items topic of Navigation.

  • Delete Work Item(s) from the Document and the repository.

Tip:

For the procedures in the rest of this topic, you may find it useful to view: Recycle Bin sidebar.

For a reference on what actions send content to the Recycle Bin, see subtopic of the above: Content Handling.

Restore items to the current Document

  1. Place the insertion point (caret) at the position where you want to insert the Work Item(s) currently sitting in the Recycle Bin.

  2. In the Recycle Bin, select the item(s) you want to insert by selecting the check box preceding the ID-Title.

  3. Click the Insert button to insert the selected Work Item(s) into the Document at the current insertion point.

  4. Save the Document.

Move items to another Document

You can move a Work Item from the Recycle Bin of one Document to a different Document. Note that you must have permissions allowing you to modify the target Document and to create new Work Items in it.

  1. In the Recycle Bin pane of the Sidebar, select the item(s) you want to move by selecting the check box next to each one.

  2. Click the Move button. The Move Work Items dialog box appears.

  3. In the dialog box, select the Move selected Work Item(s) to Document option.

  4. In the Space list, select the name of the space where the target Document resides. The default selection is the space of the current Document. The Document list is populated with the names of the Documents residing in the selected space.

  5. In the Document list, select the name of the target Document, click OK, and finally save the Document.

    The selected Work Items are disassociated from the current Document and removed from its Recycle Bin. They are then associated with, and appended to the content of the target Document. If you want the moved item(s) to appear elsewhere in the target Document, you need to open that Document for editing and move them manually.

Disassociate items from the Document

You can disassociate a Work Item in a Document's Recycle Bin from the Document but still keep it in the project.

  1. In the Recycle Bin panel of the Sidebar, select the item(s) you want to disassociate by selecting the check box next to each one.

  2. Click the Move button. The Move Work Items dialog box appears.

  3. In the dialog box, select the Move selected Work Item(s) out of Document option, click OK, and then Save the Document.

    The selected Work Items are disassociated from the current Document and removed from the Recycle Bin. However, the data artifacts are maintained in the repository with their same IDs and properties. People using the integrated Tracker will be able to manage them as Tracker-based Work Items.

Delete items completely

You can delete Work Items from the Recycle Bin, disassociating them from the Document and deleting them from the repository.

Note:

Deleting a Work Item does not delete its history from the system.

  1. Select the item(s) you want to delete by checking their boxes.

  2. Click the Delete selected Work Items button and respond to the confirmation prompt.

  3. Save the Document.

Tip:

You can delete a Work Item without first moving it to the Recycle Bin: click the Work Item icon in the left margin and select Delete on the menu. The item is deleted from the Document and the repository. (It is not deleted from the Document history.)

If you want to delete a Work Item that is not defined in a Document, see Delete Work Items.