Looking through our mantis system, I notice that 99% of issues are either assigned (blue), resolved (green) or closed (gray). Most of our developers don't bother using the acknowledged or confirmed statuses.

It would be a nice option to have (just like setting the status to assigned when you assign an issue to someone) the status set to acknowledged when the handler first views the issue. This would provide feedback to the managers that the handler has at least viewed the issue and provide good feedback to all interested parties by using a status level that isn't really being used by us.

Another nice thing to add would be a check box with the bug note form to move an issue from acknowledged to confirmed when submitting a bug note (by the handler). This would save a step of changing the status and submitting even though if you do it that way you get a bug note field (most developers here just use the obvious bug note field on the main view page).

All of these things are spelled out in our Mantis HowTo pages, but they aren't being used and it's tiring to keep reminding people on what they believe aren't important issues. Having the system automatically do some of the simple things or prompt to do them would provide better feedback and system status info.