Good bug tracking with Sharepoint?

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At my place of work, it has been decided to move many processes to Sharepoint. I'm now looking into how Sharepoint can be used for bug tracking (à la Mantis, FogBugz etc. but within Sharepoint). Specifically, we're using a collaboration room and the solution must work inside that.

I know that I can create lists using an "Issue tracker" template, but it lacks workflow, integrated correspondence (like FogBugz), and audit log (any user can edit any field any time, without it being noted anywhere).

That's not sufficient, so I am looking for "bigger" solutions but haven't yet found anything at all.
This question is similar but aims at Helpdesk use; we aim at bug tracking and change requests to a system.

I'm open to suggestions! As I'm not an administrator, I can't just grab a Sharepoint component and install it for testing. I'm looking for experiences, documentation, white papers, screen shots -- the actual downloadable will be relevant later.

Ideally, some of these matters should be covered:

  1. Support for different ticket types (bug, feature, inquiry, internal task).
  2. Configurable workflow per ticket type, no fixed number of steps.
  3. Configurable read/write permissions per field and per workflow status.
  4. Configurable dashboard for managers with nice charts.
  5. Configurable email notifications.
  6. Correspondence à la FogBugz. (Challenge: we use Notes, not Exchange.)

Torben Gundtofte-Bruun

Posted 2010-01-21T08:17:49.737

Reputation: 16 308

Question was closed 2012-05-16T21:27:30.837

The best advice? Stay far, far away from Sharepoint. Its SQL is bastardized, file uploads are an absolute pain, and the real goal seems to be pushing everyone back to using Office. The Discussions section is a joke, and wants to integrate heavily into Outlook instead of being by itself.

Using Sharepoint as anything but a place to keep a few policy docs is a bad idea. Right now I'm trying to create a SP Wiki (it too has been deemed) and I'm resorting to coding everything in HTML (inlined with CSS, no wiki template support).

It may be possible, but you will fight it more than you will use it. – Steiv – 2010-01-21T14:30:50.753

Yes, it seems evident that SP exists to keep the MS Office cash-cow alive against the Web 2.0 battlefront. I would also have avoided SP, given the choice, but it's been decided from above and I'm going to make the best of it. -- I am pleasantly surprised that the collaboration room does have several useful features, and editing uploaded (Office) documents is straightforward (they're saved, reuploaded, and versioned, all in one automatic step). Too bad it only works for Office documents! To the point: the "issue tracker" and "workflow" features are far from useful for the above purpose! – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun – 2010-01-21T16:51:26.953

I think you're seeing what I'm seeing with SP- anything dealing with the core of Office works, everything else is hacked together. What we've done at our office is just integrate the RSS feeds of Jira (our issue tracking software) with SP to get an update list in SP, but use Jira instead for the tracking. As a bonus, Jira supports Wiki syntax, so editing and commenting is a breeze. – Steiv – 2010-01-21T18:28:04.173

You should ask at http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com

– Nicolas Raoul – 2016-02-29T04:15:34.167

Answers

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Not sure if the template you mentioned was from here.. "SharePoint Templates"

SharePoint can be a challenge but does offer some great tools once you understand it. I belive it is one of the most challenging MS products I have seen but it is also very powerful. Have you checked Codeplex for SharePoint? Codeplex

Dave M

Posted 2010-01-21T08:17:49.737

Reputation: 12 811

Oddly, both sites (Codeplex in particular) focus on admins to just download and install the file, while nearly ignoring non-admins' need for documentation to convince admins and management that the add-on is actually worth it. But your link to SP Templates looks promising. There are "server admin templates" with interesting descriptions. I found a page full of documentation, too - see my own answer below. – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun – 2010-01-23T08:47:16.673

I don't have any links handy but MS and some of their MVP's have some great webinars and other recorded material on some of these tools. Takes a bit of searching but worth the effort – Dave M – 2010-01-25T13:54:33.367

1The trouble is that all this material is aimed at the server admin - not at people like me who aren't admins but need evaluation documentation... – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun – 2010-01-31T18:55:10.047

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Our team has used the MS SP bug tracking template on two projects. I would not consider the solution 'best of breed,' but it does work. You are able to add and remove fields as required, have a conversation with date stamps (using comments), and apply security (view/read/write). You can import and export the bug list to/from Excel.

Workflow can be added but it requires a developer (or a SP super user). The default configuration includes history tracking amd files attachments. As with any SP object, you can setup RSS feeds and e-mail notifications.

Given the choice, I would use a dedicated bug tracking package rather than the free solution offered by Microsoft. I haven't looked, but I'm sure that there are more complete bug tracking solutions that use SP as the back end.

Michaelkay

Posted 2010-01-21T08:17:49.737

Reputation: 783

We didn't have opportunity to try that template. In the end, we used a very very simple custom list as an interim solution and ended up using a non-Sharepoint permanent solution. Not Jira, but something similar that the organisation was already using for other departments. – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun – 2010-04-02T11:10:53.597

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SharePoint might answer your need as as simple ticket system.

However, I expect a bug tracker to be integrated with the source code (like if I comment a source change with "FIX bug #123", I want the ticket to be marked as "fixed" and be able to see the code diff).

Also, you don't have much flexibility around notifications, tracking time spent on a ticket, etc.

As such, I don't recommend SharePoint if you want to be serious about bug tracking.

rds

Posted 2010-01-21T08:17:49.737

Reputation: 127

1

In extension to DaveM's answer, I found documentation about the templates here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb848090.aspx

Specifically, these were interesting:

and this one for a more advanced setup:

I think I'll go with a combination of the first two. The latter seems too advanced for SP newbies and would be better suited to a much larger team.

Torben Gundtofte-Bruun

Posted 2010-01-21T08:17:49.737

Reputation: 16 308

Asked: 2010-01-21T08:17:49.737

Viewed: 30 085 times

Active: 2012-05-16T21:21:04.620