defect tracking – Elementool Blog

The Power of Partnerships: Working Together Versus Working Alone

But you don’t have to do it alone anymore. In a period of 18 months myself and the rest of the team at Elementool, Inc. have conducted extensive research, read dozens of books, run surveys, and received a lot of feedback from our clients about their problems in the way they run their projects.

That helped us to gain an understanding of the challenges that companies face and enabled us to come up with a solution that will help companies have control over their project management process. We want to share our knowledge and expertise in the project management field with you to help you improve your life.

We’ll be covering a lot of ground in this book, guiding you through some very important concepts. But one of the best things about Elementool’s Project Management Formula is that you will start noticing results right away. As you begin adopting the practices I show you, you’ll immediately see improvements in your work and life. That’s because the tools are simple, step-by-step and easy to follow:

Six Sections for Success!

What, exactly, will The Project Management Formula give you? What I am offering you in this book are six sections for success, the last of which – the Formula you’ve been hearing so much about – will provide you with the final five steps, or solutions, that will kick your project management into overdrive!

The six major sections that we will be covering in this book are:

Requirements
The Learning Process
Estimating
Time Management
Scheduling and Planning
The Project Management Formula

The first section, Requirements, breaks down the requirements phase for you. This is a crucial part of project management that gets ignored far too often, so I am going to start you off on the right foot by explaining the “why’s” and “how’s” of good requirements management.

That will be followed by our second section, The Learning Process, which I think you will find truly eye-opening. In that lesson, I reveal some little-known truths about how our minds take in information and process change.

Some people think that, to do their job well, they only have to know the technical aspects of how to perform their tasks. But at Elementool we believe that to get to the next level professionally – to find greater success – you need to be able to think beyond the obvious. It’s important to understand how the mind works so that you can create positive changes with your team members and within yourself.

The third section we’ll cover together, Estimating, is where you learn how to create and provide the best possible estimates for your clients and for your team. I will show you different methods for doing this that you will want to put into action right away. Best of all, they are easy to understand and easy to implement.

The book’s fourth section, which focuses on the extremely crucial skill of Time Management, offers a wealth of information and tips on how you can ensure that your valuable time is used to its best advantage.

In the fifth section, Scheduling and Planning, you’re going to find out practical, easily applicable ways to schedule your projects and keep them on track as you go along. You will also discover in this section that good project management involves managing expectations.

Finally, in the last and most pivotal section of the book, I’m going to teach you The Project Management Formula. This is an easy 5-step system for running projects that we here at Elementool are really excited about, and that you will be able to start using straight away. The five steps of “the Formula” are:

Step 1: Define project objectives and collect requirements
Step 2: Define the priority of the requirements and features
Step 3: Planning iterations
Step 4: Running iterations
Step 5: Present the product to the client

Don’t Just Manage Your Time; Master It!

When it comes to project management, regardless of your position in the company, the size of company or even what industry you’ve been in, time is a mission critical factor that often makes completing projects a challenge.

We’ve all been there: not enough time, no solid schedule, poorly defined goals and objectives, no formal plan, out of control scope creep, miscommunication between people that are involved in the project, etc.

As a result, projects are delayed, time is wasted, clients are angry, your company’s reputation is damaged and you lose customers, people are frustrated and stressed out, team members have to work extra hours to catch up, morale goes down, and employees lose confidence in the company.

If you’ve invested time and money in trick after trick – such as using different project tools, begging and threatening, shouting, motivating team members, holding group discussions, adding more people to the team, and working more hours – but nothing has worked, I would ask you to give this book, and The Project Management Formula it contains, a chance.

Here’s why: You’ve been investing in a host of project management tools and services because you want a better income, a better life for your family, more freedom and independence. But tools alone are useless without solid foundations.

You need strategies for using tools. You’ve been focusing on tools and solving problems instead of focusing on creating strength and power that can be leveraged to avoid problems in the first place. That’s a mindset I hope to change with the Formula I’ll be showing you in this book.

It might help you to think about it this way: let’s say you have the fastest car in the world in your garage. But you don’t know how to drive. The car will be useless to you because you don’t know how to move it, let alone master all the strength, vitality and speed that’s being wasted under the hood. But if you are an excellent driver, even a slow car will be able to get you from one place to another.

In this book I am going to show you how to take charge of your projects and run them in a simple, step-by-step way that will enable you to complete them on time, starting today. This can boost income now and bring you the high-caliber clients that you want to attract. It can also make your company more efficient and competitive and begin refining and spotlighting your brand starting on this very page.

The best part is you don’t need any special background, education, or skills to use this Formula. That said, you do need one special super power to put it into use: action. And not just any action, but aggressive action. Process without action will never produce change. Process without action is simply doing the same things you did yesterday – and the day before – and expecting change.

Albert Einstein said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Something is missing from that equation; something vital. That something vital is aggressive action.

If you don’t take aggressive action once you’ve seen the path I’ve laid out for you in this book, then I can’t help you. Real Success is for people who take action. Mediocre people follow the herd and wait passively for things to “maybe” change in the future.

You are not like that. How do I know? Because you’re here, with me, reading these words and hoping, ready, for change. I am going to show you how to drive your projects and you’ll be able to use this knowledge with any tool that you currently have.

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging has become common in our daily routine. So we have decided to offer it as part of Elementool to help you improve your communication with your team members. Especially if they are located someplace else.

To start a new conversation using the Instant Messenger, please follow these steps:

• Click on the ‘number of users’ online link at the top of the page to display who is currently logged in to the account.
• Click on the name of the user to start an Instant Message session.
• The Messenger window will be displayed on your screen.
• Type your message and click on the keyboard Enter button to send it.

When someone starts a new conversation with you, you will see a red flag next to the ‘number of users’ link.
Follow these steps to join an instant message session:

• Click on the ‘number of users’ online link at the top of the page.
• The person who sent you the message will be marked on the user list.
• Click on the user’s name to open the messenger window.
• Type your reply in the text box and click on the keyboard Enter button to send it.

As you can see, Instant Messaging is easy and can make the communication with your team faster and more efficient.

Track Time Spent on Tasks

In this clip I’ll show you how you can use Elementool to track the time that team members spend on issues.
Tracking time enables you to view the progress of the project and make changes to the project plan if needed.
It is also useful for billing in case clients pay you by the hours you spent developing their projects.

To start using this feature, you should have the Issue Tracking and Scheduling services, because time tracking is done using the integration between Issue Tracking and Scheduling.

The first step is to submit the issues to the Issue Tracking account and assigned them to your team members.
I’m guessing you already know how to do that. If not, please see the Issue Tracking User Manual clip for instructions.

The next step is to assign the issues to a project or projects in the Scheduling service.
To do that, please follow these steps:
• Switch to Scheduling.
• Click on Edit Schedule
• Click on the Add button to add a project. You can assign issues to one or more projects.
• Now that the project is defined, click on the Add button to add the issues to the project.

After the issues have been added to the project, the team members can use the Scheduling section on the Issue form to submit the time that they spend on the issues.

To submit the time spent on an issue, please follow these steps:
• Open the issue
• Scroll down to the Scheduling section
• Submit the date and time that you spent working on the issue.
• Click on the Update

If we go back to Scheduling and look at the Gantt chart, we can see the project plan displayed in light blue and the actual time that the team spent on the issues in dark blue. This gives us a quick view of the project progress.

If you still don’t have an Elementool account, click on the ‘Sign Up Now’ button below to open a free trial account.

How to Send Daily Reports

Hi, it’s Allison again.
Today I would like to present two new features that we added to the reporting section:

• The option to define the view type of the Quick Reports.
• The option to automatically send a daily report by email.

The reports offer 5 view types:
• Normal – this is the standard report type that is display on your browser.
• Dynamic – The Dynamic view type enables you to make changes to the issues directly on the report. This allows you to update multiple issues in a single update instead of opening each issue separately.
• Print View – this is a printer friendly view of the report, that is useful in case you wish to print the report.
• Excel CSV and Excel HTML – these two view types enable you to export the report to an Excel file. Each offers a different Excel formatting option and you can choose the one that suits you the most.

We added an option to define the view type of each Quick Report. It saves you the trouble of defining how you would like the report to look like when running it.

Please follow these steps to change the view type of an existing report:
• Select the report from the Quick Report list.
• Click on Edit Selected Report.
• The Quick Report setup window will open.
• Click on the Step 3 button and the on the Step 4 button to go to the Step 4 page.
• On this page define the View Type and click on Save.

The Send Daily Report option enables you to send reports on a daily basis to other Elementool users or to external people who don’t use Elementool.
It is an easy way to send updates about tasks and issues that you have in your account.

For example: every morning you can send a report of all the open issues in your account, to inform people of the tasks that need to be taken care of.

To setup an automatic daily report, please follow these simple steps:
1. Go to the report page by clicking on Issue Report.
2. Select a report from the Quick Report list.
3. Click on Send Selected Report.
4. Define the recipients by selecting Elementool users or by typing email addresses of external people.
5. Check off the ‘Send report automatically daily’ check box.
6. Select the time when you would like to report to be sent daily.
7. Click on Send.

Very easy.

We plan to release more new features in the near future.
Stay tuned!

How to Submit Issues Faster

Hi, I’m Allison, and I’d like to tell you about new options that we added to the Field Dependency feature. This is a very helpful feature that allows you to quickly locate and select relevant information when filling out a form.

The Field Dependency feature enables the creation of relationships between fields in such a way that a dependant field’s value list is determined based on a value selected in the source list.

For instance, let’s say that you have two fields on a form: State and City. The State field lists all 50 states in the U.S., and the City field lists the 10 largest cities in each of those states. Currently, without using Field Dependency, the State field list shows all 50 states and the City field displays a long list of 500 cities in those states. So if a user wants to choose their city from that list, they need to scan through all 500 to find the one they want.

However, by using the Field Dependency feature, the process becomes much easier. It allows the person to first select their state in the State field. At that point, the Dependency rule automatically filters the city list so that the City field only displays the 10 cities from the selected state. This means that the user can simply select the appropriate city from the list of 10 rather than poring through a long list of 500.

To access the Field Dependency feature, you should go to Control Panel, click on Edit Issue Form and then click on ‘Edit Dependencies’.

Click on Add New Rule to add a new rule.

In Step 1, select the source field that triggers the Dependency rule.
In our example it was the State field.

In Step 2, select the target field that is being changed based on the rule.
In our example it was the City field.

In Step 3, define the rules.
For example:
Select State = New York.
Select cities in New York State.

Click on the Add button to save the rule.

You can repeat these steps to create additional rules for these fields.
When you’re done, click on the Save button to save the rule.

We added two new options to the Field Dependency feature:
• The ability to make a field required based on the value of a certain field.
• The ability to hide fields based on the value of a certain field.

Let me explain how these new options work:

The first option enables you to make fields required based on a value of another field.
For example:
I would like to make the City field required when selecting a State value to make sure that when a person fills out the form and selects a State, they also select the city.

To define the city as a required field, move it to the Required Fields list on the Dependency setup form.

The second option is to hide fields based on a Dependency rule.

For example:

I have a field on the form called Country with a list of country names.
When a person selects a State, they should not select Country. To prevent the person from selecting the Country, I hide the Country field when a state is selected.

To define this rule drag the Country field to the Hidden Fields list.

As you can see, the Field Dependency feature makes filling out and submitting forms much easier and far less time-consuming.

Issue Tracking with Unlimited Fields

In this clip I’m going to introduce you to Elementool full issue form customization.
Everyone who develops projects has specific needs and processes for running the software development. That’s why it is important to choose an Issue Tracking that gives you the flexibility and customization to allow you to fit it to your unique needs.

Elementool’s Issue Tracking offers you full customization of the issue form.
This includes defining the positions of the fields on the issue form and using different field types, as well as the option to add unlimited fields to the system.

Now let’s go into a bit more detail about each option:

First, you should login to the account as an administrator.
Click on Control Panel.
Click on Edit Issue Form.
Click on Edit Fields.

The Issue form is divided into field containers.
Each field container can contain fields.
As you can see, there are different types of field containers.
Some enable you to display large and wide text fields.
Some enable you to display short fields.
You can change the position of the fields by dragging and dropping them around the form in the different containers.

Elementool Issue Tracking offers a selection of 15 different field types.
For example: Text field, dropdown, date, URL, etc.
The tool box on the left top corner of the Edit Issue Form page displays the different field types that you can choose from.

To add a field to the issue form, simply click on it on the toolbox, hold down the mouse button, and drag it to the form to the position where you would like it to be displayed.

Very simple, right?

As I mentioned before, Elementool Issue Tracking allows you to use an unlimited number of fields on the form. This means that you can add as many fields as you wish.
Isn’t that awesome?

That’s it for now, but
I’ll be back soon with more great tips.

The New Remarks Message Board

Hi I’m Allison.

I would like to introduce our new Remarks Message Board.
As you already know, the Remarks Message Board enables you to submit messages related to the issues in a message board structure.

We are proud to release the new message board that adds more flexibility and options to the way you type your messages.

The new remarks message board includes the following new features:
• An ability to embed images into the remarks message
• An option to insert links to web pages and files.
• Control over the font formatting such as color, bold, background color, etc.

I’m going to show you how each of the new features work.

To embed images in the message please follow these simple steps:
• Click on the Insert Image button.
• Select the image on your computer.
• Click on Open.

To insert link please follow these steps:
• Type the link text in the remark
• Highlight the text
• Click on the Insert Link button
• Choose the link type from the three link options:
Http which is a standard web link
Https is a standard secure web link
File is a link to a file on your computer network
• Type the link location
• Click on Save and the link will be added to the remark

To change the font formatting please follow these steps:
• Highlight the text you wish to format.
• Choose from the formatting options on the toolbar.
• You can also first choose the formatting option and then start typing and the font will be changed accordingly.

When done click on the Update button to submit the remarks.

That’s it for now. We are developing additional new features that are planned to be released in the near future. Stay tuned…

What is The Best Way to Define Task Priority?

It’s Allison here again.
In this clip I’m going to show you how you can improve the efficiency of your project development process so you can develop more in less time.

One of the main reasons why projects are late is lack of proper priorities.
It’s very common to see developers working on low priority tasks instead of focusing on the high priority tasks first.

I’ll give you an example:
Let’s say we develop a shopping cart.
The highest priority task would be to develop the credit card payment processing.
A lower priority task would be to develop the page design layout.

Why is credit card processing more important than page design layout?
Because you can’t process the transactions without the payment processing system, but you can process your transactions if the page layout is not done yet. Although, needless to say, it’s much better to have both of the tasks completed.

Another advantage of using priorities is having the ability to control the project schedule and deadline.
If you’re about to reach the project release date and several of the features are not ready yet, it’s much easier to delay low priority tasks to the next version and release the project on time.
But if you haven’t completed the major high priority tasks close to the deadline, you can’t delay them to the next release — and this means that your project couldn’t be released on time.

It’s very common to use priority categorizing such as:
Critical, High, Medium, and Low.

But what if you have 10 high priority tasks? Which one should you finish first?

To try to solve that, people add a second tier of priority. Often it is called Severity.
For example: Critical, High, Medium, and Low.

Using this system, you would first complete issues that are Critical Priority and Critical Severity.
Then you’ll complete issues that are Critical Priority and High Severity.
Starting to get complicated, right?
Furthermore, what if you have five tasks with Critical Priority and High Severity?
Which should you complete first?

I bet you’re pretty confused by now. It’s understandable, because these priority methods are confusing and too complicated.

This is why we developed the Priority List system that makes your life a lot easier.
The priority List enables you to define a unique priority value to each task in a simple manner of using numbers.
This means that an issue with priority value 1 will be developed first.
An issue with priority value 2 will be developed second, and so on.

With Priority List there is no way to get confused.
Each team member knows exactly what they should work on at any time by just looking at the Priority List and simply focusing on the issues based on their order.

Priority List gives the manager full control over the development process.
It’s easy to define and change task priority by simple dragging and dropping them on the list.
It is also possible to see the progress of each task right on the list itself, giving the team leader a full overview of the project progress.

So toss away the old complicated priority system and start using the quick and simple Priority List right away.

If you still don’t have an Elementool account, you should try a free trial by clicking on the Sign Up Now button below.

What to Look For in Issue Tracking Software?

Hi, I’m Allison.

If you’re viewing this video, you must be looking for an issue tracking tool.
I’d like to help you with that and explain the features that you should look for when choosing issue tracking software.

Issue tracking is one of the basic tools used for project management and software development.
It is mainly used for task management, bug tracking, and defect tracking.
This is why it’s important to select the right issue tracking software for the success of your projects.

Here are the main features you should look for when selecting an issue tracking tool.

Make sure that the issue tracking software has a dashboard that enables you to view a snapshot of your project. This dashboard should be customizable and should use both text and charts to display details about your issues.
It should allow you to view the issues that are assigned to you and sort issues by their status, such as New, Fixed, Closed, and so on.

Another important feature is file attachment. You should be able to attach files to your issues. It is one of the most common features that developers and testers use when reporting and updating bugs. In many cases it is helpful to attach a screenshot of the bug or a short video that demonstrates how to reproduce the defect. It saves time when a team member views the bug report and helps them to better understand what it is about.

Next is issue reporting. Reporting and search is a very useful feature that is used often. It enables you to display issue reports based on search criteria.
For example, you can display a report of all the open bugs, or all the bugs assigned to a specific developer.
You want to make sure that the reporting feature allows you to easily set different query filters and customize the report display by enabling you to choose the columns that are displayed on the issue report.
Another useful feature is the option to create save report settings by creating a list of quick reports. This way you can select the report from the list and display it with the click of a button instead of creating the report every time from scratch. That’s a big time saver!

Email notification is also a handy feature you should look for when selecting an issue tracking tool. It enables you to send emails to team members when issues are updated. This way you can improve the communication between team members and enable them to respond quickly to bugs that are reported to the system.

These are the basic features you should look for in issue tracking software.

If you still don’t have an issue tracking account, you should try our free trial by clicking on the Sign up button below.