Difference between revisions of "Tracker"

Revision as of 13:08, 9 March 2015

Tracker provides developers an easy way to manage the various aspects of a projects' creation and evolution. Unlike our competition, a single installation of tracker can be used for all projects desired by the development team, all in an easy-to-use interface! As an added benefit, this software can also be used as a way to create and maintain knowledge base (KB) articles for your projects. Below we will outline the functionality of this project so that users and administrators can find answers to any questions they may have.

License

This projects' codebase is licensed under the CPLv2 unless a valid CPLv1 license has been purchased. More information about both of these licenses can be found under the "Our Licenses" link of our homepage.

Installation

Just like the rest of our software, we have engineered our installation process to be as simple as possible. After downloading the desired version, you can either install from the command line or from a web browser. In both instances it is important to remember that you will need to move the downloaded file into a directory that can be accessed by your favorite webserver (e.g. Apache, lighttpd, etc) before performing any of the below steps:

Command Line

$ cd /path/to/uncompressed/package
$ tar xzf tracker_x.x.x.x.tgz
$ cd tracker
$ ./install.php

The wizard will then ask you a couple of questions and then proceed with the automated install.

Web Browser

$ cd /path/to/hosted/files
$ cp /path/to/downloaded/tracker_x.x.x.x.tgz ./
$ tar xzf tracker_x.x.x.x.tgz

Now you will need to open a web browser and direct it to the appropriate URI that points to the hosted, uncompressed 'tracker' directory referenced in the above steps while appending 'tracker/default.php?p=tracker.setup.html' at the end. This will start the graphical installation routine. For example, lets say the '/path/to/hosted/files' was '/var/www' and that you had a local web server (e.g. apache, nginx, shttp, etc) running on 127.0.0.1. If 'tracker' was uncompressed to '/var/www/tracker', you would open a web browser and point it to 'http://127.0.0.1/tracker/default.php?p=tracker.setup.html'.

It is important to note that if you are not mapping the 'Accounts' table to an existing database table, then a default administrators account will be created. The default username and password for that account will be the word 'admin' (without quotes) for both values.

User Interface

The user interface of Tracker is broken down into three main screens - home, issue, and administration. Users can only interact with two of the three screens whereas administrators will have access to all. Keeping the number of accessible areas to minimum reduces the complexity of Tracker without compromising the capabilities offered. For an indepth overview of each page, please see the desired section(s) below. It is important to note that if you have any questions about something on any of these pages, try placing the mouse cursor over the desired object to have a brief overview shown.

HOME

The home page allows the user to select which project they would like to investigate by using the listbox in the upper left-hand corner. Upon changing that value, the issues list will populate to show all related issues. To show the details of an issue, click its associated number and another screen will be shown (see ISSUE below). Other functionality is also available on this page and is located in the top, right-hand area. Each will be covered below based on their associated icon.

This icon will ONLY appear for accounts that have logged in successfully and have been marked as an administrator account for the Tracker installation. The information on this page is discussed in more detail in the ADMINISTRATION section below.

Clicking this icon displays a popup box that asks for your account credentials and upon entering the correct information, additional functionality will become available. This icon will also change, after a successful login, to .

If you do not have an account, clicking this icon will display a popup that allows you to create one by filling out all of the information on the form and clicking the 'Create' button. As a confirmation step, an email will be sent to the provided address with a link that will need to be accessed in order to complete the creation of the account.

If you do already have an account, and are logged in, the same popup is displayed, but with populated information. You can update any field on that page by replacing the current value with the new one and then clicking the 'Save' button.

Use this icon if you want to inform someone you know about the Tracker project. Simply fill out the name, email address, and optional comment of the person you would like to have contacted on your behalf. It is important to note that none of this information is stored!

If you would like to request a new feature for inclusion into the Tracker project, click this icon to be presented with a popup box requesting the appropriate information to fulfill that request. Not all fields are required, so fill out as much information as you can and then click the 'Save' button.

It's bound to happen, occasionally a bug will appear that needs to be fixed. Use this icon to report such an incident to have our staff look into it as soon as possible. Not all fields are required, so fill out as much information as you can and then click the 'Save' button.

Included with all of our projects, this screen will navigate you to our wiki in order to provide users with the information they need in order to use our products and services. Our wiki will also provide a link to access the related knowledge base articles that discuss and resolve problems associated with the product.

This icon is ONLY shown for logged in users and will allow them to create a new issue for the project currently selected in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Not all fields are required, so fill out as much information as you can and then click the 'Save' button.

ISSUE

Just as with the home page outlined above, all the same icons are available here with the same functionality. Unlike the home page, however, this screen provides the actual tracking of your projects through the use of two sections. The first section we will cover is located in the top half of the screen just under the title bar. If you've ever entered a new issue, the fields in this section will look familiar. Upon changing any of these field values and clicking the 'Save' button (), the adjustments will be displayed in the table to the right so that people can track the progress of each issue with the most details possible. A more comprehensive overview of each field will be given below.

• Project The name of the project that the issue corresponds to. This field is actually non-editable and is displayed for information purposes only.

• Project Version This value should pertain to the earliest version of the project that first experienced the issue.

• Add-on An optional field that indicates the issue pertains to an add-on and not neccessarily with the parent project.

• Add-on Version Another optional field, obviously, that corresponds to the earliest version of the add-on that first experienced the issue.

• Device Since user interfaces among various devices typically differ, this field allows identification of the specific device type that is experiencing the issue. Of course, there can be some issues that are independent of the device and as such, there is an 'Independent' value that can be used.

• OS Just as with the 'Device' field, this value allows the idenfitication of an issue specific with certain operating systems. And also, just like the 'Device' field, there is an 'Independent' value as well.

• OS Edition Similar to the 'Project Version' and 'Add-on Version' fields, this value should pertain to the earliest edition of the operating system that experiences this issue.

• OS Version This field allows for specific versions of an operating system to be identified as having the issue. For example, if 'OS' has a value as 'Windows' and 'OS Edition' contains 'XP', this field can contain something like 'SP3' indicating an overall applicable OS installation of 'Windows XP SP4' is the only version of the operating system that is affected. It is important to note that this field can also be numeric values too.

• Kernel Included as an optional field, this value indicates that the issue can actually be caused by a bug in the underlying operating system kernel. Just as with all the other version fields, this value needs to identify the earliest version of the kernel that first experienced the issue.

• Type Use this field to mark the type of issue. While 'bug' and 'feature request' are self explainatory, the 'adjustment' value has been included to indicate that some type of adjustment needs to occur with something that currently exists in the project.

• Status You will find that this will most likely be one of the most adjusted values per issue with the right-hand table, containing the issues history, having at least four of the six values listed before the issue is resolved.

• Severity While this is pretty self explainatory, this field contains the level of severity that the issue holds.

• Assigned This field can be used by a signed-in member to accept responsibilty to resolve the issue or the ability for a superior staff member to assign the issue to a particular person. In either case, an email will be sent to the person listed in this field.

It was mentioned above that the right-hand table contains the history of issue from conception to resolution. Each row in the table corresponds to a single change made, by whom, and at what time that change occurred. While this is a great system for tracking some of the details of an issue, the bottom portion of the screen contains the actual indepth, back-and-forth dialog among those involved. It contains different tabs that relate to different bits of information to provide the most comprehensive means of identifying and resolving the problem. Just as with the top section, we'll now outline the various tabs below, but before we do, it is important to note that if you would like more of the screen to view this area, click on the issue title to re-arrange the screen to accomplish this very goal!

• Discussion This tab contains the general discussion revolving around the particular issue and it allows all logged in users to add their own comments to help find a resolution.

• Additional Unlike the previous tab, this one is more useful to record preformatted information such as logs and onscreen errors. This screen also allows users to upload any related graphics such as screen shots for other members to see.

• Resolution The goal of this tab is to outline various types of information that can be used as a knowledge base article for the issue, if desired. Logged in members can also upload a single file that can be downloaded and used by others to resolve the problem.

ADMINISTRATION

This area of Tracker is reserved for the accounts that are marked as administrators. It's organized into three columns containing the neccessary information for the project to work correctly. Below we will outline each section and provide details to what each setting represents.

SETTINGS

• Reply Email This field represents the email address that should be used as the "reply to" address when automated messages are sent to users by this software.

• Alert Email Unlike the above value, this email address is the one that is used to send automated messages that alerts the appropriate person/group when something goes wrong or when there is suspecious activity going on.

• Wiki URI Provides the website address to where the wiki is located for all the projects that have been added to your installation of Tracker. This address should point to, more or less, a table of contents containing the links to the individual wiki pages of each project.

• Allow Anonymous Posting of Issues In order to give administrators more flexibility, this option will either allow or prevent users from posting information in the bottom section of the "issue" screen without logging in (a.k.a. anonymous posting). This does NOT apply to the top section, as that can only be adjusted by logged in members.

• Enable the use of Captchas Instead of having the administrators of this software search and install a captcha program of their own, this option will enable/disable the included captcha extension for ease of use.

• Host Specifies the fully qualified domain name of the SQL server used to store the information managed by this project.

• Database The name of the database that will be used to store the information managed by this project.

• Username The username that has been granted read and write access to the database.

• Password The password of the afore mentioned username.

• Table Prefix Designates the prefix to append to the table names used by this project. This field is useful if there happens to be two tables with the same name. For example, lets say that you have a website that has a table called "users" and this software wants to create a "users" table also. There will obviously be a conflict here, so the developers of this project have enabled the administrator to define a prefix to be used as part of the naming scheme for this softwares' "users" table name. As a result, lets say that the value given here is "tracker_", this application will now know that its "users" table is actually named "tracker_users", thus protecting the already existing "users" table.

• User Table Unlike the above field, this one is what we call a "table mapping". The goal of this value is to indicate the name of an existing users table within your project that will be modified (by adding used fields that are not currently present) so this software can interact with it. This allows Tracker to know where in the database to access the desired information that is used by this project. If this value is omitted, the default database table name (Accounts) will be used.

• First Name These fields are also "mapped", but unlike the "Users Table" above, these values represent individual database column names so that Tracker knows the exact location to obtain user account information. This value represent the column name in an existing users table that stores the first name of each user. If there is not existing "users" table, then this value defines the column name to be used.

• Last Name The same as above, but for the users last name. It is important to note that if your existing "users" table doesn't separate the different parts of a users name, this field can be left blank.

• Username Used for authentication, this value needs to contain the column name within an existing database of the current usernames. If there is not an existing database, this value provides the name of that column that will be used instead.

• Email Just as the name suggests, this value contains the column name used to store the each users email address.

• User ID This value needs to point to the database column name storing each user accounts primary key.

• Session ID Also part of the authentication portion of the project, this value must define what database column name stores the logged in session ID's for each user.

• Admin users This area is used to mark which user accounts have administrative priviledges for the tracker installation. To add an account, type the username in the top box and click the icon. If you would like to remove any accounts, select them in the listbox (using the 'ctrl' and/or 'shift' keys to select multiple at once) and then click the icon.

PROJECTS

For all the projects that you would like to have maintained by Tracker, add them to this section of the administration screen. By clicking this icon, you will be presented with the projects name.

If, for some reason, you no longer desire to have certain projects maintained by Tracker, simply check all that are applicable and click this icon.

ADD-ONS

This section of the screen pertains to all the add-ons for all the projects listed, NOT add-ons for a particular project. The values entered here provide Google-like results when filling out the "add-ons" field of the "issue" screen.

Just like the corresponding button for the "Projects" section, clicking this icon presents you with a prompt to enter the add-on you would like to add to the list.

In order to delete any desired add-ons, select all that you would like removed and click this icon.

Knowledge Base (KB)

There is currently no knowledge base setup for this project.

FAQ

There are currently no frequently asked questions.