A "Role" in Code Collaborator indicates the way in which a person participates in a review.
Roles
Code Collaborator supports four "roles" for review participants. The following roles are configured by default but administrators can configure completely different templates.
Author
Authors are the people responsible for the changes or documents under review. Usually they are responding to comments and questions made by reviewers and observers. In the "Fix Defects" phase the review will be "in their court" and on their Action Items list.
Reviewer
Reviewers are responsible for inspection, creating defects, etc.. With multiple reviewers, they will hopefully come to a consensus about each questionable item, but this is not required by the system. Reviewers typically create defects, but again this is not required.
Observer
Observers are involved and make comments but they are not "vital" to the review. If all other participants mark the review "complete," the review goes to the next phase regardless of observer state. Observer roles are usually used when you want to bring in someone who has special expertise on an issue.
Moderator (optional, not enabled by default)
The Moderator maintains the pace and tenor of the review. This is an optional role that doesn't exist in the default installation. This is used for more formal review workflows where one person leads and controls the review..
Different styles of review require different roles with different terminology and rules for what each rule is allowed to see and do in a review. Formal reviews might have four roles with strict rules, informal reviews might have just an author and reviewer, and a "self-check" review might just require an author with optional external reviewer.
Users interact with roles when they are creating a new review or editing the list of participants in a review.
The Role Configuration screen lets you set up any number of sets of roles. Each set is given a name and corresponds to some concept of a review.
