Trackers and real-time Reports

Disclaimer: this chapter covers the new generation (aka v5) of Tracker system. For documentation on the legacy tracker system (v3) see Tracker (Legacy).

The Tuleap Tracker is one of the most powerful and flexible service provided by Tuleap. It allows tracking change management and various artifacts like bugs, tasks, requirements, etc… . A project can create and customize as many trackers as necessary.

All trackers, whether predefined at the site level or created by a project, can be fully customized to your processes and business needs.

Terminology and common features

Before we explain the features of the tracker service, it’s worth spending some time on the terminology used in the tracker service as well as on some of the features that are shared by all trackers.

As the Tracker Service is meant to track virtually any kind of item, the generic term “artifact” will be used throughout this document to designate items that are being tracked - be it bug, task, support request, user stories or other such type.

Defining a tracker is just a matter of assigning it a name, choosing the fields that are going to be used in the tracker, and what values will be allowed in those fields.

In addition to the project definable fields and field values there is a Follow-ups section that is permanently attached to a tracker artifact. This one allows you to follow the artifact lifecycle (values changed and free text comments attached to an artifact and posted by users). In this section you can also add a follow-up comment that will be added in the follow-ups flow.

Entering the Tracker Service

To enter the Tracker service of a given project, first go to the project and click on the “Trackers” item in the sidebar.

You will be presented with a list of trackers available for this particular project. Select the tracker you are interested in. Entering the tracker will give you access to various tracker functions depending on the permissions you have with this tracker. You may be able to submit new artifacts, update existing ones, search and browse the artifact database or configure the tracker.

Submit an artifact

To submit a new artifact to a given project you must first access the appropriate tracker of that project as indicated in the section above Entering the Tracker Service.

When entering a given tracker you are presented with the artifact selection and browsing screen (more about this facility in Search for existing artifacts). For now let’s click on the “Submit new artifact” item (or whatever the artifact name is) from the Tracker Menu Bar in the upper part of the welcome screen (see A Tracker browsing screen).

A sample artifact submission screen (the artifact is of type “bug” here)

A sample artifact submission screen shows a sample submission screen from one of the Tuleap public request tracker. Because of the Tuleap Tracker high level of customizability no two submission screens look alike. Depending on the project more or less fields may appear on the tracker submission form and the name of artifact managed by the tracker may change as well.

When submitting a new artifact, make the Summary and the detailed description as explicit as possible. Do not use a clueless summary like: “Service X doesn’t work” or “Blocking problem in Y”. Explain the exact nature of the artifact by giving an explicit Summary and Description to the person in charge. A unique ID is automatically assigned to the submitted artifact.

The values proposed by a field could depend upon other field value. If javascript is activated in your browser, fields will be filtered dynamically. Otherwise, Tuleap will ensure that the values you submit are correct.

As explained above, artifact submission forms vary from one project to another depending on the fields used by the tracker. The submission form can also vary according to the permission level. Depending whether you are a project member or an ordinary registered user the artifact fields displayed on the screen may differ. As an example, on A sample artifact submission screen, the bug submitter using the form is probably a project member because giving access to the “Assigned to” field to an ordinary registered user doesn’t make much sense. It is very unlikely that users external to the project team know enough about the project organization to correctly assign the bug. That’s the reason why artifact fields shown to users on the submission form can be configured in the Tracker Administration module.

In any case don’t forget to click on the “Submit” button when you are finished !

Note

About to sumit a bug or a support request? Before you do that, make sure that others haven’t yet submitted a similar artifact.

Search for existing artifacts

Tuleap offers the ability to browse the artifact database according to a variable set of criteria.

Selection Criteria

The upper part of the artifact browsing screen is devoted to the selection criteria. A Tracker browsing screen shows the default set of selection criteria that is available when a new tracker is created. You can select bugs by Category (the module in which the bug occurred), Group (nature of the bug like Crash, Documentation Typo, …), Status (e.g. Open, Closed, …) and Assignee (the person in charge of the bug). But you may also add or remove criteria by using the “Toggle criteria” link.(for more details, see Tracker Report Management)

How selection criteria are filled out depend on their field type. The Tracker Service currently has several types of fields used as search criteria:

Select Box Field and Multiple Select Box Field

A select box field can take its value in a set of predefined values. By default, only one value can be selected at a time. If you want to select multiple values at once, use the Advanced Search facility by clicking on the + icon. A multi select box appears and allows the user to select multiple values for the same field.

There might be 2 specific values in the list of choices: “Any” matches any value in the list and “None” matches the items where no value has been assigned yet.

Text Field

A Text field can contain any kind of text. There are two ways to query a text field:

• Keyword search: you can type a series of space separated keywords that will ALL be searched for in the text field (including as substring in words)

• Regular expression: You can also specify a MySQL Extended Regular Expression as a matching criteria (mind the surrounding /…/ !)

  Examples:

  • /^[Aa]ddition/ : matches any text field starting with either “addition”or “Addition”
  • /foo|bar|dim/ : matches text fields containing the string “foo”, “bar” or “dim”

Date Field

A date criteria follows the following pattern: YYYY-MM-DD where YYYY is the year number, MM is the month number and DD is the day number.

Examples: 2015-03-21 is March 21st, 2015, 2017-12-05 is Dec 5th, 2017.

You can search an exact date (using = in the operator select box), all dates before a certain date (using <) or all dates after (using >).

By cliking the + icon, you can use the advance search and search for dates between two specific dates.

Integer Field

An integer field can take positive or (possibly) negative values and has no decimal part.

Examples: 0, 1, +2, -100…

There are several ways to query an integer field. Here are the values you can specify in a integer query field:

• Single Integer: if you type a single integer the field will be matched against this value (e.g. 610)
• Inequality: if you use >, <, >= or =< followed by an integer the search will look for integer values which are greater, lesser, greater or equal, lesser or equal to the integer value (e.g. > 120 , < -30)
• Range: if you use the “integer1-integer2” notation the search engine will look for all values greater or equal to integer1 and lesser or equal to integer2 (e.g. 800 - 900 for integers between 800 and 900, -45 - 12 for integers between -45 and +12)
• Regular expression: MySQL Extended Regular Expression can also be used as a matching criteria (e.g. /^4.*8$/ will look for all integer values starting with a “4”, ending with an “8” with any number of digits in between.

Floating Point Number Field

A floating point number field can take positive or (possibly) negative values, may have a decimal part or use the exponential notation for large values.. .

Examples: 0, 1.23, -2.456, 122.45E+12…

There are several ways to query an floating point number field. Here are the values you can specify in such a field:

• Single Number: if you type a single number the field will be matched against this value (e.g. 2.35)
• Inequality: if you use >, <, >= or =< followed by a number the search will look for all values which are greater, lesser, greater or equal, lesser or equal to the integer value (e.g. > 120.3 , < -3.3456E-2)
• Range: if you use the “number1-number2” notation the search engine will look for all values greater or equal to integer1 and lesser or equal to integer2 (e.g. -1.2 - 4.5 for numbers greater than or equal to -1.2 and lesser than or equal to 4.5)
• Regular expression: MySQL Extended Regular Expression can also be used as a matching criteria (e.g. /^4.*8$/ will look for all values starting with a “4”, ending with an “8” with any number of characters in between including the decimal point.

Comment Criterion

Starting Tuleap 9.18, it’s possible to filter artifatcs by follow-up comments. A new search option called comment is now always displayed. It allows users to search artifacts that have at least one comment that contains the provided content.

Attention

When searching in comments, you should be aware of some limitations:

• Searches are done for words longer than 3 characters
• Some words are not taken in account because they are too common (like the, a, please …)

Tracker Search Results

Based on your selection of search criteria, Tuleap runs a query against the tracker database, selects the matching artifacts, and displays them right below the selection criteria. Columns displayed in the artifact list are entirely configurable by the user. (see Tracker Report Management).

Results are listed by chunks of N artifacts where N is user-definable. If more than N artifacts are retrieved from the tracker database you are invited to click on the navigation bar to display the next or previous chunk of artifacts.

To access a given artifact from the list of results, simply click on the icon or on the id.

Artifact List Sorting

By default, artifacts are sorted by the chronological order of the submission on the Tuleap.

The list of artifacts can be sorted by any of the columns displayed on the screen by clicking on the column heading. Clicking twice on the same heading toggles the sort order between ascending to descending. The currently displayed sorting direction is shown by a small up or down arrow next to the sort criteria right above the artifact list.

For more sophisticated sorting you can also use the multi-column sort. In this mode sort criteria accumulates as you click on column headings. So you can for instance click “Severity” first and “Assigned To” second to see who in the team is assigned critical bugs and how many.At any point in the multi-column sort process, a click on one of the sort criteria displayed in the list (criteria 1 > criteria 2 > criteria 3…) will bring you backward in the sort criteria list. Using this feature you can easily test various sorting strategies.

Export Tracker Search Results

In the report “options” menu, “Export all report columns” and “Export all columns” links allow to export all artifacts of your search result into CSV format. Using this facility you can easily select the tracker artifacts that you want to process with other tools outside Tuleap.

CSV File Parsing

The CSV format that is accepted as import input is accessible over the CSV file submission screen. This page allows manual validation of the tracker field names (shortname), indicating which fields are mandatory in case of a new artifact submission. In addition, it gives you a sample CSV file. As for the export feature, you can specify the separator used in the CSV file you want to import as well as the date format (See Account Maintenance). If you already use the Tracker Artifact Export (see Project Data Export) you will notice that the format of the files to import and the exported files are exactly the same. This means that if you changed your CSV separator for exporting data, you must use the same to import those data. You can refer to the export format especially for the date formats. The first record in the CSV import file is always the header row containing all the tracker field names that will be used in the following artifact records.

Depending on whether you want to import new artifacts or update the ones that already exist in the tracker you need to provide different information. Nevertheless, you can mix in one CSV file the submission of new artifacts and the update of existing ones.

For the artifact creation you need to provide information on all fields that are specified as mandatory in the CSV import format except the Artifact ID which must not be specified. You may omit the submitter and submission date. The artifact submitter is then automatically set to the user importing the CSV file and the submission date will be the date of the import.

For the artifact update you need to provide the artifact identifier of the artifacts to update in the special column ‘aid’. Beside this, you only need to provide the fields you want to update. All fields not specified in the CSV file will remain unchanged.

The parsing method checks several potential errors in the CSV file:

• Omission of mandatory fields when submitting new artifacts
• Not the same number of columns in the header row and an artifact row
• Unknown tracker field name
• Field values that do not correspond to the predefined field values of a (multi) select box field
• Unknown artifact identifier
• Wrong date value

All other potential errors have to be checked manually by looking at the parse report table.

Graphical visualization

You can also view graphical results of your search by adding a Charts tab. There are four types of graphs supported : Pie, Bar and Gantt charts, but also Burndown charts used in Scrum methodology. Like the list of artifact (table renderer), the graphical view respond to the selection criteria. For more details, see Charts renderer.

Tracker Report Management

Tracker reports allow the definition of a specific layout of the artifact search and browsing screen where one can choose the selection criteria and the renderers, which present the search result. Tuleap is proposing two kinds of renderers : “Table” and “Charts”. The “Table” renderer presents the list of matching artifacts using columns. The “Charts” renderer gives a graphical visualization of the results. The “Cardwall” renderer is an easy-to-understand view of the results. Users may enjoy the ability to choose from several graphical tracker renderers available in the renderer tabs section. Depending on the project, they may also enjoy the ability to choose from several tracker reports by using the upper pull-down menu of the artifact browsing screen. If no project or user specific tracker report has been defined, the Tuleap ‘Default’ report is the only one available.

Any Tuleap user with access to the tracker can define his own personal report, choosing his own search criteria and adding renderers (tables, charts, cardwall). In this case the report is a personal one and is only visible to this particular user. On the contrary, tracker administrators have the ability to define project-wide graphical reports that all users will be able to use.

Tracker Report Setting

The current report is defined at the top left of the report page. If several reports are available, a select box will allow to change the current report.

For each report, if you are granted enough to do it, you can either save, save as, change the visibility from public to private, set the current as the default tracker report or delete it.

Be careful! When you are a tracker admin, updating a public report will update the report for every other tracker user. Keep this in mind before saving your modifications.

Renderer management

Adding a renderer

You can add as many renderers you want in any tracker report. Renderers are ordered in tabs. Adding a renderer is easy: click on “Save” or “Save as”. Select the kind of renderer you want to add (either table, charts or cardwall), give the renderer a name and a description, and select the submit button.

Note

Save button for renderer is displayed only when you have changed your current report.

Table renderer

Table renderer is displayed artifacts matching your search in a table. Columns of the table are tracker fields and rows of the table are the artifacts.

You can select the fields of the renderer (using the Toggle columns link), reorder the fields using drag and drop, sort artifact list by fields (by clicking on the field name in the table header), browse artifact list selecting the number of displayed artifacts at once

It is possible to add aggregates functions on table renderer on specific fields. For int, float, select box and multi select box fields, an icon is displayed under each column.

Simply click on it to add one or several aggregate functions. Aggregates functions available are:

• Count (only for int, float, select box and multi select box fields)
• Count Group By (only for int, float, select box and multi select box fields)
• Average (only for int and float fields)
• Maximum (only for int and float fields)
• Minimum (only for int and float fields)
• Std Deviation (only for int and float fields)
• Sum (only for int and float fields)

You can easily add, remove and move columns you want to display on your table as well was adding agregate functions at the bottom.

Charts renderer

Charts renderer allows to add charts in your report. Tuleap provides four kind of graphs: pie, bar, gantt and burndown charts.

You can add as many graphs as you want in a charts renderer. To add a graph, click “+ Add a chart” and select the type of chart you want in the drop down.

Available chart: - Pie chart

• Bar chart
• Gantt chart
• Burndown chart
• Cardwall chart

A renderer with some charts

Warning

If you’re dealing with big projects and your dates spread on several years, don’t display your Gantt chart by day. The chart will be too large. Please change the time scale to week, month or year.

Updating/removing a renderer

Depending on your permissions, you will be able to update a renderer, by clicking the down arrow next to the renderer name.

Available actions are title and description update, or renderer deletion.

Note

Every renderer (either table or charts) can be displayed in your dashboard. To do it, select the link “add to my dashboard” or “add to project dashboard”.

Artifact Update

Selecting an artifact from the list generated by a search operation will bring you to a screen with all the artifact details. Depending on the permissions you have on this tracker, the detailed view is made of text fields and menus that you can update with new values. If you are an anonymous user or a registered user who does not belong to the project team, most of the fields will likely appear as immutable text. By default, non-project members cannot edit any of the artifact fields. They can only submit a follow-up comment.

The Artifact Update screen is divided in several parts: Header and Comments.

Header

The header zone is where you’ll find all the fields associated with an artifact. Many of these fields are assigned a set of predefined values (Status, Category, Resolution) while some others have a number format (Effort) or a free text format (Summary). For more clarity, the fields are grouped in field sets. The set of fields used in a given tracker, as well as the related set of predefined values and the field sets can be configured by project members who have administration permissions on this tracker.

Dynamic Fields

Some fields have a particular behaviour and some explanations seem necessary.

• Automatically edit fields: Tuleap includes fields that are automatically set : “Artifact ID”, “Last Update Date”, “Submitted By”, “Submitted On” and “Rank”. The users can’t edit that fields.

• Cross-Reference: Tuleap offers another dynamic field which has the ability to cross-reference any artifact, or any other Tuleap object from within a follow-up comment.

  When typing a follow-up comment, any text that follows the pattern “XXX #NNN” will be interpreted as a reference to the artifact XXX number NNN, where NNN is the unique artifact ID, and XXX is the tracker short name (e.g. “bug #123”, “task #321”, “req #12”, etc.). If you don’t know the tracker short name or don’t want to specify it, you may simply use “art #NNN”. Each time Tuleap displays a piece of text that follows this pattern it will auto-magically create an hyperlink to the web page showing all the details of the artifact.

  Tuleap reference patterns may be used to reference artifacts, as well as source code commits, documents, files, etc. Please refer to Reference Overview for more details on References.

  Furthemore references concerning artifacts, svn revisions and cvs commits are stored in the database. They are displayed in the next section, ordered by type and initial reference direction.

Comments

As many follow-up comments as needed can be attached to any given artifact. Follow-up comments are free text fields where virtually any kind of information or comment can be typed in.

Follow-up comments have several of interesting capabilities and extensions:

• Changeset: Each follow-up comment has a part dedicated to the artifact history. This keeps track of all changes that occurred on all artifact fields since the creation of the artifact. The artifact history shows what fields changed, what the old value was befor the change took place, who changed it and when.

• Canned Responses: it is not infrequent to see the project members in charge of the artifact classification and dispatch process to post the same follow-up comments again and again. Typical examples of repeatedly posted comments are: a thank you message to the originator, a request for the originator to provide commonly missing information like version numbers or type of machine used, etc. Rather than typing the same comments all the time, Tuleap allows project members to create a predefined set of responses. Each canned response is defined by a name and by the body of the response.

  Posting a canned response is just a matter of selecting the appropriate response from the pull down menu in the artifact update screen and submitting the changes.

File attachments

You can attach files to an artifact by using file field.

Please note that it is possible to drag ‘n drop (or copy/paste) images directly in the text or in the follow-up comment field as soon as they are in html mode.

Such images will be added in the first updatable file field in the artifact.

Drag ‘n drop or copy/paste are not possible if:

• there isn’t any file field
• the file field is not updatable (due to permissions) or is frozen (due to workflow)

Artifact Link

Artifact link field provides a very powerful way to link an artifact to others. Any artifact from any accessible tracker can be linked to the current edited artifact. Artifact are displayed as a regular tracker report where each tab is a list of artifact of a given tracker according to the default renderer of the default selected report.

Linking artifacts

If you know the id of artifact you want to link, just add it in the unput box. You can add several artifact at once, by separating them with comma ‘1,2’. If you don’t know the id of artifact to add click on the search button, a modal will allow you to choose artifacts by trackers.

Creating an artifact

As linking another artifacts to a currently edited one, it is possible to create a artifact in different tracker (e.g. sub-tasks addition) any created artifact is set as “to be linked”, this means that right after creating it is added to its tracker tab, and in the input field text.

Managing linked artifacts

Linked or “to be linked” artifacts can be managed in the artifact link tabs view. Not yet linked artifacts are highlighted. All artifacts can be uncheck (by clicking the cross).

Using typed artifact links

Since Tuleap 9.14, trackers use by default the typed artifact links. This feature gives to the user the ability to add a type to a link between two artifacts.

Trackers and project administrators are able to deactivate the whole feature or some types for the project. This can be done in the new tracker global administration section

Regarding the _is_child type, it cannot be disabled if a hierarchy exists in the project. If _is_child is disabled, a hierarchy cannot be set.

Attention

Some types cannot be disabled because they are used by an active plugin in the project.

Once deactivated:

• A type cannot be used in new links
• Old links using this type still exist
• The type of these links will be cleared after the next artifact update (the link will continue to exist without any type)

Move artifacts

Since Tuleap 10.5, you can move artifacts from a tracker to another one.

To be able to move an artifact:

• you must be tracker administrator of both source and target trackers
• artifact deletion must be allowed (Site admin > Administration > Tracker > Artifacts Deletion)

However artifacts containing artifact links and artifacts connected to FRS releases cannot be moved.

Note

For the moment, only:

• fields based on semantics Title, Description, Status, Assigned to and Initial effort
• field submitted date
• field submitted by

And follow-up comments can be moved.

E-mail Notification

The Tuleap Tracker is equipped with a powerful and flexible e-mail notification system. Unless otherwise instructed by the project administrators or the users themselves, the e-mail notification system follows simple default rules. Whenever an artifact is created or updated - whether with an additional follow-up comment or a change in any of the artifact fields - an e-mail message is sent to:

• The artifact submitter (the person who initially submitted the artifact)
• The artifact assignee (the person to whom the artifact is currently assigned if the option “Send notifications to selected people” of the field which refers to the assignee has been checked by the tracker admin)
• All users who posted at least one follow-up comment to the artifact.

The e-mail message generated by the Tuleap Tracker first shows the most recent changes that occurred on the artifact in case of an update. It is then followed by a complete snapshot of the artifact. Web pointers are also included in the message to quickly and easily access the artifact form on Tuleap.

Notification by email

Artifact Fields

Standard types

Find below a detailed description of each type:

String

Allows the user to enter free text in a one-line text field. The summary of a defect or a task is a good example of a one-line text field.

Text

Allows the user to enter free text in a multi-line text area. The field “Original Submission” that is used to describe in details a defect, a task, etc. is of type “Text”.

Select Box

A “Select Box” field takes its value from a predefined list of values defined by the tracker administrator. The predefined values can either be a:

• static list of values,
• a list of users,
• a list of user groups.

For more details on each possible values, see bind type configuration.

Depending on the browser you use it may be displayed slightly differently but it is generally shown as a pull-down menu with the list of predefined values. At any given time this type of field can only be assigned one single value.

Multi-Select Box

Like the Select Box field described above this field takes its value from a predefined list of values or users. As opposed to the Select Box field, the Multi-Select Box can be given multiple values at once by the end user. As an example, this type of field can be used to assign several persons to a given task in a task tracker.

Date*: one-line field that only accept ISO formatted dates (YYYY-MM-DD). For user convenience, each date field comes with a calendar.

File upload

This field allows to add any kind of files. Users can add several files in the same file updload field. A typical example of file upload file is an attachment section of defect or bugs artifacts.

Integer

One-line field that only accept well-formed integral numbers (e.g 3, -100, 2345…)

Float

One-line field that only accept well-formed floating point numbers (e.g 3.56, -100.3, 2345, 34E+6…)

Open List

This field allows to have a list of values, but the values are not predefined. The list is “open”. It means that users can use an existing value, but can also add a new value. This new value will be part of the existing ones the next time! Moreover, this field provides autocompletion (typing the beginning of a word, the system suggests values starting with the entered text). This fields accepts multi values.

Like the standard lists, open lists can be linked with static values or with users.

Note

Former trackers version of Tuleap contained a section called CC that was used to notify people of artifact updates. This section no more exists, but can be easily replaced by an open list field, linked with users. Don’t forget to check the notify option when defining your field!

Artifact link

This field allows to make specific reference or dependance to other artifacts. A typical use for this kind of field is a reference from a task to several sub-tasks. This field is multi valued.

Permissions on artifact

This field allows to define specific permissions on an artifact. The artifact submitter can then choose to restrict the access of the artifact to a group of users.

Computed field

In Tuleap, computed fields are special fields that allows you to do the sum of all your child field in a tracker hierarchy.

A common use case for this field is calculation of remaining effort in release. Release remaining effort is the sum of sprint remaining effort and sprint remaining effort is the sum of user stories

Computation rules: * we never compute twice the same node, if a user story is linked to two sprints, the release remaining effort add only one time the user story remaining effort * manual value break the calculation, * when calculation encounter a manual value we never computed children of node, we keep manual value for computation. permissions are not taken in account during calculation process, user will see the remaining effort global, even he/she can’t see some artifacts.

Example of computation work:

Example of computed field calculation

• User story #6 remaining effort is count just once for release, but sprint #2 and #3 reflect correct remaining effort
• If I manually set remaining effort for Sprint #2 to 10, release remaining effort will be 60 (10+30+20)
• I am connected as a member who only can see release, I will see 60 as remaining effort

Burndown

Burndown is a graphical representation of remaining effort, and is used to track team progress. In burndown every dot represent the sum of all linked artifact remaining effort for a given day.

Burnup

Burnup chart represent team progress overtime for a release or a sprint. It’s a new field for Agiledashboard plugin.

A burnup field

This graph allows you to visualise:

• Total effort: sum of initial effort to do to complete release
• Team effort: sum of initial effort already done for the release

Burnup and Burndown mechanisms

Cache for burnup and burndown works the same way.

They are both based on a cache tables:

• every night yesterday value is computed and cached
• the value for the day “today” is never cached and calculated at every display
• if chart has missing day, a system event is triggered to generate the full cache for chart
• if start date or duration is updated, the full chart cache generation is computed again
• project admin can force cache generation
• data are not displayed until the cache is complete

It’s possible to use burnup and burndown over different timezones:

Let’s imagine your team is split in Montreal and in Tokyo:

Team A	Team B
Montreal	Tokyo
31th July 2017 1:00 AM	1th August 2017 3:00 PM

With a server located in Paris

Server time	31th July 2017 8:00AM
Today remaining effort	10

My team B, update the remaining effort to 9 at 3:00PM, burndown will reflects following values:

in Montreal	value for 31th July will be 9.
in Montreal	value for 1th August will be 9.
in Tokyo	value for 31th July will be 10.
in Tokyo	value for 1th August will be 9.

Dynamic fields

Find below a detailed description of each type:

Artifact ID

this is the unique identifier of the artifact. It can be useful to make reference to the artifact. The artifact Id cannot be updated and is determined by the system. This is a read only field.

Last Update Date

this field is a read only field and cannot be updated by the user. This field is automatically set to the date of the artifact was updated last time. Each artifact modification will update this field (field update, follow-up comment, etc.). This field can be useful in a report sorted on this field to follow the activity of the tracker.

Submitted By

this field is a read only field and cannot be updated by the user. This field is automatically set to the user that submitted the artifact.

Submitted On

this field is a read only field and cannot be updated by the user. This field is automatically set to the date of the artifact was created.

Cross References

this field is automatically updated with existing references from and/or to this artifact. It displays all references from or to this artifact, grouped by reference type (artifact, document, wiki, etc.).

Rank

this field is automatically updated by the AgileDashboard plugin. It displays the artifact rank in the context of the milestone.

Structural Elements

Find below a detailed description of each type:

Fieldset

This structural element allows to group several fields together. Fields are stacked one above the other.

Column

This structural element allows to add columns in the artifact form. Columns are aligned one next to the other. You can use columns if you want to put several fields on the same row.

Line Break

This structural element adds an invisible line break in the artifact form. Use this field to arrange the different elements.

Separator

This structural element adds a visible line break in the artifact form. Use this field to arrange the different elements.

Static Text

This element allows to add static text in the artifact form. You can use the rich text editor to add color, formatting, etc. You can use this field to add instructions, ot just for decoration.

Trackers administration

If you are a tracker administrator, a project administrator or a site administrator, you will be able to create, update or delete trackers. It means that you can customize tracker as you wish, you will find in this page what you can configure.

Artifact Mass Change

Tracker admins have the ability to update many artifacts at once. This feature can be convenient to assign all bugs or tasks of a team member to another if the person is moving on another project for instance.

To do this, select the “mass change” link in the “options” menu of the tracker report. Please note that only tracker admins have access to that option.

You will be able to update any kind of field (except the semantic title field). Number of artifacts to be updated are displayed with their artifact Ids. By default, all fields have the “value” set to “unchanged”. If you don’t want to update a field, please keep the value unchanged. To update a field for every artifacts, just update it. You can also add a follow-up comment.

Note

The artifact mass change feature allows to by-pass any workflow on field(s)

Tracker Creation

Before one can define what fields and field values to use in a tracker, it must first be created. Tracker creation can be accessed from the “Create a New Tracker” menu item that is available in the tracker servide page.

To define a new tracker you must provide the following information:

• Name: this is the name of your tracker. A tracker is typically named after the type of artifact it is going to manage. This name will be used by Tuleap in the title of the various screens of the trackers. Typical examples of tracker names are: Action Requests, Support Requests, Requirements, Defects, Bugs…
• Description: A longer description of what this tracker is all about and the type of managed artifacts.
• Short name: this is a short name that best describe the type of artifact managed in this tracker. This name must be quite short as it is used in various screens of the Tuleap Tracker like the artifact update form where it appears in the tracker menu and also next to the artifact ID. Following the examples given for the Name field above, short names can be: AR for Action Request, SR for Support Requests, Reqt for Requirements, bug for Bugs…

Create a new tracker

The next step is to decide upon the set of fields available for this tracker. In order to avoid the pain of defining the most common type of trackers again and again (e.g. Bug tracker, Support Request tracker, etc.) Tuleap offers the ability to create a new tracker from a set of templates. Those templates are either Tuleap-wide templates (also known as site templates), project specific templates or an xml file.

Note

Using a template doesn’t mean you have to stick to the list of fields and field values defined in this template. You can always add or remove fields or fine-tune the field settings afterwards.

• Tuleap-wide Templates: these are templates that have been defined by the administrators of the Tuleap site because it is expected that most project needs them. It is also a way to ensure a certain level of harmonization across projects that will make developers’ life easier. The list of available templates may vary from one Tuleap site to another but you will typically find templates for Bugs, Tasks, etc. A specific tracker called “Empty” allows you to create a virgin tracker with no predefined fields other than the minimal set of required fields. See Tracker Templates for more explanations on the semantic of those templates.
• Project Templates: in case you have already defined a tracker that suits your needs or you have seen a tracker from another project that you’d like to reuse, you just have to specify the project ID and tracker ID either by hand or from the pull down menus and click on the create button to create the exact same tracker in your project (Note: this does not copy the artifacts of the original tracker but only the field settings).
• XML file: Tuleap allows you to create trackers from XML file. The expected XML file describes the structure of the trackers, the fields used, the values of the fields, and the permissions. XML schema is available in /src/www/tracker/resources/tracker.rnc. Most of the time, you will use an XML file coming from a tracker structure export (See Tracker Structure Export). This feature is really convenient to copy a tracker from a server to another. Note: this does not copy the artifacts of the original tracker but only the structure).

Tuleap-wide Tracker Templates

The standard trackers provided for each new Tuleap project are:

• Bugs
• Tasks
• User stories
• Change Requests
• Requirements
• Risks

Each of those templates have predefined fields that correspond to the specific work processes around bugs, tasks etc. In the following, we give a short overview of these different work processes. For each of those templates, the Tuleap Team also tried to maintain a fair balance between sophistication and ease of use. As a consequence, fairly simple and straightforward templates are configured by default for all new hosted projects. Then it is up to the project members to decide how much information they want to see attached to an artifact and customize their tracker configuration accordingly.

The Bug Tracker Template

One of the golden rules in a collaborative project environment is to let your project community test the software and freely report on any defect (or bug) they have seen. The Bug template was developed with this objective in mind.

The template Bug Tracker comes pre-configured with a set of fields (used or not) that are probably enough for the majority of projects hosted on Tuleap. You can either decide that the template is lacking some critical fields that you can create or, on the contrary, switch some fields to the “Unused” status to make the tracker simpler.

The Task Tracker Template

The Tuleap Task tracker is a task manager and not a project management software like CA-SuperProject, MS-Project or other powerful and complex desktop products available on the market. The Tuleap Task Tracker cannot build a Pert chart, it doesn’t have any planning capabilities. It is rather a time sheet tool which allows project members to track their time and manage other things like weekly TODO list for instance.

However the Tuleap Task Tracker offer a number of features that makes it very complementary with the above mentioned project planning tools:

• Like all Tuleap tools, the Task Tracker is entirely web based. Therefore any project member can update his/her time sheet regardless of its physical location.
• Tasks can be managed by authorized project members.
• Each project member has its own time sheet showing all open tasks assigned to her, their priority, description, start and end dates, percentage completion, related tasks, follow-up comments and a full audit trail of the past changes.
• Task data can be collected by the project leader(s) at any point in time and exported out of the Tuleap project thanks to the Project Data Export facility (see Project Data Export). This allows for an easy generation of progress reports or project re-planning.

The User Story Template

Tuleap makes it easy to implement the Scrum methodology, by providing a User Story tracker to each project. You will find a comprehensive description of Scrum on Wikipedia.

The User Story tracker contains artifacts called “User Stories”, that describe needs expressed by the customers of the project. The tracker has been customized to capture customer requirements: it is possible to define the customer value of each story, its acceptance criteria, its effort, etc.

Other optional fields are available, and of course, each project may customize the tracker to fit the way it implements the methodology

At the beginning of a Scrum project, each customer user story must be stored. During the first Sprint Meeting, a few stories are selected by the team to be implemented in the first iteration. The team then affects the stories to team members (‘Owner’) and can start developing.

At the end of the Sprint (after two to four weeks), the team meets for the new Sprint Meeting. User stories selected in the past Sprint are updated, and new stories are selected for the next Sprint.

The Change Request Tracker Template

This tracker allows to submit change requests for your application adjustment. This is of great importance for change management process (ITIL, PRINCE2, …). A change request is declarative, i.e. it states what needs to be accomplished, but leaves out how the change should be carried out.

When submitting a change request, you have to provide:

• The impacted product (Product, version)
• The approval status (approved by, disposal)
• The change request description (description, justification, impact if no change)
• The change impact analysis (Objectives, deliverable, risks, schedule, budget)

You can set permission to allow only client and project manager groups to access this tracker. For instance:

• only client can set the “priority” field
• only project manager can set the “approved by” and “disposal” fields
• both can describe impacts fields

As for all trackers, tracker administrator can customize the fields according to the internal process.

The Requirements Tracker Template

This tracker helps software engineers to identify a necessary attribute, capability, characteristic, or quality of a system in order for it to have value and utility to a user.

All system Requirements are also an important input into the verification process, since tests should trace back to specific Requirements. This tracker is really useful for Requirements management processes such CMMI.

When submitting a Requirement, you have to fulfill:

• The designed Product (Product, version)
• The Requirement characteristics (type, nature, complexity, priority)
• The Requirement description (origin, description, proposed solution)
• The Requirement state (state, satisfied by)

You then can link (using artifacts references) a requirement to a test case/result artifact, or other requirements artifacts for traceability/satisfaction.

You can set permission to allow only client and project manager groups to access this tracker.

As for all trackers, tracker administrator can customize the fields according to the internal process.

The Risk Tracker Template

This tracker aims to support Risk management. It provides information for identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks during the project lifecycle. You can minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities. Risks may be linked (using artifacts references) to actions/task/documentation for minimizing likelihood or impact.

When assessing a Risk, you have to set:

• Rate of occurrence (likelihood, tendency)
• Impacts
• Timescale for Risk occurrence
• Action for risk reduction (action, responsible)

You may use the query form to filter the risks :

• select the “likelihood” field value “any” if you wish to get all predefined risks
• select the “likelihood” field value”high”, “medium” and “low” if you wish to review your assessed risks

Default Tracker Access Permissions

Depending on the class of citizen a user belongs to and the level of permissions granted as a project member, the various features of the Tuleap Tracker may or may not be accessible. Please note that the default access permissions listed below may change for a particular tracker if the tracker administrator modifies the access permission settings. For more information on how to configure tracker access permissions see Permissions Management. Default permission settings are summarized in the table below:

Tracker Feature	Access Permission
New Artifact Submission	By default any Tuleap visitor, whether logged in or not, has the ability to submit a new artifact to a tracker. The tracker administrator has the ability to limit the scope of this feature to Tuleap registered users (anonymous users are requested to login first) or to the project members if the tracker is made private.
Artifact Browsing	Searching the Artifact database and browsing the results is available to all Tuleap visitors (whether registered or not) unless the tracker has been made private by the project administrator. If so the tracker is only visible to project members.
Artifact Update	By default only project members can update an artifact. Non members have only limited access and can only add a comment or attach a file.
Tracker Administration - Artifact Import	Only Project administrators and project members with Admin. permission can import data into trackers.
Tracker Creation	Only available to project administrators.
Tracker Administration - General Settings	Only available to project administrators and project members with Admin. permission on this tracker.
Tracker Administration - Field Usage Management	Only available to project administrators and project members with Admin. permission on this tracker.
Tracker Administration - Semantic Management	Only available to project administrators and project members with Admin. permission on this tracker.
Tracker Administration - Workflow Management	Only Project administrators and project members with Admin. permission can define and configure workflow.
Tracker Administration - Permissions Management	Only Project administrators and project members with Admin. permission can define tracker permissions.
Tracker Administration - Canned Responses Management	Only Project administrators and project members with Admin. permission can define canned responses.
Tracker Administration - Email Notification Settings	Only Project administrators can add email addresses in the global email notification field. Project members can watch artifacts of other team members. Any registered Tuleap user can customize her notification preferences.
Tracker Administration - Structure Export	Only Project administrators and project members with Admin. permission can export tracker structure.

Default Tracker Access Permissions

As we went through the description of the Tuleap Tracker features, we referred several times to the flexibility of this system and how easy it is to customize your own tracker. This can be done through the Tracker Administration available in the menu bar of each tracker.

The configuration settings for a given tracker is divided in ten sections:

• General Settings: name, description and some other general purpose parameters are defined in this section.
• Permissions Management: allows you to give different access permissions to different users depending on their role.
• Manage Field Usage: this is where you will build the tracker.
• Manage Fields Dependencies: allows you to define how values in one field depend upon other field values.
• Manage Semantic: this section allows you to define some fields semantic.
• Manage Canned Responses: allows you to create some pre-defined follow-up comments that your team is using on a regular basis.
• Manage Workflow: allows you to define a workflow
• Email Notification Settings: fine tuning of the global and personal email notification settings.
• CSV Import: allows you to import data (artifacts) in the tracker with a CSV format
• Export: allows you to export the tracker in a xml format
• Hierarchy: allows you to configure tracker hierarchy
• Delete artifacts: allows you to delete an artifact

General Configuration Settings

This module allows you to define a series of properties for your tracker. Some of those properties have already been defined in the tracker creation form while some others are only available on this configuration page. The properties are as follows:

• Name: this is the name of your tracker. More precisely you want to name your tracker after the type of artifact that are going to be managed in your tracker. This name will be used by Tuleap in the title of the various screens of the trackers. Typical example of tracker names are: Action Requests, Support Requests, Requirements, Defects or Bugs…
• Description: A longer description of what this tracker is all about and the type of artifact that it manages.
• Short name: this is a short name that best describe the type of artifact managed in this tracker. This name must be quite short as it is used in various screens of the Tuleap Tracker like the artifact update form next to the artifact ID. Following the examples given for the Name field above, short names can be: AR for Action Request, SR for Support Requests, Reqt for Requirements, bug for Bugs…
• Instantiate for new projects: This parameter is only displayed when working on a “template” type of project (see Project Type). If the parameter is selected, then projects created from this template project will have this tracker created. If not selected, the tracker will not be available in the new project.
• Submit instructions: an introductory message that displays at the top of the artifact submission form. This is a convenient way to give directions and recommendations to the submitter. The text must use HTML tags for formatting which gives a great flexibility to shape the content of this preamble (you can use bold, italic, colors, embedded URL…)
• Browse instructions: an introductory message that displays at the top of the artifact searching and browsing screen. The text must use HTML tags for formatting which gives a great flexibility to shape the content of this preamble (you can use bold, italic, colors, embedded URL…)

Permissions Management

This module is used to give different access permissions to different users depending on their role.

Access permissions to a tracker can be defined at two levels:

• Tracker level: at this level, you can define the group of users who have access or not to the tracker.
• Field level: this is a more fine-grained level, where access permissions can be defined field by field. Using this feature you can specify which groups has read-only permission on a field, which ones can modify it or which ones do not have access to it at all.

All access permissions are defined for groups of users rather than individuals. See User Groups for more information on how project administrators can define and manage groups of users.

Tracker Permissions Management

When entering this module, a list of user groups appears along with their access permissions. The user group list first shows groups of users defined at the system level like all_users, registered_users, project_members, etc. These are groups that Tuleap manages for you so you don’t have to keep them up to date when new users subscribe to the site or become member of your project. The second part of the user group list shows all groups of users defined at the project level (see User Groups for more information on how to define and manage groups of users).

Each group can be associated with the following access permissions:

• HYPHEN: this level of permission that displays as a hyphen means that the group has no specific permission.
• access to all artifacts: when granted this permission a user group has access to all the artifacts of the tracker.
• access to artifacts assigned to group: when granted this permission a group of users can only see those artifacts that have been assigned to one or several members of this group.
• access to artifacts submitted by group: when granted this permission a group of users can only see those artifacts that have been submitted by one or several members of this group.
• access to artifacts assigned to or submitted by group: when granted this permission a group of users can only see those artifacts that have been submitted by or assigned to one or several members of this group.

Field Permissions Management

Beside defining access permissions for the tracker and its artifacts (see Tracker Permissions Management) it is sometimes necessary to restrict access to certain fields of the tracker to a given population. As an example if you share a defect tracking system with your customers you may want to hide some fields from the view of your customer or prevent them from modifying certain fields. This is precisely what this module is meant for.

When using this configuration module, you can toggle the display between two different views: you can either view all user groups permissions for a given field OR for a given user group you can view all the field permissions defined for it. The experience shows that the view by field is often the preferred one when you configure a tracker for the first time whereas the view by group of users is more convenient to adjust the permission settings later on (see User Groups for more information on how to define and manage groups of users).

Each group of users can be granted the following permissions for a given field:

• Can submit: this permission determines whether a group of users can define the initial value of a field when an artifact is first submitted. If not checked, this field will not be visible on the submission screen for this user group.
• Read-only: if granted read-only permission a group of users only has read access to a field. In other words the users see the value of the field but cannot modify it.
• Update: if granted update permission, a group of users can see the current value of a field and also modify it.
• -: this level of permission that displays as a hyphen means that the group has no specific permission, like in tracker permissions.

Important Note: the permissions associated with a field apply in many areas of a tracker. For instance if a group of users has no access to a given field, this field becomes invisible on the initial submission form, on the artifact search form as well as in the table of results returned by the search, in the artifact update form, in the history of changes associated with each artifact and finally in the email notification sent to this group of users.

Field Usage Management

When a tracker is first created, it comes pre-configured with a set of fields inherited from the template that was used to create it. For the majority of projects hosted on Tuleap it is very likely that the standard Tracker templates (e.g Bugs, Tasks, User strories) will cover most of the needs.

However Tuleap gives you the ability to customize your trackers. It can be a variation on an existing template with some fields or structural elements addition or removal or it can be an entirely new tracker created from an empty template.

The Field Usage Manager is divided in two parts : a fields palette on the left and a tracker visualization on the right (see Tracker Admin Field Usage Overview)

Tracker Fields Palette

The palette allows the user to choose the elements he wants to add to his tracker. The field usage manager palette consists of 4 groups:

• Fields: These are regular fields (int, float, list, etc.) that the user will be able to update. These fields have no special behaviour.
• Dynamic Fields: These fields have a special behaviour. Their value cannot be updated by the user. The value is determined dynamically (e.g. the user that submitted the artifact, the Id of the artifact, the artifact submission date, etc.).
• Structural Elements: These elements are not real fields. There are really useful to enhance the artifact presentation. They can be containers (fieldset, columns) or decorative elements (line break, text).
• Unused Fields: In this section, you will find all the fields that are not used in the tracker definition. If you remove a used field from your tracker definition, it won’t be deleted but placed in this unused field section. It will then be easier to use it again. If you really want to delete it, delete it from the unused field section. Unused fields are also used in tracker template definition. You can find here some fields that the team didn’t decide to introduce in the template but that makes sense however. It is easy then to add such a field whereas creating from scratch.

Creation and Modification of a Tracker Field

Add a field to a tracker

To add a field to a tracker, you just have to choose a field type on the fields palette. Simply click on it, and a property field form will appear instead of the palette!

Depending on the fields, the properties can change. But, here is the properties that can be tuned :

• Label: this is the name of the field. Although you are entirely free to change the name of a field, we recommend that you only change it for a new name with a similar meaning. If you want to change the name for something radically different then we recommend that you create an entirely new field and you leave the existing field in the list of unused fields.

• Description: a longer description of the purpose of this field.

• Size: this property allows you to define how much space a field is going to take on the screen. It has a different meaning and a different format depending on the field type.

  • Multi-Select Box: the display size is made of a single number which indicates how many of the values associated with this field are visible at once. A reasonable value for the size of multi-select box is between 2 and 5.
  • String, Integer Float Fields: “maxchars” and “size” can be filled where “size” is the number of character visible at once in the field display window and “maxchars” is the maximum number of characters that can be typed for this field. If “Size” is less than “Maxchars” then the text will shift in the visible window as more text is entered. The maximum value of “Size” is 255.
  • Date Field: A date always follows the same pattern (YYYY-MM-DD) and therefore it always has a fixed length of 10 characters.
  • Text: for text areas, “rows” and “cols” can be filled, where “cols” is the number of columns in the text area (the width in number of characters) and “rows” is the number of rows or lines of text. Note that the number of lines is not limited to “rows”. If the text typed in the field has more than “rows” lines then a scrollbar will show up to navigate through the text.

• Rank: this is the position of the field on the form. Positions are relatives one against another.

• Required: determines whether leaving the field blank in the artifact submission or update form is allowed or not. If checked the tracker won’t accept the form unless the field is given a value. The fields that must be filled out are marked with a red start on the submission and modification forms

• Default value: This applies to one-line fields with no restricted set of values. For those the default value can be defined. It is the value which will be displayed at the artifact submission.

• Values: This applies to “Select Box”, “Multi-Select Box” and “Text Box List” type of fields where the list of values you are going to choose will show up in the pull-down menus when an artifact is submitted or updated.

  You can bind those fields to :

  • Add the values: To configure values simply add values in the text area (one per row). Check “alphabetically sort values” will sort automatically your values.

    Tuleap allows to add what we call “decorator” to each value but only on edition mode (see Edit the field of a tracker)

  • Binding a field to a list of users: the Trackers offers the ability to associate “Select Box”, “Multi-Select Box” and “Text Box List” type of fields with a list of predefined values that is actually dynamically generated by the platform. A typical example of this is when one would like to create a new select box showing the list of project members. Instead of creating and maintaining the list of values manually, you can re-use a list already defined elsewhere.

    Note that if you decide to bind a select box to a list of dynamically generated values you can no longer create your own values. The following lists are currently available (others may be added in the future):

    • Project Members : list of people belonging to the project.
    • Project Administrators : project members who have been granted the status of project administrators.
    • Artifact Submitters: the full list of people who once submitted an artifact to the tracker.
    • Project Defined User Groups: you can bind a select box to any of the user groups that are defined by the project. To see how to define such user groups refer to User Groups.

    On the following picture, we can see that people in “Assigned to” field are automatically populated from “SupportTeam” user group.

Select box bound to a list of users

• Binding a field to a list of user groups: It’s an extension of “binding to a list of user” but with user groups. It behaves the same way but instead of selecting a user, you will choose a user group among a list.

It’s useful when you have complex setup and want to have several people notified at once for an action.

On the following picture, we define a list of support groups that will be in charge of the artifact according to their responsabilities:

Select box bound to a list of user groups

Edit the field of a tracker

In order to make some change on a field, you can simply edit it by clicking on the Edit icon.

The edition mode allows for fields configuration not available at the creation :

• Change the field name: the field name is different from the field label. Field name is an internal name for the field. It is used in SOAP API for instance. It must not contain any special characters. Only lower case letters and “_” are authorized.
• Add a decorator: List values can be embellished with a decorator. A decorator is a colored square. There are two available color palettes: one that uses “named” colors that go well with Tuleap colors. The other lets you choose from a larger palette of colors (see Tracker Admin Field Edition). Please note that the “old” color palette is deprecated and may be removed in future releases. You can choose a color for each value of the list. Decorators can be used to get a quick visual indicator feedback for the user. For instance, the values for the priority of a bug can be given a color with the meaning “the darker the more important”.
• Add values You can easily add new values to the list by selecting the “add new values” link below existing values.
• Hide values You can easily hide existing values by clicking the hide icon next to the value. If the eye is open, the value is available. If the eye is medium closed, then the value is hidden. Just click again to enable the value. Artifact with hidden values will still be set to the hidden values. But hidden values won’t be proposed anymore for new artifacts.
• Remove values You can remove a list value by clicking the cross icon next to the value. It is impossible to delete values if there are some artifacts with this value. In this case, you can hide the value.
• Access directly to the field permissions manager Editing a field, you can access the permissions administration of this field selecting the “edit permission” link.
• Configure notifications: if the field is a “Select Box”, a “Multi Select Box” or a “Text Box List” bind to a list of users, a checkbox “Send notifications to selected people” will be displayed. If checked, all selected users of an artifact will receive a email if the artifact is modified.

Tracker Admin Field Edition

New color palette with “named” colors

Delete the field of a tracker

In order to delete a field, simply click on the Delete icon on the visualization tracker page. The field won’t be deleted since it will be now present in the “Unused Elements” part of the palette.

Please note that you won’t be able to remove a field if this field is used in tracker semantic, or in tracker workflow.

To delete definitively that field, click on the trash icon in the “Unused Elements” part of the palette.

Field Dependencies

Field dependencies allow us to link source field values to target field values. In other words, the values proposed to a final user for a field will depend upon the value selected for another field.

As an example, if you define a field Operating System(Linux, MacOS X, MS Windows, NetBSD) and a field Version(2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 3.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 (Tiger), NT, 2000, XP), you can define dependencies in the tracker administration interface:

1. First, select the source field “Operating System” then the target field “Version”.
2. To create dependencies between each “Operating System” values and the corresponding versions, you just have to check the corresponding box in the matrix.

First, you select a source field.

Once the source field selected (here, “Operating System”), you can select the target field.

Then submit, and a matrix with all values is displayed:

You can now check the boxes corresponding to the dependencies. In the example, if the source field value is “Linux”, the corresponding target values are “2.0”, “2.2”, “2.4”, “2.6”.

Once a field dependency has been created, it appeared at the “Choose Source/Target” page as a quick link if you need to edit it. Note that to delete a field dependency, you need to empty the matrix.

Once dependencies are defined, the final user (when submitting/updating an artifact) will see the Version options filtered according to the selection of the Operating System:

When you define your dependencies, please be aware of the following points:

• Only Select Boxes and Multi Select Boxes can have dependencies,

• The cyclic dependencies are forbidden (Field 1 => Field 2 => … => Field 1),
• A field can depend upon only one field,
• Javascript must be allowed on the browser to manage dependencies,
• If a field is not the target of a dependency, then it will propose all its values. On the opposite, it will propose only those which satisfy the dependencies.

Semantic

As trackers can be fully customized, you may need a way to define what is the title of your artifacts, when you consider an artifact to be open or close, or the field used to define the contributor (or assignee) of an artifact. This feature is provided by the admin section “Semantics”.

Most of the trackers you will use already defined a semantic. This is the case for instance for all tracker templates (see Tracker Templates ).

To define or update a semantic field, select the pencil icon next to the semantic property. Semantic admin section lets you define the following semantic properties:

Title

The title of an artifact is a field that sum up the best the artifact. For instance, it can be the field summary for a bug tracker, the field name for a contact tracker, or the field I want to for a Scrum user story tracker.

You can choose any text field as the title of your artifacts.

This semantic information is used in the edition page of an existing artifact, next to the ID. It is also displayed in My artifacts widget.

Status

The status of an artifact is a field that describes the stage of the artifact. If you set a semantic for status, please define the values that mean open for this field.

The most commom case is a field Status with the value open for open values. All other values will be considered as closed values. But you may want to define any other semantic. You can choose any selectbox field (single or multi) as the status of your artifacts.

This semantic information is used in My artifacts widget (this widget displays only open artifacts that belongs to you).

Done (Agile Dashboard)

The done semantic is used for burnup and velocity chart computation.

Velocity (Agile Dashboard)

Attention

This module is part of Tuleap Entreprise. It might not be available on your installation of Tuleap.

How to add velocity chart in a release:

1 - You should have a tracker hierarchy between Release and Sprint

Example of release hierarchy

2 - You should have a velocity semantic at release and child level

An error is displayed when children tracker does not have the velocity semantic

3 - You should have at least one backlog tracker with done and initial effort semantic.

I some tracker don’t have both semantic, its value won’t be taken in account during computation.

A warning is displayed if tracker does not have all needed semantic

Once computation is done, you can manually override the computed value by entering a new one.

Contributor / Assignee

The contributor of an artifact (or assignee) is a field that is bound to users. The contributor(s) of an artifact are the person(s) who are responsible for the work needed to complete the artifact. For instance, it can be the field assigned_to for a bug tracker, the field owner for a task tracker.

You can choose any user list field as the contributor of your trackers.

This semantic information is used to define specific permissions on a tracker (for instance restrict tracker access to a group of assignee people).

Tooltip

The tooltip of an artifact is a piece of information that is displayed when you hover an artifact reference with your mouse.

You can select all the fields you want to compose the artifact tooltip.

Cards semantic

The cards semantic allows you to add the fields which will be visible in cardwall, Agile dashboard Planning and Kanban.

The background color semantic allows you to choose the field which will be used to determine the background color of a card. Only selectbox and radio buttons bound to static values can be used to determine background color. It also can only be used when each value has a “named” color. In addition to the background color, a special pattern is associated to the selected color. It will be shown for users who have enabled the Accessibility mode user preference (see Account Maintenance). Patterns have been defined only for “named” colors but not for all possible colors. Therefore there is a limitation for the fields that can be used as background color. All their values must have either “transparent” color or a “named” color. (see Edit the field of a tracker)

The card preview will show you examples of how your cards will be displayed in cardwall.

Card preview

Attention

While you can select the same field as Status semantic for the background color, you should know that this case has a limitation in Kanban. When drag and dropping cards between columns in Kanban (which affects the Status field’s value), the Background color will not be updated on-the-fly. To see the updated background color for the card, you should either change status via the artifact modal or refresh the page.

Initial Effort (Agile Dashboard)

The Initial Effort semantic is special in that it only exists if the project has the Agile Dashboard enabled. In the agile context, it is supposed to represent the estimated effort for a given task, story, sprint, release…

In order to use this semantic you need to have a numeric field in your tracker that corresponds to this initial effort notion.

The initial effort is used in the Agile Dashboard content and planning views.

Workflow Manager

Overview

A Workflow can help you control the artifact lifecycle, ensure that your teams follow the rule of your company methodology (CMMi, etc.).

Each tracker can have it’s own workflow, designed by the tracker administrator.

For now, a tracker can have only one workflow defined on one field. This field must be a list field (select box).

N.B. Worflow is not taken into account in artifacts mass change, during artifact copy and during XML import.

Add a workflow to a tracker

• First, select the field: you choose the field on which applies the workflow. A workflow applies on “Select Box” field type (except if it’s bound to users).

• Then, define transitions: the states the artifact should take from it’s beginning to it’s end.

  By default, no transitions are allowed (it’s not possible to change the values of selected field). You authorize a transition by clicking on the bullet that cross “FROM” row and “TO STATE” Column. Arrow icon: the transition can happens, grey bullet: the transition is forbidden.

  For instance, in Add a workflow to a tracker, various transitions have been defined: on artifact submission, defined by fake state “new artifact”, values available for the field “Status” will be “To do”, “On Going” and “Review”. Then, once Status is “To do”, possible changes will be “On Going” and “Done”, etc.

To delete the workflow, simply click on the “Change or remove” button near to the field name. Transitions are deleted too.

Workflow simple and advanced mode

Each transitions can be configured. That means that they can have pre-conditions and post actions.

A tracker workflow can uses two modes: simple or advanced.

• In simple mode, pre-conditions and post actions of transitions are configured at target state level. This means that all transitions defined at target state level share the same configuration.
• In advanced mode, each transitions are configured individually. This means that the administrator has to configure pre-conditions and post actions in each transitions.

By default, a workflow is created in simple mode.

A tracker administrator can change the workflow mode:

• From simple to advanced: Each transitions copy from their target state the configuration and are now editable individually.
• From advanced to simple: Transitions are now editable by target state. For each state, the first transition found is used as a template and its configuration is used to configure all transitions defined for this target state.

The workflow presented in Add a workflow to a tracker is in simple mode. You can see that the target state can be configured.

This picture above shows the same workflow, but switched to the advanced mode. You can see that now, each transition is configurable individually.

Define rules on transitions

Define workflow transitions

For a given transition, you can select the people allowed to perform it, define fileds and comment not empty and actions exectued after the transition happens (if allowed).

Groups that may process the transition

Once the transition is defined, you can refine who can make the transition. To do this, click the “Configure” button. Then, select the group of users you allow to do the transition (see Define workflow transitions).

Fields and/or comment not empty

A tracker administrator can define a set of fields that must not be empty before processing a workflow transition. An administrator can also make adding a followup comment mandatory for a transition. Keep in mind that this condition cannot be configured for transitions from “New artifact”, as it is not possible to add a comment when creating a new artifact.

Post actions

You can define a list of actions after the execution of a transition. The available post actions may vary depending on the configuration mode you are in (Simple or Advanced).

In Simple configuration mode:

• Set a value to a date field
• Set a value to a float field
• Set a value to an integer field
• Process a Jenkins job by providing its URL
• Hide fieldsets in the artifact view
• Freeze fields values so that users can’t change them while in this state

In Advanced configuration mode:

• Set a value to a date field
• Set a value to a float field
• Set a value to an integer field
• Process a Jenkins job by providing its URL

For instance, you can set a date field to the date of transaction execution. It might be used to set automatically the close date of an artifact (eg. when it’s state move from Resolved to Closed).

Hide fieldsets will hide them in the artifact view which can be useful when you don’t want users to bother with information irrelevant to the current state of the artifact; they can still press a dedicated button if they want to see them anyway, it is a visualization help, not an access control option.

Freeze fields values will render the selected fields uneditable for the current state. This can be useful if you want to prevent users from editing parts of the artifacts data at or past a certain state of your workflow.

Canned Responses

One frequently sees project members in charge of the artifact classification and dispatch process posting the same follow-up comments repeatedly. Typical examples of repeated posted comments are: a thank you message to the originator, a request for the originator to provide commonly missing information like version numbers or type of machine used, etc. (see Definition of Canned Responses)

Rather than repeatedly typing the same follow-up comments, Tuleap allows project members to create a predefined set of responses. After these canned responses have been defined, posting a follow-up comment is just a matter of selecting the appropriate response from the pull down menu in the artifact update form.

Definition of Canned Responses

Email Notification Settings

The Tracker comes with a predefined set of rules to keep relevant people aware of the artifact life. The default rules can however be complemented or tuned in a number of ways:

Global Email Notification

In addition to the default notification rules, the tracker administrators have the ability to specify a list of email addresses to which submissions of new artifacts (and optionally artifact updates) will be systematically sent. To add an email address, click the “add” link. You can add as many email addresses as required.

You can choose to disable the permission check for global email notification. This can be useful if the email address is a mailing list, because individual permissions can’t be checked for each member of the mailing list. So for mailing lists, if the check box “check permissions” is checked, the notifications will be send to each member with the permissions of an anonymous user.

This feature is typically used to send submissions of new artifacts to a number of well identified persons in the team who are in charge of qualifying and dispatching the artifacts.

Note

If you want to notify many people at once, we suggest that you use the Tuleap Mailing Lists service to create a distribution lists (see Mailing Lists). Once the Mailing List is up and running type the e-mail address in the Global Email Notification field.

Creating a Mailing List on Tuleap has several advantages: first individuals can (un)subscribe by themselves and second all messages sent to a Tuleap mailing list are kept in an archive that can serve as an audit trail for your tracker.

Email subject customisation

It is possible to enable a marker “[Assigned to me]” in the subject of email notifications to easily identify emails concerning artifact assigned to you. This rely on Contributor/assignee semantic of the tracker.

In addition to the subject of the email, all the assignees are listed in the mail body with =ASSIGNED_TO=<username>. These markers are not visible but could be used to create filters in your email client.

Tracker Artifact Import

Project Administrators have the means to import artifacts into Tuleap trackers using the well known CSV (Comma Separated Value) format supported by all of the major office productivity suites. The artifact import functionality greatly facilitates the migration and integration of external project tracking and management tools into Tuleap trackers.

The import is divided into three steps:

• CSV file submission. The project administrators can access the Import functionality from the tracker administration screen or over the Project Administration Menu. Enter/choose the tracker to update and specify the CSV file to import. In this step you can also check the option to send a mail notification to all users concerned by the artifact changes due to the import. If you don’t check this option no notification will be sent.
• CSV file parsing. If no parse errors were found in the uploaded file, a parse report is shown to validate that the information to import is correct.
• Database update. Depending on the parsed information new artifacts are created or existing ones updated.

When to use the Import

You will find below a couple of suggestions regarding the use of the tracker import feature:

• Initial import from a project management software to your Tuleap task tracker.
• Migration of your legacy defect tracking system into your new Tuleap defect tracker.
• Migration of artifacts from one Tuleap tracker to another.

The Database Update

If you import new artifacts, all non-mandatory fields that are omitted in the CSV file will be initialized to their default value.

The submitter and submission date of an existing artifact is never changed by an import even if the import file contains relevant information.

If an error occurs for some artifact during the database update the following artifacts in the CSV file are not imported any more.

Each import is tracked in the project history (Project History). On the other hand, no e-mail notification is sent in response to the import.

Note

If a .csv file is opened in Excel, any change to the spreadsheet (even something as simple as a column resizing) may cause Excel to modify and update the .csv file. Changes that may occur include: dates, times and numbers converted to the same format as those used by your system’s regional settings, single line feeds converted to line feed and carriage return, extra commas appended to certain lines.

The updated date format might not be compatible with the Tuleap date format and potentially cause troubles when importing such updated CSV files back into Tuleap. On the other hand Tuleap-exported CSV files might not open correctly under Excel in certain Regionals.

If you have a .csv file that either will not open correctly under Excel or was opened in Excel and will not import into Tuleap please try the following: Make sure all applications are closed. Change your system’s regional settings (Start > Settings > Control Panel > Regional Options) to use the English with the following formats: Date = MM/dd/YYYY Time = hh:mm. Using Excel, open the .csv files that don’t import, make a column width change, save the files and exit Excel. Go back and restore your original regional settings. Import the “fixed” .csv file into Tuleap.

Tracker Structure Export

Tuleap allows you to export the structure of the trackers into an XML file. The Tuleap tracker templates are provided under the form of such XML files. This feature is also really convenient to copy a tracker from a Tuleap server to another.

To export the structure of your tracker, please go to the admin part of your tracker, and select the Export link. This will open a browser window to choose the location of the exported file.

The exported structure file can be used when you create a new tracker, see Tracker Creation.

Note

This does not copy the artifacts of the tracker but only the structure (general settings, fields, values, workflow, semantic, canned responses and permissions).

Delete artifacts

Tuleap allows project and tracker administrators to permanently delete artifacts. To do so, go to the tracker administration and select “Delete artifacts”.

Note

if you are not project or tracker administrator, please contact one administrator.

Webhooks

You can configure your tracker so that each time an artifact creation or update is done, a webhook endpoint is called. To configure your webhooks, please go to the workflow section of the tracker administration.

See the Tracker section in the webhook documentation section.

Warning

The payload contains changeset representations. They are sent without any permission checking, so be careful where you send your webhooks.