Hi, it’s Allison again. In this clip, I’m going to teach you an easy and simple way to estimate tasks that you can use right away. Estimating how long it will take to accomplish a task can be surprisingly difficult.
An endless variety of factors and variables can affect the outcome, making an apparently complicated task much simpler than initially expected, or turning a seemingly easy task into a nightmare. But however difficult it may be, estimation is a necessary part of your work. You need good, accurate estimates of task durations in order to build a project schedule and ensure that you deliver your product on time. Coming up with a good estimate is a common challenge that many people struggle with, so, I’m going to teach a simple estimation formula called PERT. Also known as the Program Evaluation and Review Technique, PERT isn’t just a cute name – it’s a vital tool for estimating task duration.
The formula goes like this: Multiply the most likely amount of time that it will take to finish the task by 4 (this is the time that makes most sense, taking into account that you’ll encounter a few obstacles on the way). Then add your ‘best case scenario’ time (this is the fastest that you can complete the task if you have everything that you need, and everything goes according to plan). Now add your ‘worst case scenario’ time (this is the longest time that it will take you to fix the task in case things go wrong). Sum it all up and then divide by 6. The resulting figure is your ultimate estimate for the duration of the task.
Now let me give you an example of PERT in action. Let’s say I want to walk down to the corner market to buy a quart of milk. From my experience, I think this task will most likely take 15 minutes. 10 minutes of walking time, 1 minute to get the item, and 4 minutes to wait in line. So 15 is my Most Likely number. If there is no line, and I walk fast, then I think it will take a total of 8 minutes, so that’s my Best Case number. Now for my Worst Case number I have to consider what might go wrong. And a lot might go wrong. The sidewalk could be crowded, I might nearly get run over by a taxi crossing the street and have to stop to catch my breath, and, worst of all, the line could be three times as long as usual because everyone is stocking up on snacks for the big game tonight. I figure that puts my Worst Case number at 28 minutes.
Now I take the formula: [best case + (4 X Most likely) + worst case] / 6. I plug those numbers in: [8 + (4 x 15) + 28] / 6
And then I get out my calculator. Or, if I’m feeling up to it, I just do the math in my head. My result is 16, and that’s my estimate for the duration of this particular task.
PERT is effective because, even though it gives much more weight to your most likely estimate, it also takes the best and worst case possibilities into account. You will find that it truly makes the difficult job of estimating much easier.
Carl is managing a major software project for his company.
The client calls Carl and talks about what needs to be done for the project in general.
As project manager, Carl brings his team together for a meeting and explains the project scope. Unfortunately, he forgets to bring up a few crucial details.
The team works hard on developing the project, based on the instructions they received from Carl. Because the project description that they were given was generalized and lacking in certain details, team members frequently find themselves filling in the gaps by making assumptions about what they think the client would like. Many of their assumptions are incorrect.
When the project is finally completed, Carl proudly shows the end product to the client. But the client can’t believe what he’s seeing – this product is not what he wanted at all!
The client is furious over the many months wasted and the large amount of money spent on developing a failed project. Carl is embarrassed by the unwanted result, and now he and his team must start the long process all over again.
Meanwhile at an office two floors below, Sarah is managing her own team as they begin work on an entirely different software project.
As project manager, Sarah makes a point of meeting with her client and asking the client to carefully explain what he would like to achieve with this project. They discuss each feature in great detail.
Sarah uses the Elementool Requirements Management tool to write the project specifications and capture the details of each feature. This easy-to-use tool helps her to quickly acquire and organize important information about the project.
Sarah then creates an SRS document using Elementool’s Requirements Management and presents it to the client for approval. The client later sends along his comments, and, once the missing details have been corrected, he approves the project plan.
Using the integration between Elementool’s Requirements Management, Time Tracking, and Issue Tracking, Sarah is able to create tasks for her team based on the project plan.
The team develops the project according to their project manager’s plan and the project is released on time with all the right features in place. The client is thrilled with the result, and everybody is very happy.
I’m Allison and I’m going to teach you Scrum Agile Development in three simple steps.
This is a special video I created just for Elementool’s clients and the people on our mailing list.
So if you’re watching this, you are one of the special lucky people who, within a few minutes, will have a system that will help you to improve your development performance immediately.
In many cases when you develop a software project, you know how it starts but you cannot predict what will happen after a few weeks of development. As a result, it becomes difficult to keep track of the project progress. If you’ve ever felt that things get out of control, you know what I mean.
Delays cause the project to cost more, because you need to pay for additional development time. They also cause your clients to get upset and this is something we want to prevent.
Scrum enables you to keep everything visible. It allows the team to know exactly what’s going on and make adjustments to the project to keep it moving forward.
With Scrum you build pieces of the software. The client can experience each part and determine what to do next. This way you have control over the progress of the project and the power to prevent delays.
Let’s get started:
Step # 1 – Create a Backlog
The project backlog is a list of all the features that clients would like to have as part of the complete product. It includes the client’s dreams and wishes. But it doesn’t mean that everything will be developed, as we’ll see later. The Backlog is created by the Product Owner. The Product Owner represents the interest of the people who ordered the product – the clients.
Step #2 – Estimate and Prioritize
After completing the Backlog list the Product Owner estimates how long it would take to develop each item on the list. There are different ways to estimate and I’ll explain them in another clip. Next comes prioritization. The goal is to focus on what brings value to the business. The Product Owner sorts the backlog items by priority, from the most important at the top to the least important at the bottom, picks the features that should be included in the release and creates the Release Backlog.
Step # 3 – Sprint
Here is when most of the work is being done. Sprints are development units between 3 to 30 days. A project usually includes several sprints.
At the beginning of each sprint the team will have a Sprint Planning meeting. In this meeting the Product Owner and the team get together to decide what will be done in the new sprint. They select items of the highest priority from the Release Backlog. The Product Owner describes to the team what is desired and the team decides how much of what is desired they can complete in this sprint.
The Sprint Planning meeting has two parts:
The first part is spent with the Product Owner to decide which features to develop.
In the second part of the meeting the team plans out the sprint. The selected tasks are placed in the sprint backlog and assigned to the team members.
Everyday the team meets for a short 15 minute meeting called “Daily Scrum”. In this meeting each team member answers three questions:
• What have you done on this project since the last daily scrum meeting?
• What do you plan on doing on this project between now and the next scrum meeting?
• What stands in your way to meet your commitments to this sprint and this project?
The purpose of Daily Scrum is to synchronize the work of all team members and address any issues that might delay the work progress.
In every sprint the team must complete the work that was defined for this sprint. Bugs that are related to the features on the Sprint Backlog should also be fixed as part of the sprint.
At the end of each sprint, a Sprint Review meeting is held. In this meeting the team presents what was developed during the sprint to the Product owner and other Stakeholders. This meeting helps to decide what the team should do next. The clients can see the project progress and submit feedback. It prevents the risk of developing features that the client didn’t ask for. Also, in case of a delay in the development process, the sprint will not be completed on time and that will indicate to everyone that there is a problem and something needs to be done.
Repeat step 3 until all features on the Release Backlog are developed and the product is ready to be released.
That’s it. So easy. As you can see, Scrum is a simple and effective way to have control over your development process and make sure things go according to plan.
I created a flowchart for you of the three steps. You can download it using the link below.
The workflow feature will make your life a lot easier. The great thing about it is that it allows you to define workflows so that field values are automatically updated based on the changes made in one or more fields.
You can define processes to prevent team members from forgetting to update certain field values – or updating the wrong values. This feature saves you a ton of time because users don’t need to manually update a long list of fields anymore. The fields are updated automatically based on the value of selected ones. For example: Let’s say that every time an issue is fixed, I would like to automatically track the fix date, the name of the person who fixed it and assign it back to QA. I can do that by defining a rule using Workflow. To use Workflow you should follow these easy steps: Go to Control Panel, click on Edit Issue Form and then on Edit Workflow. Click on ‘Add New Rule’ to create a new Workflow rule or on the Edit button of an existing rule to edit it. In Step 1 we are going define the workflow conditions. For example: when status = fixed and Priority = High. In Step 2 you define the fields that are going to be updated once the rule has been met. In this example, I would like to change the fixed date to today and assign it to a tester.
In Step 3 I’m going to give the rule a name and save it. Now the rule is added to the list. When I’ll go and update an issue, the system will automatically update the fields based on the rule definition.
We are going to share with you another hidden secret related to the rules of the game. But I’m not sure you can handle it.
Can you handle it? OK come closer because I don’t want anyone to hear.
The secret is: “The bench”.
This clip is about risk management. Risks are those things that usually have low changes of happening. But if they occur, their results might be bad for us.
The primary objective is to insure that the client and their investment is protected as best as possible
Risk management is an activity that:
1. Looks for problems that could occur.
2. Evaluates how big these problems are.
3. And the best way to manage them via risk response plans.
Risk management a process that you do usually before the project starts. It is a very important stage that is being neglected often because it is being considered as a waste of time. People just want to start working on the project right away. In our “game rule” model risk management is like the basketball bench. There are 5 players on the court and about 10 on the bench. Now let’s think about it for a minute. You need only 5 players to play the game, but the teams go through all the effort and spend so many resources to keep another 10 players sitting on the bench.
The coach keeps more players on the bench than on the court to deal with anticipated risks of players getting tired or fouled. And the unanticipated risks of players getting injured or losing their mojo.
There are a lot of reasons why people might resist the risk management process:
1. People don’t always understand the importance of this process and would consider it a waste of resources.
2. People think that risk management is a pessimistic activity, but the project manager should act as a good coach and present it as a positive thing to reach project objectives.
3. The team feels that they can fight the fire when we get there, which is often not the case.
The 4 Steps of risk management process are:
1. Develop the risk management plan.
2. Identify the risks that might occur.
3. Assess the risks in the project.
4. Response to risks in when they happen.
You also should keep monitor and manage the project risk throughout the project development to ensure that the risk management and response plan are working properly.
We are going to teach step by step how to build your bench and manage risks. We have developed a simple system that you can implement right way. In fact, this new system is so powerful that you will call us and ask us not to sell it to anyone else.
In this clip we’re going to focus on one aspect of project management: Requirement Management.
We are going to reveal another secret related to the “rules of the game”, and why projects are delayed, exceed budget, and in many cased don’t come out as designed.
Research shows that 71% of software projects that fail, do so because of poor requirements management. This is the biggest reason for project failure.
The Standish CHAOS Report, which surveyed 9,236 IT projects, found that the top three causes of project failure were lack of user input, incomplete requirements or changing requirements.
Another secret we are to share with you today is: You cannot win a game without solid strategy.
Requirements management defines the project and provides a framework that enables to track and complete the project progress and objectives.
Like in a basketball game. First the team designs the game strategy. They do that before the game. Then they discuss and practice it and implemented in the game.
A product requirement is anything that is required to make a product complete and successful. There are high level requirements, which must be broken down into smaller individual items for each function, and then documented and tracked.
Requirements management is not just a process that you do at the beginning of the project. Just like in a ball game, the game strategy needs to be monitored and updated during the game. Requirements management is a process that gets the most focus at startup, but then monitored, and updated continually throughout the project lifecycle. Just like a coach will call a time out or talk to his players during half time to make sure that the strategy is still working and if it needed to be changed.
It is best to use software designed for requirements documentation to document the process. This will allow better product development and tracking once the requirements stage is completed and the development phase starts.
The software should track the list of requirements that will be the source of data for all other steps in the requirement phase.
It is common that teams treat anything that is not coding as a waste of time. Many companies are eager to start with the coding of the project as soon as possible, because it gives a feeling that they are working on the project and tend to neglect or don’t give enough attention to the requirements management process. It’s just like basket players that want to start dribbling and playing instead of sitting at the office and think about strategy. You can be an excellent dribbler, but you cannot win the game without strategy.
We are going to teach step by step how to plan your project strategy and create the requirements. We have developed a simple system that you can implement right way. In fact, this new system is so powerful that you will call us and ask us not to sell it to anyone else.
Project management has a few core problems that happen to almost everyone in the market. Projects are delayed, exceed budget, and in many cased the projects don’t come out as designed.
68% of projects either fail or are seriously challenged
Everybody knows about it. We’re not telling you anything new here. But have you ever stopped and thought why this is happening?
With over 10 years of experience in the project management industry, and based on extensive research we discovered the secrets to solving these problems.
One of the main secrets to successful projects is knowing the rules of the game.
Think about it as a basketball game. You might have a team of very talented athletes who can pass the ball, dribble and shoot hoops. But if they don’t know the rules and how to play as a team, the changes of winning are not so good.
Their game looks like a game of kids in the school yard. There is a lot of activity, but there is no strategy or planning behind it.
Now imagine these same kids playing against a professional. The score will be something like: 137:2.
Project management is the same as basketball. The secret of product management success is to teach project management principles to all the people who are involved in the process: including developers, testers, management, and even your clients. We call them stakeholders.
We created a series of clips about different project management topics. These clips will teach you and your team all you need to know about project management to allow you to run your projects like a professional basketball team. This program will give you an enormous advantage over your competition. In fact, after you finish it, you will call us and ask us not to sell it to anyone because you want to be the only person with this knowledge.
We all run projects as part of our daily life activities. Let’s say a fun dinner party is a project. This project includes several tasks and people and can be run using common management concepts.
Project stakeholders – the stakeholders are people who are involved or benefit from the project. In this example, the stakeholders will be everyone invited to the party, and the organizers: Bob and myself.
Project scope – the work that needs to be done to deliver a complete project. The scope of our dinner is inviting the guests, cleaning the house, buying grocery, cooking, serving the food to the table, entertaining our guests and cleaning after they leave.
Project objectives – these are benefits that the person that initiated the project expects to achieve from it. The main objective of the dinner party is to spend a nice time with our friends over dinner. The secondary objectives are to have them enjoy the food and leave the house after they’ve been well fed and no one is hungry.
After we defined the concepts of the dinner project let’s move to the other parts that in the development.
First stage this is the project plan we call it Requirements Management – in this stage we define the features that needs to be completed. It is different from project scope because this phase goes into much greater details and defines each feature and component of the project.
We will define the house cleaning activity before the guests arrive. What needs to be cleaned, should we move furniture to make more space? etc. we will define what we are going to cook. The grocery list that we need to buy. The sitting order. The dishes we are going to serve. What we should talk about during dinner. Subjects we should not mention because we don’t want to upset specific friends. What we should do after dinner. Who cleans after the guests leave and more.
Requirements management is an important phase in the project management process. But many companies neglect it and in many cases fully ignore it. Image how many problems we can have in a simple dinner if we don’t define our requirements. Now compare that to complicated projects that involve many people, and a long list of features. There is endless amount of problems you can get into if you don’t complete the requirements phase properly.
After we’ve completed our project plan or requirements lets do some risk management. Risk management is the process of identifying all the things that might go wrong and defining how we are going to handle them in case they occur. This is also something that many companies neglect because at the early stage of the project people are eager to get right to work and risk management seems like a waste of time. But as the project progresses and risks start to become real, the project starts delaying the team members are busy putting out fire instead of developing the project.
The risks that are involved in preparing the dinner are: the grocery store might out of stock of some of the ingredients. For example, the store doesn’t have lemons and you make lemon chicken. Or there is a parade on our street that will make your guests late. These are just two examples. In case of the lemons risk, we might want to go to the store the day before. We should also check the city parade schedule to make sure the streets will remain open.
Scheduling – scheduling is the process of estimating how long each activity will take and assign that activity a date and time as part of the project overall schedule to make sure everything is completed on time.
We estimate the house cleaning will take 4 hours. Cooking 5 hours. Cleaning after cooking another hour. Grocery shopping 2 hours. Dinner itself will take 3 hours. Cleaning after the guest leave 2 hours.
We list the tasks in the project plan according to the order of their occurrence. Some tasks can be done at the same time as other tasks, and some can only start after prior tasks are completed. For example:
Let’s say we decided that we are going to clean the house, buy grocery, cook, host dinner and then clean after the guest leave.
Allison can clean the house while Bob it out shopping for grocery. When they are both done, they can start cooking.
They can also decide to first do the cooking and when finished cleaning the house.
But the cooking task is dependant on having all the grocery. So they have to finish shopping before cooking. This is called “schedule dependency”. We will go into more details on how to define project schedule and manage dependency in our project management formula program.
Now that we finished with scheduling, it is time to go to work. Tasks are assigned to the team members and each one is responsible to complete them as best as possible. They should also report on the progress of the task to the project manager, so she’ll be able to keep track on the project progress.
The Dinner party was a real success. Now that you’ve learned how to run a dinner party, you can discover all the secrets of successful project management. These are simple and easy methods and you can start using them right away. You have the basic concepts, and it will easy for you to learn the rest of the formula. For more details logon to our website at: project management formula.com
Hi, welcome to the tutorial on how to use Elementool Help Desk. Help Desk is so easy, even your grandma can use it.
I’m Allison, and I will be showing you how to use Help Desk.
Let’s begin.
The account is divided into two sections: The Control Panel and the application section.
On the top of the screen are tabs that correspond with each action in Help Desk. Click on a tab to perform that particular action. As you can see, you have the option to create a new issue, view issue, display issue reports, and access the control panel.
The Control Panel is where you setup the account. It can be accessed only by users that are part of the Admin group.
The application section consists of “new issue”, “view issue”, and “display issue reports”. Users of all groups can access the application portion of Help Desk by logging in to their Elementool account.
Let’s start with the Control Panel
The next icon, “edit email settings”, allows you to edit the settings on the email fetcher. The Email Fetcher is responsible for storing the email messages sent by your customers to your support email box in your Elementool account.
All you need to do is enter your email server address, your support email address, and a few other simple details and you’re all set. You are minutes away from having your support email address linked with your Elementool Help Desk account.
The spam filter settings enable you to set the rules and actions of the e-mail fetcher when it encounters spam mail. Based on these rules, the Email Fetcher will automatically delete spam email that is sent to your support mailbox.
Going back to the control panel, the next icon is “edit customer list”. Here is a list of all your customers. You can add new customers to the list by clicking ‘add new’ and entering the customer’s information. Clicking on a customer allows you to delete them or edit their information.
The next icon, edit support form, allows you to edit and customize your support form. Help Desk allows your customers and team members to submit issues directly from your website. The support form is the form that your customers will use to submit tickets. The first heading that appears on this screen is ‘edit support form’. You can customize the support form by dragging the fields from the left to the right, and clicking update. You can preview the form by clicking the preview button.
When you click on the Update button, Help Desk will create an HTML code that you should copy and paste to your support page on your website.
This code will present a support form and will be used to submit support tickets to your Elementool account directly from your website.
Below that, is the ‘edit auto reply’ heading. You can create customized automatic responses to customers after they place a ticket. For example, “Thank you for submitting a ticket. A representative will contact you shortly”.
Help Desk includes a web link in the auto-reply e-mail that allows your clients to view the status and correspondence history by clicking on it.
The last heading on the screen is the “knowledge base code”. Here, you are provided with the HTML code for the knowledge base box that is placed on your website. A knowledgebase is a search box on your website that allows customers and team members to search your Help Desk account for frequently asked questions for issues and their solutions.
Viewing Issues
If you know which issue you would like to view in particular, type in the issue number in the “view issue #” box located on the top right, or click on the ‘View Issue’ tab and type the issue number there. You can also view issues by running a report and opening the issues on the report itself.
When you view an issue, Help Desk displays the correspondence history related to it. You can see all the emails that were sent back and forth between your client and your support team.
To reply to a client support request using Help Desk, you should open the message that was sent by the client by clicking on the message title.
Then click on the Reply button and use the Reply form to send out your response.
By using the reply form, the email that you send will be added to the issue’s correspondence history. It is very important that the interaction is done using Help Desk, in order to keep the communication trail on your Elementool account.
As you can see, Help Desk is very easy to use. So easy, your grandma can do it!
Hi, it’s me, Allison. Welcome to Elementool Issue Tracking. I am going to show you how to setup and use your account. Issue Tracking is so easy, even your grandma can use it. The account is divided into two sections: The Control Panel and the application section. On the top of the screen are tabs that correspond with each action in Issue Tracking. Click on a tab to perform that particular action. As you can see, you have the option to create a new issue, view issue, display issue reports, and access the control panel. The Control Panel is where you setup the account. It can be accessed only by users that are part of the Admin group. The application section consists of “new issue”, “view issue”, and “display issue reports”. Users of all groups can access the application portion of Issue Tracking by logging in to their Elementool account. Let’s start with the Control Panel
Control Panel
The green tab is the ‘control panel’. I am going to go through a quick overview of the control panel with you. Click ‘control panel’. Here you will see edit accounts, edit issue form, and edit user profile. Let’s click on ‘edit accounts’. The ‘edit accounts’ section enables you to manage different administrative aspects of your account. It includes the following options: Manage account list, update billing info, download database, empty trash, set time-zone, and sms settings. I’ll go through each option one by one. Let’s start off with ‘manage account list’. This option allows you to add or remove services for each account. The “update billing information” tab is just that! Here, you can enter your billing information or change it.
The ‘download database’ option allows you to download your database into an Access file. It allows you to save a local backup of your account, export the data to external applications and also run advanced queries on your issues.
The next tab is “empty trash”. Here, you can delete issues that have ‘Trash’ status assigned to them. This is a perfect way to make room for new issues. Isn’t that the whole point of emptying trash? So you can have new trash? The ‘set time zone” tab is self explanatory, right? You can set the time zone according to your geographical location. Lastly, the “SMS setting” allows you to add SMS notifications to your SMS bank by account. Later you will be able to use this feature to send text notification directly to your team members’ mobile phones.
Now that we have a feel for ‘Edit Accounts’, let’s go back to the main control panel screen and click on ‘edit issue form’. Here, you can customize the issue form to work exactly the way you prefer. You can customize the existing fields or create unlimited new fields. Let me show you how to do this. Click on the caption you wish to change or click “add new” field. Here, you can change field caption, type, set field width, or create a value list.
Going back to the main screen on the control panel, the last icon is ‘edit user profiles’. This is where you add users to the accounts. In order for people to have access to your Elementool accounts, they need to have usernames and passwords. The username is unique to each user. Here you can assign users to particular groups based on job function or assign them to accounts. You can also create new user groups and define access permissions based on user and group privileges.
Welcome Page
When you sign in your account, you see the “Welcome Screen” where your automated dashboard is displayed. You can customize this to your liking. Clicking the ‘edit’ button on the dashboard box allows you to filter and customize the item based on your preferences. If you have several Elementool accounts, you can setup your dashboard to display your entire workflow. For example: you can display all your open issues, all the high priority tasks, and so on. The Welcome page is fully customizable and enables you to add new items, change their location on the screen using drag n’ drop and have an easy access to your quick reports (more on quick reports later.)
Notice how the top of the screen displays the account name that you are logged into currently. You can switch accounts by clicking on the dropdown menu and choosing the account of your preference. On top of the left hand side of the screen, below the Elementool logo, is a display that shows the current online users who are using the account. If you drag your mouse over the display, it will show you the actual users. Clicking the display will enable you to instant message online users in a chat room setting.
Creating an issue is as simple as pie. Click on the ‘new issue’ tab and simply fill out the fields. It can’t get any easier! As you can see, you can set the status, priority, frequency, and severity of the issue. In the same area, you can assign users to the issue. These features are extremely important in keeping things organized so issues don’t fall through the cracks! Below is the remarks field. Here you can write comments regarding the issue. All comments in the remarks field are displayed in the remarks message board. The History Trail preserves a complete audit trail of all the changes that have been made in the different fields.
In the same section is the ‘linked issues’ and ‘attach files’ button. The file attachment feature enables you to attach HTML, PDF, Word, Excel and other file types to an issue by clicking the ‘attach button’ and uploading the file. This is useful because users will have direct access to files that are related to the issue, as opposed to wasting time looking for the files in the company’s server.
Issue Tracking is part of a suite of applications that are seamlessly integrated. The ‘Linked Issue’ option allows you to link issues between the different Elementool applications. To do this, scroll to the ‘linked issues’ field near the ‘remarks section’ and choose the account name and application from the dropdown field that you want the current issue to be linked with. Then type the issue number in the text box. Your issues are now linked!
The Issue Form enables you to assign the issue to a user by selecting the user from the ‘Assigned to’ list. Checking the email or mobile phone checkbox will send a notification with the issue details to the assigned user’s email or cellular phone. Each issue has a unique issue number that is assigned by the system when you submit a new issue. You can later use this number to reference this specific issue.
If you know which issue you would like to view in particular, type in the issue number in the “view issue #” box located on the top, or click on the ‘View Issue’ tab and type the issue number there. You can also view issues by running a report and opening the issues on the report itself.
To run reports, simply click on the “issue report” tab. You can customize the issue report by title, description, status, severity, assigned to, and much more. You can also customize the fields that appear in the report by clicking the ‘customize report’.
The customize report option enables you to select the columns that are displayed on the report, the report’s sorting order and the query filters.
Next to the “customize report” tab is the “View type” tab
There are several view types: Normal, which displays the report on the page; Excel, so you can export the report to excel; and Dynamic, to perform bulk field changes to the issues on the report itself-so you don’t need to update the issues one by one. Choosing the “print view” displays the report in a printer friendly fashion.
Quick Reports
If you frequently run the same report, you should add it to your quick reports. This feature allows you to run reports based on predefined criteria, rather than customizing your report each time. It is very simple to set-up.
Click on the ‘add report list’, and select the accounts and query fields you want present in the report. Customize the report based on your preferences, and click step 3. Select the report fields, such as the field list and report columns, and go to step 4. Lastly, name your quick report and click “save”. Once you setup your quick reports, you can send the report results to people by email.
As you can see, Issue Tracking is very easy to use. We work closely with our clients and are open to ideas and suggestions regarding enhancements and new features. If you have any questions, suggestions or requests, please don’t hesitate to contact our support at support@elementool.com
Hi I’m Allison, and I am going to show you how to use Elementool Test Cases. Test Case is so easy, even your grandma can do it.
Let’s begin!
On the top of the screen are tabs that correspond with each action in Test Cases. Click on a tab to perform that particular action. As you can see, you have the option to edit tests, view tests, display test reports, and access the control panel.
The account is divided into two sections: The Control Panel and the application section.
The Control Panel is where you setup the account. It can be accessed only by users that are part of the Admin group.
The application section consists of “edit tests”, “view test”, and “display test reports”. Users of all groups can access the application portion of Test Cases by logging in to their Elementool account.
Now that we have a feel for ‘Edit Accounts’, let’s go back to the main control panel screen and click on ‘edit test form’.
Here, you can customize the test form to work exactly the way you prefer. You can customize the existing fields or create unlimited new fields. Let me show you how to do this. Click on the caption you wish to change or click “add new” field. Here, you can change field caption, type, width, or create a value list.
O.K, great! That sums up the control panel. Now let’s move onto the application section.
When you sign in to your account, you see the “Welcome Screen” where your automated dashboard is displayed. This will show all test cases assigned to you.
Notice how the top of the screen displays the account name that you are logged into currently. You can switch accounts by clicking on the dropdown menu and choosing the account of your preference. On top of the left hand side of the screen, below the Elementool logo, is a display that shows the current online users who are accessing the account. If you drag your mouse over the display, it will show you the actual users. Clicking the display will enable you to instant message online users in a chat room setting.
Edit Tests
Editing and creating test cases is very easy using Elementool Test Cases. To create a new test, group, or subgroup, or to edit any of these, click on the “edit tests” tab. To create a new test group, click “new” on the left hand side and choose “group” from the dropdown. If you would like to add a subgroup to an already existing group, click on the group to highlight which group you would like to add a sub group to, and on the left, click “new” and choose “sub group” on the dropdown.
To add a test case to a group or subgroup, click on the group to highlight which group you would like to add a test case to, and click “new test” on the right hand side. Fill out the test form and you will be set!
To edit a test group’s name, highlight the test group you wish to change, and click “edit” on the left. To edit a test case, click on the particular test group or subgroup that the test case is associated with, and click on the test case you would like to edit on the right. It’s really that easy!
You can do some other nifty things on the “edit tests” screen, such as copying test templates to new test groups and importing test cases from Excel. To learn how to utilize these more advanced features, check out our blog and watch the tutorial videos!
View Test
Now that we covered the “edit tests” tab, let’s examine the “view tests” tab. After you click on the “view tests” tab, you will see all of your test groups on the left. Clicking on a test group will reveal all associated test cases along with their priority, severity, completion percentage, and expected execution date. Clicking on a particular test case will allow you to edit it. Easy, right?
Let’s move on the last section, “test reports”.
Test reports
To run reports, simply click on the “test report” tab. You can customize the test report by title, description, status, severity, assigned to, and much more. You can also customize the fields that appear in the report by clicking the ‘customize report’.
The customize report option enables you to select the columns that are displayed on the report, the report’s sorting order and the query filters.
Next to the “customize report” tab is the “View type” tab. There are several view types: Normal, which displays the report on the page; Excel, so you can export the report to excel; and Print View, to create a printer friendly report.
There you have it! Test Cases is so easy, even your grandma use do it!