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.
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, 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!
Mass Update is a powerful feature that enables you to make changes to a long list of issues in a single update.
This saves you the need to open each issue and update it separately.
To use Mass Update you should follow these steps:
Go to Control Panel and then click on the Mass Update button.
On the first screen we are going to select the issues that you want to update.
For example: All the issues that are closed and have been submitted between January 1st 2005 and December 21st 2010.
On Step 2 you should select the fields you wish to update.
In this example, I would like to change the status of all the issues that I selected from Closed to Archive.
So I’m going to add the Status field.
Step 3 shows me the details of the changes I’m going to make in the account and asks for my confirmation.
I confirm and the system performs the changes to my account.
The multiple file upload features enables you to upload and attach multiple files to an issue instead of one file at a time.
Click on the file attachment button.
Click on the Browse button and select all the files that you wish to upload. You can use the keyboard’s Control button so select multiple files.
The files that you selected are displayed on the screen.
You can remove files by clicking on the red X button and you can also type a short description to each file.
Clicking on Upload will upload and attach the files to the issue.
The progress bar shows you the upload progress.
Janet Smith got married last week and just got back to the office from her honeymoon in Paris. She’s changed her last name to after her husband’s name and now she is called Janet Michaels.
She wants also to update her name in the company’s Elementool accounts.
Over the years she has submitted over 200 issues and now she needs to update each one of them.
She calculated that it takes about 30 seconds to open and update each issue. So she figured that it will take her almost two hours to update all her issues.
That’s a lot of work.
Instead of doing that, she decided to use the Mass Update feature.
Mass Update enables Janet to update her issues with her new name in a single update that takes less than a minute.
What a time saver!
New York, NY – Elementool Inc. (www.elementool.com), a developer of integrated Software-as-a-Service project management software, announced it has reached a partnership agreement with web-conferencing provider Fuze Meeting (www.fuzebox.com). Under this API agreement, Elementool has developed a web-conferencing tool that is integrated with the existing suite of seven Elementool project management tools and applications. The result is a web-conferencing tool that competes in the same market as WebEx and GoToMeeting, offering Elementool clients the ability to integrate global face-to-face conferencing into their project management processes.
Elementool customers such as State Street Bank, Johnson & Johnson, BP and GE, which have teams located across the globe, are able to communicate with far flung colleagues within the integrated Elementool project and application lifecycle management dashboard. Communication is the key to successful project management for companies both large and small. 40% of Project Managers cited lack of communication as the leading cause of IT project failure. This partnership is the direct result of Elementool customer requests for a more efficient way to integrate connectivity and communication into the project management process. Many of those in project management, particularly in IT, are constantly faced with having to explain issues or bugs over telephone or e-mail. Without the use of a visual aid, understanding the issue or bug may prove to be very challenging and ultimately, frustrating.
Additionally, with so many companies having globally distributed teams, Elementool’s clients have discussed a need for better communication amongst virtual teams. Many of the organizations who deploy virtual teams frequently leave out virtual members from corporate meetings. Many of Elementool’s customers acknowledge that in these instances, resentment and lower team morale are inevitable. In addition to lowering team morale, the lack of communication may also result in a loss of production. Virtual members might receive a list of project requirements, and perceive the requirements to mean something other than what’s intended. Since these virtual members do not attend meetings, they are unaware of their incorrect perception. This may result in a loss of production, dissatisfied clients, and an inability to meet deadlines and requirements. In fact, 84% of IT development projects don’t meet cost, time, and quality standards. The problems facing virtual teams and IT teams are a direct result of a lack of communication. Conferencing enables effective communication by allowing global clients to share screens, trouble shoot or simply hold a team meeting directly from their Elementool dashboard from anywhere in the world. For example, a development team in Asia can meet with the Engineering team in the UK to ensure that proper requirements are met. Or perhaps the Quality Assurance team in New York can take part in the weekly corporate meetings in Palo Alto.
Besides benefiting from increased communication, Conference also saves clients time and money by reducing unnecessary costly on-site visits. Elementool’s customers frequently complain about traveling cross-country for short meetings. These same customers believe their limited budget would be better spent on talent, equipment, and other resources.
The addition of Conference to Elementool’s seamlessly integrated suite of application, allows users a complete management tool that eliminates both the hassle and the cost of purchasing multiple services from different vendors. Instead of wasting time integrating tools and switching between screens, all Elementool applications are seamlessly integrated. Having all necessary management tools available from one dashboard lets users focus their time and energies on their job tasks.
“The SaaS business model gives us the option of integrating with other web-based Cloud Services providers. Building interoperability with vendors like Fuze Meeting has allowed us to implement an established Web-Conferencing system and pass that on to our users in a format that will take advantage their existing processes,” says Yaron Sinai, CEO & Founder of Elementool. “Our goal is to enable our users to improve and increase productivity; we believe that this partnership will provide tangible value in that regard.”
About Elementool
Elementool is the leading provider of web based project management tools for help desk, bug and defect tracking, test tracking and time tracking. Customers such as Fortune 500 companies, International banks, automotive manufacturers, IT consulting companies and software start-ups, use Elementool’s project management tools daily in their project development and testing process.
About Fuze Meeting
Fuze Meeting, developed by Fuze Box, Inc. enables seamless high-definition online collaboration between mobile and desktop users. Fuze Box is a leading provider of Internet and mobile based unified communications solutions. Other Fuze Box products currently available include Fuze Messenger, Fuze Movie, Internet Fax, Voicemail-To-Text, Internet Answering Machine, and HD Audio Conferencing.
I don’t know how they do it, but Elementool is awesome. It has all the features. It is so sophisticated and easy to use.
You go to the Welcome page and everything is there.
It surpasses all the others by miles. You should check it out.
