Mantis Bug Tracker - Forums

In my company Mantis has become a victim of its own success!! Formalised plans are now being drawn up to roll out Mantis through multiple departments.

There is one sticking point - until now we have insisted on the "Mantis Way" where an issue should remain assigned to its handler (the developer) right up until it is closed.

There are now many demands for the ability to be able to assign an issue to anyone, mainly to solicit feedback - so it could be assigned to the reporter, to testers, managers, documentors, marketers, and other third parties.

My defences against this change are simply not strong enough:

1. "But this will screw up the statistics"
2. "But the original handler information is obscured"

And given the more complex workflow we are going to be introducing, being able to assign an issue to anybody has many advantages.

To try and overcome problem 1 I've come up with one idea - to create a custom field called "Resolved By:" and whenever an issue is resolved, copy the handler's name into that field. Then re-code the statistics to retrieve the developer's name from this field rather than the "Assigned To" field.

This will also partially overcome problem 2. For an issue that has gone through many assign hops, I think people will just have to look through the history to find the original developer to assign it back to again.

Does this seem a reasonable solution? I feel sure this is a common problem that most Mantis users run into. What other solutions are there for this fundamental conflict?

thanks,
djcarr

Just an idea ... perhaps rename "Resolved By:" to "Managed By:" and set this when first assigned to the responsible person. Alternatively, shouldn't only one handler level (or above and or the initial reporter) be able to set the issue to resolved, in which case they will be the last user in the assigned field? The first assigned per can get emails when something changes to that issue.

You can then use $g_handle_bug_threshold and or $g_access_levels_enum_string to populate the assign to list. $g_set_status_threshold may also interest you.

Do you want all reporters for feedback, or just the person that reported the issue? If all reporters, you could end up with a very long dropdown list. If just THE reporter, setting the status to feedback will send then an email without having to assign to anyone.

I'm sure others with more experience will have better ideas.