Best Practices and Guidelines for ReqIF Round-Trip Workflows

Managing Requirement Custom IDs

When you import requirements as referenced requirements, Requirements Toolbox™ attempts to map a requirement identifier generated by the third-party requirements management application to the Custom ID attribute of the requirement. Verify that the intended attribute mapping between the Custom ID and the requirement identifier is selected.
Do not modify the requirement custom ID attribute to maintain traceability.

Guidelines for Updating Referenced Requirements Content

The Update operation overwrites local modifications such as edits to unlocked referenced requirements with values from the ReqIF™ source file. Save, check-in, or export your requirement set files before attempting the Update operation.
The Update operation preserves comments and attributes. Do not delete imported custom attributes as they will be restored when you update the requirement set. For a complete ReqIF round trip workflow, include all previously imported attributes.

Guidelines for Editing Referenced Requirements Content

Rich text attributes like the Description and Rationale may lose some formatting, particularly tables, during the round trip workflow. To preserve formatting, edit these attributes in the same application. Plain text attributes can be edited in multiple applications.
Rename imported attributes through the Attribute Mapping pane of the Requirements Editor to maintain the connection to the corresponding attribute in the external requirements document during the Export operation.

Guidelines for Adding Details to Imported Requirements

You can add additional details to imported requirements by:

Adding additional attributes
Authoring new requirements and linking imported requirements to them

You cannot insert locally authored requirements as children of imported requirements. To associate newly authored requirements with imported requirements, add them to a separate requirement set and link related requirements.

Guidelines for Exporting Requirements to ReqIF Files

Do not import requirements from multiple ReqIF files into the same requirement set. Each ReqIF file can contain multiple specifications which get imported under separate top Import nodes in the requirement set. Every Import node has a Custom ID that matches the name of the specification.
Do not import referenced requirements into a requirement set that contains locally authored requirements. For round trip workflows, reuse the previous import settings to requirements that were previously imported.
You cannot update requirements you author within Requirements Toolbox if you export them to ReqIF. Import the exported file as referenced requirements into a new requirement set that you can update in the future. Links created to authored requirements will not be preserved when you re-import them. Export and re-import the locally authored requirements before you create links.