Bug Tracker Handbook

Chapter 3 Administrating Bug Tracker

Table of Contents

3.1 Basic settings

3.2 Groups

3.3 Users

3.4 Feedback System

3.5 Customer management

3.6 Status management

3.1 Basic setting

After login, please click on the "System" at the top-right corner and you will see this:

You can finish all system configurations here. Let's see the "Configuration" first:

• Program Name: The program name will be used when sending email and shown on the top header.
• Date Format: Set the date format.
• Automatic Redirection: After you submit a form or perform any setting, if the action is successfully accomplished, we will show a confirmation page. If the Automatic Redirection is set to YES, no confirmation will be shown. We will just redirect the page.
• Authentication method for normal users: There are two authentication methods in Bug Tracker - "Storing user's password in Bug Tracker database" and "Using IMAP server". Notice that you will still have to add the users even if you use the IMAP authentication. The user's information besides the password is still saved in the database.
• Sender's name when sending system email: This is the sender's name when sending email.
• Sender's email: When sending email, we will use this email to be the sender's email address.
• Send mail function: Bug Tracker can send email in 2 ways: "Using PHP's mail() function" or "Using Bug Tracker's SMTP function". If you are running Bug Tracker on FreeBSD or Linux box which is able to send email by the "mail" command, we could use it to send email (this is default). However, if you are running Bug Tracker on a Windows machine, or the mail server requires authentication to send email, you would have to use the SMTP functions implemented by Bug Tracker.
• Allow users to subscribe projects: Set to "YES" if you allow users to subscribe projects. Subscribed users will receive email notification when report created or updated. However, if you have a lot of users, the email traffic could be huge.
• Max Area/Max Minor Area: You can set the area owner in the project. This the max area allow when add new area.
• Max filter for each user: Every user can has their own filters. The filter will be used to filter the project database. This is the maximum of filters allowed for each user.
• Max shared filters for each user: Users can share their filters to others. We can set limitation on the number of shared filters.
• Max log item in syslog: The system will rotate the syslog when it achieves the max log items.

3.2 Groups

A User has to belong to one group. The permission system in Bug Tracker is based on group. You can grant permission to use features and status. For example, you might want to add the group "Marketing" and allow them to manage the customer feedback system. Or add group "R&D Manager" to have full permission, and group "R&D Staff" can't delete reports, nor delete projects.

The "Status Allowance" allow you to set the statuses that a group can use. You might want to disable some status for particular group. For example, only a project manager can set the status of a report to "By design", only member of the quality control team can set the status to "Could not reproduce".

3.3 Users

On the users setting page, you can add/edit/delete users. A user's information should at least contain username, email, and password. The username can not be changed after added. The username can not contain special characters, such as \$,"*<>()\.

I highly recommend you not removing any user account after added. The report data has to refer the username. If you remove a user, the user information in report table will be set to null. If you would like to disable an user account, just edit the user and set the "Account Status" to "Disabled".

You can grant an user the right to access projects. Users can only see projects for which "Project Visible" is checked. You can set the project visible on the project management page, too. Users who have the permission to edit projects can edit users' "Project Visible" in project management page, too.

3.4 Feedback System

The Bug Tracker has a customer feedback interface. You can edit the attribute of the Feedback System.

• System Name: The system name will be shown on the top of feedback system and the email notification. You might want to add your company name to the system name.
• Sender's name when sending system email: When a customer reports feedback or an internal user updates the feedback, the system will send a notification to the customer and specified internal users. The Sender's name will be used when sending email.
• Sender's email: This is the email address to be used when sending the above email.
• Feedback System Login Mode: There are three login modes in the feedback system - Customer Mode, Anonymous Mode, and Mixed Mode. We only allow existing customer users to login under Customer Mode. Users can register their own account under Anonymous Mode and the newly registered user will be assigned to Anonymous group. Under Mixed Mode, both customer user and anonymous users can login to the system.  If the Login Mode has been set to "Disabled", none can access the customer feedback system.
• Default reply when import report: After a customer reported a bug, internal users, who have the permission to manage the feedback system, can update the report. If the report is verified and imported into the internal database, we will change the status to "In Process" and send a notification to customer. This is the content of the notification message.
• Message to append to report when imported internal report closed: After customer feedback has been imported into the internal database, if the related internal report has been closed, we will update the external feedback system and write this message to the feedback system. We will replace the key word "__STATUS__" with the status name of the related internal report.

The Feedback System can be completely separated from Bug Tracker. You can move the feedback_site directory to another server or directory if you want. Please refer to chapter 4.3 for more information.

3.5 Customer management

If the feedback system login mode is "Customer Mode", only customer users that are added in Customer management can login. You have to add a Customer Group before adding Customer Users. After adding a customer group, you can start to add "customer users" that belongs to the customer group. The "Anonymous" customer group is a default system group and can not be removed. It is the default group of anonymous customer users.

You can set the "Project Visible" to grant customer group permission on projects that they can access. In the "add/edit" customer user page, you can edit the attributes of customer users. Just like a system user, removing a customer group or a customer user is not recommended. Set the "Account Status" to "Disabled" if you would like to disable an account.

If a customer user's "Receive notification when associate reports" is set to "YES", the user will receive a notification when users of the same customer report/update feedback.

3.6 Status Management

I don't recommend you to change a status name after using Bug Tracker for a while. However, if you would like to change status name or add more statuses, you can use "status management" to edit a status.

We save the status id in report items. If you edit a status name, the reports that have the same status id will be changed, too. So if you would like to change the status "Duplicated" into "Repeated". That's fine. You can just edit it since they have the same meaning. However, if you want to delete "Duplicated" and add a new status "Pending for decision", DO NOT use edit. Please delete the "Duplicated" and add a new status "Pending for decision".