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Issue Defect Management Application
Welcome to Serena Business Mashups!
Issue Defect Management is part of the Serena Development Process Management offering. This application manages the capture, triage and resolution processes for software or hardware issues including bugs, enhancements, and requests. This document describes how to deploy the default application to your Mashup Server for testing and how to modify and use the workflow in your production environment.

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Contents

Overview

Issue Defect Management (IDM) automates the capture, routing, collaboration, and resolution of issues and defects, helping you to better manage your development processes.

The following are some examples of how IDM improves your processes:

  • Issues are efficiently captured and managed to resolution, saving money and minimizing risk.

  • Development activities are coordinated across different people, teams, and systems in a fully automated, repeatable way. No more issues falling through the cracks.

  • Everyone involved in a development project has access to the right information at the right time. Visibility into the process eliminates unproductive e-mail threads and increases stakeholder satisfaction. Complete audit trails keep you in compliance with internal and external regulatory mandates.

The following diagram shows how the IDM mashup integrates with other Serena mashups to create a full solution to manage your development process.

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Use Cases

The following use cases describe typical scenarios for using the issue defect management process.

Use Case 1

A Quality Assurance (QA) tester submits a defect. After evaluating the defect, the team lead assigns it to the appropriate developer.

The developer opens the item, which contains a link to the development Wiki. The Wiki contains information relevant to the item, such as best practices or part specifications.

The developer makes the code change to fix the defect and requests a peer review from the lead developer. The lead developer reviews the code and approves it, moving the defect to QA. A QA tester verifies the fix and closes the defect.

Use Case 2

Heavy-duty testing needs to be performed on a product, and a group of new QA testers are hired to test the product. These testers are unfamiliar with the previous defects opened by the team.

The team wants to prevent a proliferation of duplicate defects, and the team lead requires that the testers verify that an issue has not been previously opened on a particular defect.

To accomplish this goal, the testers perform a search on the submission form to find any related issues. When they find a related issue, they cancel the submit form and add information to the existing issue.

Use Case 3

A manager wants to check the workload of the developers to make sure that the work is evenly balanced. The manager creates a summary report to display the number of issues that are assigned to each developer, along with the sum of the estimated hours to fix the issues. After running the report, the manager can then reassign issues to distribute the workload as needed.

Use Case 4

QA testers submit defects and the defects are placed in a work queue for the development team.

Sarah, a member of the development team, has completed her tasks early and has free time. She reviews the existing defects in the work queue and chooses the ones that she can work on. She assigns the defects to herself and begins to work on them.

Pablo, another member of the development team, reviews the defects in the queue and identifies one of them as a duplicate to an issue that is currently being worked on. He links the duplicate issues and closes one of them.

IDM Workflow

The following is the graphical depiction of the IDM workflow. View the mashup in Mashup Composer to explore the mashup in further detail.

For an end user's perspective of the workflow, see Exploring the IDM Workflow.

For an explanation of some of the implementation techniques used in this mashup, see Special Features.

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Implementation

The following sections explain how you install and configure the IDM mashup on your system. Choose the appropriate type of installation, either On-demand or On-premise.

On-Demand Configuration

Perform the following procedure to configure the application. These steps are necessary for implementing Issue Defect Management.

To configure the application in an On-Demand environment:

  1. Import and deploy the mashup as described in Importing and Deploying.
  2. An IDM Project is automatically created for you. If you want to create additional projects, create them in the Web Administrator.
  3. In the Web Administrator, create users and make them members of the appropriate group (Administrators, Mashers, Users). The Mashers group is for people who will be using Composer.
  4. In the Web Administrator, add users to the roles listed in Roles for Issue and Defect Tracking. Every role needs at least one user.
  5. (Optional) In the Web Administrator, set default values for the Team Lead and Development Team fields. In Serena Mashup Composer, hide the related fields on the Submit and Proceed transition forms.
    Note: This step allows issues to be routed to the correct Team Lead/Development Team without having users choose a value.
  6. In the Web Administrator, create additional projects as needed.
  7. In the Web Interface, create additional artifacts as needed (for example, custom reports).

On-Premise Configuration

Prerequisites:

The On-premise configuration is for users who have a version of Serena Business Mashups installed on their system.

Important: This mashup is contained in the sample database provided with Serena Business Mashups. Deploying it to the sample database will overlay the existing mashup in the database. This will wipe out any changes that you have made to the mashup.

Installing this mashup includes loading the blueprint into Mashup Composer, deploying it to your runtime, and then configuring the mashup using Mashup Administrator.

To install and implement this mashup:

  1. If you have not created or connected to a database in Serena Business Mashups, you must do that before you can import and deploy the mashup. To create a database:
    1. In Mashup Administrator, create a new database or connect to an existing database.
      Tip: For information on creating a new database, refer to the Serena Business Mashups Installation Guide.
    2. Create a user with Managed Administrator access, and grant that user all privileges on the Privileges and Administration tabs.
  2. Import and deploy the mashup as described in Importing and Deploying.
    Note: If you have Single-Sign On (SSO) disabled, you must modify the AddSCMAssociations orchestration to pass the user ID and password for authentication. For the ae_GetExistingIssue and ae_CreateNewAssociation steps in the AddSCMAssociations orchestration, select the steps and set the User ID, password, and hostname under Data Mapping | Auth for the
  3. An IDM Project is automatically created for you. If you want to create additional projects, create them in the Mashup Administrator.
    Tip: To make your application more maintainable and extensible over time, keep the application's base project as a template. Keep the submit capabilities turned off for the base project as well.
  4. Associate groups with the following user selection fields using Mashup Administrator. These user fields determine the owner for workflow states. The item owner has the ability to perform the transitions on the item in the state.
    Tip: When one or two users are doing the testing, associate their user IDs with each field. This allows you to continue through the workflow without having to log in and out as other types of users.
    • Team Lead
    • Developer
    • Peer Reviewer
    • Tester
    For more information, see Associating Groups with User Fields.
You can now administer and use the mashup in the target environment.

Associating Groups with User Fields

Prerequisites:

This procedure is for an on-premise deployment of your mashup. The mashup must have been deployed to your mashup server before you can edit the fields using Mashup Administrator.

User selection fields allow you to choose a user as a value for that field. The field requires that you choose the groups or users who are available for selection. You choose the groups for selection in the Mashup Administrator.

You can have different values available for these fields based on the project level. In other words, you can use the same workflow yet have it be routed to completely different users based on the default values that you set at the project level.

To assign groups to User selection fields:

  1. In Mashup Administrator, select the workflow that contains the fields and click Edit.
  2. Select the Default Fields tab on the Edit Workflow dialog.
  3. Select the field to associate and click Edit.
  4. On the Options tab of the Edit Field properties dialog, click Add and choose your group.
  5. To set a default value for the field, select Allow Override on the Attributes tab and then select the default value on the Options tab.
The users who are members of the associated groups are now available for selection as values for the fields. You can set different field values for each project and subproject by setting default values and enabling/disabling selection values.

Importing and Deploying

The following steps explain how to import your blueprint into Serena Mashup Composer and deploy it to your Mashup Server.

Note: If you used the Instant Deploy feature, which deploys the mashup directly from Mashup Central to your On-Demand environment, do not follow this procedure. The mashup is already deployed. To get the mashup from the server to Mashup Composer, click Composer Button | Open | Mashup Repository and select the mashup.

To deploy the application:

  1. In Mashup Composer, open the main menu.
  2. Select Import from File. The Import Mashup Blueprint dialog box opens.
  3. Browse to the .msd file and click Open.
  4. Click image(Deploy) to deploy the application to your environment. You are prompted to check in and publish your mashup before it can be deployed to your environment. The Deploy Mashup dialog allows you to choose a specific environment for deployment, and it allows you to change your default deployment settings by clicking Show Options.
A confirmation message will appear in the Message List when the deployment is complete.

Using the Mashup

There are three basic ways that you will interact with Serena Business Mashups:

  • Masher - This user is principally involved in design-time activities using the Composer tool. Example tasks include adding states or transitions to a workflow or modifying an orchestration.
  • Administrator - This user is principally involved in runtime configuration activities using Mashup Manager and Mashup Administrator tools (if on-premise) or Web Admin tool (if on-demand). Example tasks include adding users, assigning privileges, or configuring projects.
  • End Users - This user is involved in the regular use of a deployed mashup solution. This user is the one who submits items, transitions items, and runs reports on existing items. The user accesses Serena Business Mashups through the Web interface.
    Note: In the following End User section, we walk through the workflow to understand the different options that a user has when moving an item through the workflow. This section can be helpful for Mashers and Administrators to understand the typical movement of items through the workflow from the end user perspective.

The following sections describe how to use the mashup depending on the role that you are performing within Serena Business Mashups.

Mashers

Mashers are responsible for creating and modifying mashups. The main tool for mashers is Mashup Composer.

Typical tasks for mashers include:

  • Adding states or transitions to an application workflow.
  • Changing the layout of forms used.
  • Creating and modifying orchestration workflows.
  • Adding auxiliary tables and fields to manage data within a mashup.

If you are a new masher, see Getting Started as a Masher for explanations of basic masher tasks.

The mashup blueprint contains all the information about that you need for the mashup. You can open the mashup in Mashup Composer to inspect the details.

The following sections have information that gives a high-level overview of important parts of the mashup for mashers.

Special Features

This application includes the following special features:

  • Tabbed view on the Default State Form. These tabs contain information about the issue as well as space to add information for integrations and connectors. For example:
    • The Code tab lists code changes that have been associated with the issue. This tab is used with different connectors available for IDM, such as the Subversion Connector.
    • The Related Items tab lists items or issues that are related to this issue. This tab includes items that are in other mashups or applications. For example, if this issue was created from an incident in the Incident Management mashup, the incident is listed on this tab.
  • The IDM Configurations auxiliary table that is used by integrations with the IDM workflow. This table holds connection information to third-party tools and applications. Only allow administrators who need to configure the integration information access to this table.
  • The SCM Associations auxiliary table is used by the Software Change Management (SCM) connectors or integrations. This table is used to store data such as associations between check-ins and issues.

  • A numeric field that tracks how many times issues have been failed by QA. For details, open the IDM workflow and select the Fail transition. On the Field Overrides tab, select the QA Reject Count field. View the details under the Set to Calculation option.

  • Role restrictions that allow only a Team Lead to defer an issue, and only an IDM Manager or Administrator to re-open an issue residing in the Deferred state. For details, open the IDM workflow. View the Role Restrictions tab for both the Defer and Re-Open transitions.

  • An HTML/Javascript widget that enables users to search for duplicate issues before submitting an issue. For details, select the Submit form from the Visual Designer view in Composer. From the Form or Property Editor, select HTMLJavascriptWidget. The script is in the Content box.

  • A Web page widget that displays the Wikipedia Web page when users are viewing issues in any state. For details, select the Default State form from the Mashup Explorer. From the Form or Property Editor, select WebPageWidget. The Wikipedia URL appears in the URL box.

Administrators

The administrator is responsible for the daily running of Serena Business Mashups. The tools that the administrator uses are primarily Mashup Manager and either Web Administrator (for On-Demand) or Mashup Administrator (for On-Premise).

Key tasks that administrators perform on this mashup include:

  • Assigning users to roles
  • Assigning default values to fields for a project
  • Adding new projects
  • Assigning privileges to a user
Tip: If you are a new administrator, see Getting Started as a Administrator to get you up and running as an administrator.

The following sections give a high level overview of information necessary for an administrator.

Roles for Issue and Defect Tracking

This mashup contains the following roles.

Role Description
IDM Administrator Role for administrators of the application.
IDM Manager Role for the managers (team leads) in the application.
IDM Team Role for users, such as developers or testers, in the application.

End Users

The end user is the Serena Business Mashup user who works with the deployed mashup through the Serena Web Interface.

The main tasks of the end user include:

  • Submitting, transitioning, and updating items.
  • Searching for items.
  • Creating and running reports on existing items.
Note: The tasks that the user can performed are based on the privileges that the user is assigned by the Administrator.

For information on user tasks, refer to the Online Help found in the Serena Web Interface.

The following section describes using the workflow from an end user perspective. This overview helps administrators and mashers understand why the workflow was designed the way it was.

Exploring the IDM Workflow

Prerequisites:

This procedure requires that you have deployed the default Issue Defect Management application into your environment as described in Importing and Deploying.

This procedure demonstrates how you can use the mashup to track an issue or defect. It shows one path through the workflow, with brief descriptions on alternate paths. In this procedure, you will create an issue and transition it through development and testing.

  1. Log on the Web Interface.
  2. Submit an issue from the start page:
    1. Click Submit a New Issue.
    2. Select the IDM Project.
    3. Complete the form for creating a new issue, selecting yourself as the Team Lead.
      Note: You can click the magnifying glass icon to look for similar issues before actually submitting the issue. The search is performed based on the words in the title of the issue. The search uses these words and searches for these keywords in the searchable fields of existing items. The searchable fields have the Include Field in Keyword Searches option selected in the table properties in Mashup Composer. For this application, the default fields with this option are Description, Item ID, Status Log, Steps to Reproduce, and Title.
  3. The issue is created and moved to the Evaluating Issue state. The Team Lead is the primary owner, and the entire development team is the secondary owner. This means that the Team Lead can either assign issues to specific developers, or developers can assign issues to themselves.
  4. As you view the form, you can see an example of a Web page widget, which enables you to embed a Web site into your form. Open the Wiki section, and the Wikipedia Web site loads.

    You can change the widget to point to any Web site. For example, you can point to your intranet or your own Wiki to provide additional information to the team on the project. For details on widgets, refer to the Mashup Composer help.

  5. To allow work on the issue to start, click the Fix button.

    Other transitions include:

    • Defer – Moves the issue out of the active queue. Only Team Leads can defer an issue in this state.
    • Need More Info – Requests more information from the submitter.
    • Close – Moves the issue to the Resolved state, where it becomes inactive.
  6. Complete the Fix form, selecting the priority, severity, and the Developer. The issue then moves to the Fixing Issue state.
    Tip: You see the current state of the issue in the Action History section of the issue.
  7. If you are using any of the connectors created by Serena Software, such as the Subversion connector or the Team Foundation Server connector, you can use the connector to associate code changes with the issue. The associated code will appear on the Code tab in the issue.
  8. To send the issue to QA, click the Fix Complete button and select the resolution. You can add information to the Description and Status Log to allow others to understand the issue.

    Other transitions include:

    • Request Review – Assigns the issue to another developer for peer review. The developer can decide whether to have a peer review based on the nature of the code change; not every issue must go through a peer review.
    • Delegate – Assigns the issue to another developer for fixing.
    • Copy – Creates another issue based on the values of the first issue. This can be used if you need to duplicate the issue into another project line. The original item is shown on the Attachments tab.
    • Return – Moves the issue back to the Evaluating Issue state, where the team lead is owner. The issue can be returned by the developer for a variety of reasons, such as the issue is not in his area of expertise or the issue needs more information for him to solve.
  9. Complete the Assign Tester form, selecting yourself as the Tester. The issue then moves to the Testing Issue state.
  10. To pass the issue, click the Pass button. The issue is closed.

    Other transitions include:

    • Fail – Reassigns the issue to the developer who originally worked on it and increments the QA Reject Count field.
    • Delegate – Assigns the issue to another QA tester for testing.

Troubleshooting

The following sections will help you to solve problems associated with implementing this mashup.

If you need additional information to resolve your problems, refer to the following resources:

  • Serena Knowledge Base
  • Serena Business Mashups Forum
  • Serena Business Mashups Documentation
  • Serena Support

Installation Issues

Below are some problems that you may experience when installing and deploying your mashup.

Refer to the Serena Support site and knowledge base for additional information on solving installation problems.

Warning When Importing into Mashup Composer

When importing into Mashup Composer, you get a warning that the mashup already exists. This can be due to a previous mashup being built on the same workflow as the new mashup.

If you try to import a mashup that you have already imported on the same computer, Mashup Composer warns you that the version in the Local Cache will be overwritten with the imported mashup. If you import the mashup anyway, any work you've done on that workflow will be lost.

If the mashup has also been checked in to the Mashup Repository, Mashup Composer first warns you that, on checking it in, you will have to choose whether to check in new versions of its design elements created from the local mashup, or overwrite the local mashup with the latest versions of its design elements from the repository.

To avoid loss of any work you've done on the local copy:

  1. Cancel the import.
  2. Export the local mashup to a file.
  3. Restart the import process. You can then access the exported mashup definition file later to recover the work.

Primary Tables with the Same Name

Applications and tables in your deployment environment must be uniquely named. If the deployment fails because an application or table in the environment already has the same names as one of the applications or tables in the mashup you're deploying, rename the conflicting table in Mashup Composer, and try again.

More Information

Application Information

Title Issue Defect Management
Deployment Type On-Demand or On-Premise
Version 2009 R1
Mashup acronym IDM
Release date March 2009 (documentation update July 2009)
Creator Serena Software, Inc.

Copyright © 2007-2009 Serena Software, Inc. All rights reserved.

Serena is a registered trademark of Serena Software, Inc. The Serena logo, Composer, and Mashup Composer are trademarks of Serena Software, Inc. All other products or company names are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.