How config specs work
When you create views for your project, you must prepare one or more config specs (configuration specifications). Config specs allow you to achieve the degree of control that you need to have over project work by controlling which versions developers see and what operations they can perform in specific views. You can narrow a view to a specific branch or open it to an entire VOB. You can also disallow checkouts of all selected versions or restrict checkouts to specific branches.
A config spec contains a series of rules that are used to select the versions that appear in the view. When team members use a view, they see the versions that match at least one of the rules in the config spec. The version tree of each element is searched for the first version that matches the first rule in the config spec. If no versions match the first rule, a version that matches the second rule is sought. If no versions of an element match any rule in the config spec, no versions of the element appear in the view.
The order in which rules appear in the config spec determine which version of a given element is selected. For details about preparing config specs, see the config_spec reference page.