What you will learn
In this section you will learn about the various components of the Issue Manager graphical user interface and how they work. You will see how to perform basic tasks necessary for issue tracking.
After logging into Issue Manager, you will be automatically directed to the page you last visited from the current computer.
How Issue Manager uses inboxes
An inbox is a page that displays open issues that have been assigned to a particular user or group of users. Each inbox has a name that is displayed in the drop-down list in the toolbar of its page. This drop-down list also allows access to other inboxes available in the system (depending on the selected workgroup in the Group drop-down list).
An inbox is similar to a post office box in that it designates a location where Issue Manager delivers issues for an individual user or group of users.
These factors determine which issues appear in a particular inbox:
• The routing rules and workflow defined by your administrator
• The actions you and other users take on issues
In Issue Manager, issues are always assigned to inboxes, not to users. Users access inboxes to view and process issues. The way that users interact with inboxes gives your organization flexibility in the distribution of work and in how employees use the system. For example, your administrator can create inboxes for each product category in an organization, then assign users to test and fix issues for specific products.
In general, your administrator creates inboxes only for users who need to process (act on) existing issues. Users who only report new issues or produce issue reports do not need inboxes. For example, developers and QA engineers need inboxes in order to identify the bugs that need to be fixed and then to verify the fixes. By contrast, technical support personnel who report issues found by customers, and managers who view inboxes and produce reports, may not need inboxes.
A user may have more than one inbox. For example, a QA engineer who tests multiple products might have an inbox for each product. An employee who both tests and documents a product might have an inbox for each of their roles. Each user however has only one default inbox.
How issues are sorted in an inbox
Issue Manager sorts issues within an inbox by the first column, then by the second column, and so on. For example, if Issue# is the first column, issues will be sorted by issues number in ascending order. You can set columns to be sorted in descending order by clicking the up and down arrows next to each column name. You can define an alternate column by which to sort issues by clicking the column name.
Functions that are available to you from your Inbox include:
• Viewing the contents of your inbox and the inboxes of other users
• Viewing the details of issues assigned to you and other users
• Creating a new issue
• Viewing a printable version of an issue report
• Refreshing the contents of the current inbox
• Displaying detailed information about any issue in an inbox.
• Sorting issues by columns via customization
• Navigating between the issues within the current inbox
• Locating a specific issue
Viewing your Inbox
Click the View Inbox button on the workflow bar to view your inbox. Here you can see all the issues that have been delivered to your inbox for processing. As each issue is processed, and your inbox page is refreshed, the contents of your inbox will be updated to reflect the changes.
Viewing other inboxes
You may view the inbox of another user by selecting an inbox name from the Inbox drop-down list.
You may also choose to view the inbox of a particular workgroup by choosing an inbox from the Group drop-down list. Issue Manager then displays only those inboxes that belong to the selected workgroup. The *All Inboxes* item from the Group drop-down list shows all the Issue Manager inboxes that appear in each workgroup in the Inbox list.
To return to your inbox, click the My Inbox icon at the far left-hand side of the toolbar.
Refreshing inbox contents
At anytime you can confirm that you are viewing the latest information in your inbox by clicking the Refresh Inbox button on the toolbar. It is not necessary that you click Refresh Inbox after taking action on an issue as Issue Manager automatically refreshes the inbox whenever you modify an issue.
You can use the default inbox view as the basis of your custom view, or you can create a custom view to meet you specific needs. If you define a custom view, it will be applied to all inboxes that you open.
Your inbox view can be customized by:
• Adding or removing columns from the display
• Changing the order in which columns appear
• Editing a column label
• Changing a column default sort order
Procedure To customize your inbox view:
1 Click the View Inbox button on the workflow bar to open your inbox.
2 Open Issue Manager’s Configuration unit and select Inbox Views from the Configuration column on the left (Issue Manager/Configuration/Inbox Views.
3 From the Issue Manager Inbox Views page, select your name in the View of user drop-down list (if not selected already).
4 The left side of the interface displays the List of Available Fields that you can select from to customize your inbox. To move a field into your select list, click the field’s blue right-pointing arrow (alternately, you can remove a field from the select list by clicking the field’s left-pointing arrow).
5 The fields you select are displayed in the order in which you select them. You can move selected fields up and down within the list via the Move up and Move down icons in the Actions column.
6 Click the View Inbox button to return to your inbox to see the result of your customizations.
Note By choosing Restore Default, you can return your inbox to its default state. Once you return to the default view, your custom view settings will be lost. The system default view can be configured by your administrator (see the SilkCentral Issue Manager Administration Guide for detailed information).
Issue Details Page
From your inbox you can access all of the issues that have been assigned to you and view basic details associated with each issue (see “Customizing your inbox view” for information on changing the layout of your inbox).
Each issue has an Issue details page that enables you to perform actions on and view detailed information for that issue.
Procedure To display an issue’s issue details page:
1 From your inbox, click an issue’s View Issue icon (in the left-hand column). All details regarding the selected issue are then available in a series of text fields and information tabs.
A series of action buttons, offering functions ranging from editing the issue, reassigning the issue, to copying the issue are available (the available actions depend on the current state of the selected issue). See “Processing Issues” for information on these actions.
The issue’s Description tab is displayed by default in the lower part of the view. The Description tab includes the synopsis and description that were entered for the issue when the issue was originally created.
Other available tabs with additional functionality and information for the active issue are History, Customers, Attached Files, Testcases, Notification, or Custom. See “Additional detail tabs” and “Adding Other Details to Issues” for details regarding these view tabs.
