How to get system issues attended to fast

NB. Deprecated

Please consult Issue tracking in the manual for an uyp to date page. This page is being deprecated

Log issues in the Bika Tracker

It is important that enough information gets to support staff to assist resolving the issue, best done in writing, in the Bika issue tracker -  technicians get more done if they stay off the phone an email.

All of the Bika technical team are informed immediately, and work gets scheduled without delay

How To

You'll need to sign up first, this will ensure all comment, further questions and eventual resolution will get back to you the reporter

Navigate to the tracker

Click the Create button

1. Please select the appropriate issue type:

Bug report - LIMS not performing to specification

Improvement Request - Modifications to existing features

Feature Request - Completely new function

Task - Performing operational tasks, e.g configuration, testing

Support - How to questions etc.

2. Meaningful subject line

3. Complete the rest of the page with as much information possible, see next column, '3 Bug reports

Compulsory fields are indicated as such

4. Upload any images or other example files a Attachments to the issue

5. Click Create 

Best practice for Best outcomes

1 One issue per tracker item

Separate different issues to make them easier to manage and look-up

2 Meaningful subject line

Please give issues meaningful titles to make it easier to find them on list displays, in email folders and on-line searches

3 Bug reports

3.1 Steps to reproduce - Current behaviour 

What did you try to do?

What did you expect to happen?

What happened?

3.2 Provide the page address or URL

3.3 Attach Screenshots

Annotate if possible, e.g. use Snip  on Windows ksnip on Linux

3.4 Error messages

Please copy error message text and into the issue description. Pastie.org makes it easy to post long text

Issue prioritisation is billable

Issues logged by Clients on commercial professional support contracts with service providers are prioritised

Please log bugs regardless, as they will be tended to by volunteers where they have spare capacity

Resolution workflow

Issues are  created with status Open. Managers assign open issues to technicians and when they start work on an issue, move it on to In Progress

1 Support staff Resolve an issue when fixed

This is the bug reporter's signal, delivered per email, to re-test

2 Re-Open the issue

If the issue persists, the reporter comments and re-opens it, and the cycle repeats 

3 Close the issue

When it passes testing, watch it disappear from the to do list and experience some feelgood!

Archived Issues

Listed for search purposes. The tracker itself does not seem to get indexed by the search engines

The Bika Tracker is by Atlassian

The use of agile software development tool Jira, a formidable tracking and project management tool is sponsored for use on the Bika project by Atlassian