Issue Tracker is a system for entering and tracking support issues. It uses the web browser in conjunction with email notifications to allow Quartics' employees and customers to track multi-threaded technical discussions. This document provides a basic overview of the tool.
Login accounts are usually created by Quartics' support team for new customers. Account creation generates an email to the customer that looks similar to the following:
A user was created with your email address for the Quartics' Issue
Tracking System. You may access your account by going to:
http://issuetracker.quartics.com/
Login with the following information:
Username: JoeUser
Password: abacab
Once logged in you may change your password by clicking on the preferences
link on the left hand side of the screen. If you have any questions, please contact
randy@quartics.com.
- Quartics
When logging in at issuetracker.quartics.com/, you'll use the same name and initial password specified in the email, as shown below.
Once logged in, you are taken to a landing page where you're presented a summary of the open issues for you and your group, as shown below. To create a new issue, simply click on the "New Issue" link, which is the first bulleted item found under the Issues menu.
You will be brought to a new web based form where you supply the details of the issue. Issues can consist of questions, bug reports, difficulties you are having with the Quartics technology, etc. Be sure to include a descriptive summary of the issue to make it easier for later identification (i.e. something more detailed than just "Question" or "Bug").
Associate your question with a specific product by selecting a product from the dropdown menu. This makes it easier for the Quartics' support engineers to assign it to the most appropriate person. While the system enables users to mark specific issues as "high" or "urgent" using the Severity button, please do so only for issues that truly relate to critical milestones.
If you need to attach a reasonable sized data file, you can upload it via the "Upload File" field. Use the "Browse..." button to navigate to the file on your local file system. Finally, click "Create Issue" to submit the issue.
An important word of caution: For security reasons, Issue Tracker will timeout after 24 hours. If you've had this screen open longer than that amount of time, the "Create Issue" button will redirect you to a login screen. Normally this is not a problem, but if you start to writeup an incident and do not use the Issue Tracker interface for 24 hours, your writeup of the issue will be lost!
After you create an issue, the display will change to summarize the current state of the issue. You are free to add "New Events" to the issue at any time to correct earlier assertions or add additional information.
When you create an issue, the tool will send you a followup confirmation email (see example below). It includes a URL to the specific incident that can be useful if you want to locate it quickly at a later date. The message body can be a little misleading because it describes the issue as having been modified, when in fact it was just created. Note the "(NEW)" flag in the email subject line.
Subject: (Rocket Scientists Inc.)(NEW) Issue #3 Loopback test mode available?
The details of this issue have been modified. Please login and view the
issue log for more information.
Problem:
I was wondering whether there was any way to test the core without an
external responder by using a loopback mode?
http://issuetracker.quartics.com/?module=issues&action=view&issueid=3
You will receive emails anytime the status of an issue changes. When a support engineer follows up, you will receive an email notification with the response and the link to the issue (see example below).
Update to issue 3 by Quartics Employee
Action:
Sorry Joe.
A loopback mode is not possible for testing. You need
some sort of external responder operating in the opposite mode.
http://issuetracker.quartics.com/?module=issues&action=view&issueid=3
There are two ways to follow-up on an open discussion thread. The first is to log into the system using the link found in the email generated when an issue has been created. This method will take you directly to the specific issue.
The second method involves logging into Issue Tracker via the system's front page. When using this method, you'll end up on a landing page showing all of your open issues. You can then navigate to the particular one that is of interest.
Note: If you need to follow-up to a discussion thread, be sure you use one of the methods described above. Do not reply to a system generated email.
Once you navigate to the specific issue, you can close it or follow-up with more details/questions. In either case, set the status appropriately using the following guidelines:
If you have a new question unrelated to the current issue, do not create a new event on the current issue. Instead, please create a new issue.
Once an issue is closed, the screen will update to show the closed status. You can always use the link provided in the system generated emails to review a closed thread.
Please note that when logging into Issue Tracker via the tool's front page, closed issues will not appear because the front page only focuses on open, active issues. If you need to find a closed issue (perhaps because you want to re-open it) click on the "Issues" link (see below).
From there click on the "Show Closed" link, which will display a summary of the previously closed issues for review (see below).
