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Using FogBugz Features for Efficient Bug Tracking and Resolution


Luis Fernandes
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Overview

In this article, you will learn some useful features that can help speed up your issue tracking and bug resolution. 

Requirements

FogBugz Account Login

 

Using Snippets for Quick Responses to the Bug Reports

Snippets are the answer to this common occurrence when dealing with bug reports. With FogBugz and Snippets, you can write a response once – and then reuse it again and again, quickly. You can use them for several instances like replying to common questions, known issues, explaining your return policy, or pointing someone to a technical resource. Avoid redundant texting and increase support efficiency. A quick tip is: If you answer the same question three times, make a snippet.


Creating a Snippet

  1. Navigate to Avatar icon -> Snippets and the configuration page is displayed.
  2. Click Create New Snippet, and add a title (the text you will type to activate the snippet).
  3. Add your text in Replacement Text box.
  4. Click OK. The new Snippet is ready.Create a snippet
  5. To use the new Snippet, type the Snippet title followed by the backtick (`). For example, if you have created a snippet called install, you would type install`.

Default snippet key

 

Expediting Estimates for Quick Coding

Instead of opening and editing each case to add an Estimate,

  1. Add the Estimate directly from the grid view of FogBugz (the grid view is the view showing a list of cases where you probably spend a lot of time).
  2. If you don’t see the Estimate (current) column in your current list of columns, go to Select Columns to add it.
  3. Click in the Estimate (current) column of the FogBugz case (the bug or feature you want to estimate). Add the estimate in the pop-up window.

FogBugz is smart about time entry and how your software developers may want to enter estimates. For example, you can tell FogBugz the following:

  • 1d (one day estimate)
  • 4h (4 hour estimate)
  • 45m (45 minute estimate)
  • 2w (2 week estimate – this might be time for some sub-cases!)

Entering estimates from the FogBugz grid view helps streamline new project or milestone setup. You can create the project or milestone (sprint), then add a bunch of cases quickly. Next, add the estimates and start coding!

 

Using Tags for Grouping the Items

a. Track related items of different types (customer emails, requirements, bugs and feature requests) with tags.

When you want to group together items from different projects, categories and more you can use tags. In FogBugz, tags let you easily categorize content and find it later. You simply need to enter the tag in the FogBugz tag field while editing a case or wiki article. FogBugz will pull up matching tags as you type to help you group the current item with an existing tag.

b. Pretty straightforward so far. Now how about finding these tagged items?

If you are viewing a case that has been tagged, you can simply click the tag link within the case to search for everything (bugs, features, wiki articles) that have this tag.

You can also use FogBugz Search to find these tagged items. In the search box simply use the prefix: tag: before the name of the tag you want to find. For example, to find all items tagged “callback”, just type, “tag:callback”.

 

Selecting Multiple Cases

Let’s say you have 75 cases and you want to get 17 of them selected to do a bulk edit on them. You could start clicking them one by one.

Or you could use the mouse to select all those cases in one quick motion.

  1. Go to the grid view where you have a list consisting of a number of cases.
  2. Find some whitespace in one of the rows you can click, and then, without releasing your left mouse button, pull your mouse down the screen until you have highlighted all the cases you want. The cases will turn yellow as you highlight them.
  3. When you get where you want, just release the mouse button and you can then do what you need with the cases.

 

Avoiding Repetition of Actions

Need to repeat the same action over and over? Use Bulk Editing and do it once

Just as snippets allow your software developers and help desk team to avoid re-typing, bulk editing allows them to avoid re-doing the same action over and over.

  1. Select a group of cases requiring the same change (reply, close, reassign, change priority, and more).
  2. Click the edit (or reply) button at the bottom of the page.
  3. Once you’re on the edit screen you’ll see a list of all your cases selected up top, and a little pane down on the bottom.
  4. If you have selected cases that have a correspondent, you’d use the “reply” button to bulk reply to the selected emails. The pane on the bottom will let you scroll through the various cases you have selected to confirm that you want to reply to each of the cases you have selected.
  5. You can also populate your messages with custom bits of information that apply contextually to the case in question.
  6. Click on “Insert case-specific information” to expose the options you have for adding information that’s relevant to each case.
  • {case} the case ID.
  • {sender} the sender’s email address.
  • {sender_firstname} the sender’s first name (based on the name portion of their email).
  • {subject} the subject of the message.
  • {url} the URL of the FogBugz install.
  • {ticket} the external ticket ID (will also display other cases submitted by the same correspondent).
  • {ticket_singlecase} the external ticket ID (will *not* display other cases submitted by the same correspondent).
  • {ticketurl} a link to the external case that will also display other cases submitted by the same correspondent.
  • {ticketurl_singlecase} a link to the external case that will *not* display other cases submitted by the same correspondent.
  • {username} the name of the logged in user.
  • {userfirstname} the first name of the logged in user.
  • {userlastname} the last name of the logged in user.
  • {useremail} the email of the logged in user.

If you insert one of these into your template response to all of your emails, you will get the information that is specific to that case or person.

For example, you could type:

Dear {sendername}:

Thanks for writing to us. Just so you know, we’re keeping track of this conversation in case{case}. If you want to check the status of it at any time, you can do that at {ticket_singlecase}.

Please reply to this email if you have any additional questions about this matter or send us a new message to {email} if anything else comes up.