Xpress Bugs - A Defect Tracking System

Managing defects formally becomes necessary when there's major functionality developed within any system. This is true for an IDM installation as well. Sun IDM allows a lot of customization, thus meeting business requirements. While there are many defect tracking systems out there, setting them up and integrating within the IDM environment may not be the simplest task.

• Simple to install (just import the xml files).
• Offers a neat GUI to create, assign, respond to, close and archive defects.
• Ability to change preferences that affect the system-behaviour.
• Uses the IDM repository for storing information, so no special database is needed to be setup.
• Free to use and customize further.

Features:

• Ability to customize the "Assigned By" and "Assigned To" lists:
  Using the "Preferences" tab, you can add, update and delete the members of your team responsible to managing defects.
  The "Assigned By" list contains the account-id's and display-names of members (assigners) responsible for creating, assigning, updating, closing and archiving defects. The "Assigned To" list contains the account-id's and display-names of members (assignees) responsible for working on the defects and providing comments to assist the "Assigned By" members in closing the defects, thus making the system bug-free.
• Custom defect-status and priorities:
  Usually, a life-cycle of a defect includes passing from Open -> Closed -> Archived. Sometimes, a finding is not really a defect, it is either an enhancement desired or just a remark. Thus, the list of status to be assigned by the assigners is available to be customized.
  Similarly, defects can have priorities assigned to them, so important or major defects can be worked upon faster. This list is setup by default as Low, Medium, High and Critical, and is customizable within the "Preferences" tab.
  Note: The changes made to this tab are automatically audited for security reasons.
• Defect Summary:
  The "Summary" tab shows up the first when the task is run and list the gross count of active and archived defects, as well as per assigner and assignee. This helps in summarizing the current state of the defects.
• Create new defects:
  The "Create a new Defect" tab is available to a member in the "Assigned By" list. The user can provide details such as requirement-id, test-case-id, title, details, status, priority, etc.
• Filter and sort defects:
  The "Current Defects" tab lists all defects assigned by members that are not yet archived. This tab provides the ability to filter defects based on status, priority, assigned-by and assigned-to lists. Also, defects can be sorted by id, requirement-id, test-case-id, title, details, etc. in addition to the filters above. The "pageSize" property available in the "Preferences" tab can also be used to configure the number of defects visible at a time in one page.
• Edit and respond to defects:
  The members working on the defects can provide responses to the defects and so can the ones who created them. Thus, a centralized communication medium is available to all members.
  The member who created the defect can also change the information about it at any time, including the status and priority.
• Notifications:
  The "Preferences" tab allows configuring the notifications to be sent to assigners and assignees when an event occurs.
  When a defect is created, notify the assignee.
  When a defect is updated, notify the assignee.
  When a response is submitted to a defect by an assignee, notify the assigner and vice-versa.
  Also, the "smtpHost" and "from" address can be configured here for email notifications.
• Archiving (and auditing) defects:
  While defects can be closed, it is recommended that they be archived once they are closed for a while. This has advantages in keeping the "Current defects" list minimal containing only the immediately relevant defects accessible. Usually defects "belonging" to older releases should be archived.
  One more advantage that this action has is that the configuration object in the repository that holds all the active defects does not get too big in terms of object-size. This certainly would keep system performance optimal. Further, the defects that are archived are saved as IDM audits thus retrievable at any time through the standard "Reports" tab in the IDM console. As a convenience, a dedicated tab "Archived Defects" allows for searching, filtering and sorting archived defects.
• "User Login Mandatory" - a security feature:
  As a configurable property through the "Preferences" tab, this system offers a security feature. If userLoginMandatory=true, assigners and assignees do not need an account in IDM. Anyone executing this task could "identify oneself" from a drop-down list that shows up on the screen. This makes the system lenient which might be desirable in smaller IDM installations.
  If userLoginMandatory=false, every assigner/assignee needs to have an IDM account which he/she uses to login and create/assign/respond-to defects.
  Note: The changes made to this option are automatically audited for security reasons.

• Click here to download the zip file. It contains the xml files that contain the xpress-code needed for this system to work.
• Extract and import the files into your IDM installation
• Run the task - Xpress Bugs - Defect Tracking System
• If you are logged in as "configurator", you would see a "Preferences" tab in the task-GUI. Here, in addition to preferences that affect the system-behaviour, you may setup the list of "defect-assigners" (usually the testers) and "defect-assignees" (usually the developers).
  If you are not logged in as configurator, edit the configuration object "Configuration-XpressBugs", search for "listPreferencesAdministrators" and add your account-id.
• That's it!