Updating Issues
In our experience, it was often difficult to get the less technically-inclined team members to keep up with and update the issues they create. Bug and issue tracking is really about communication, and the majority of that communication happens when you update issues. Without participation from all parties, issues are dead in the water.
Figure 1 The status bar makes it easy to quickly gather the important information about an issue.
Status Bar
Every time that you view an issue in Sifter, the very first thing you see is the status bar. (Figure 1) With a glance you're able to discern the most important information about the issue. There's no swimming through a mountain of visually similar data points to figure out what the story is.
Figure 2 Easily update the status of an issue as you're making a comment.
Seamless Status Updating
One of our favorite features is the ability to seamlessly and intuitively update the status in coordination with comments. (Figure 2) Instead of offering a simple drop down, the status field adjusts itself to help reinforce what a particular change means. More importantly, since it's integrated with the comment field, it's not easy to overlook.
Linking Across Issues
It's not uncommon to end up with duplicate or similar issues, and while Sifter doesn't do anything fancy with blockers or dependencies, it's pretty adept at helping you handle related issues.
Figure 3 Whether you copy and past an issue's URL or use shorthand, Sifter will intelligently create rich links to other issues.
With any issue description or comment, you can use shorthand to create a link to that issue. (Figure 3) You can even copy and paste the URL right into your comment, and we'll automatically check the status of the issue and display a concise link that let's you know the status of the target issue. We'll even give you a brief description if you hover over the link.
Notifications
With any new issue or issue update, Sifter will automatically send email notifications to everyone involved. Sifter sends these out by default, but anybody can choose not to receive them. Of course, the person who creates the issue or adds the comment won't be notified—we're pretty sure they already know about it.
Attach Screenshots
You can upload up to 5 images with each comment. With 1 picture being worth a thousand words, that should save a lot of typing.
Figure 4 With each and every update, Sifter keeps track of what changed so that it's easy to circle back later and see what happened.
Change Tracking
In the spirit of accountability, Sifter keeps tabs on every change made with each comment. (Figure 2) That way, there's never any confusion who did what, when, or why. Even if a comment gets deleted, while the meat of the comment is hidden, the changes and the person responsible are still visible in the issue history.
Ready for more?
This is just one tiny piece of the pie. Make sure to see what else Sifter has to offer…
- Organization
- Creating Issues
- Managing Issues
- Updating Issues