How Redmine plugin «Luxury buttons» helps to realize request for information in issues.
Redmine task management system
works great for developers, but is difficult to use in a corporate
environment. We use Redmine
in a corporate environment more than
2 years and want to share this experience.
In
this article
we will discuss how to implement user-friendly request for
information in Redmine issues.
In
standard Redmine you can create
tasks and work with them. But
build a nice, and most importantly handy
lifecycle of tasks in Redmine is very difficult. In standard Redmine there is no user-friendly feedback mechanism that would allow us to request information for the issue, if it is necessary. There
are quite often situations when
the executor of issue misunderstands what was wanted of him, and starts to do an
issue not as customer
wished. It turns out unnecessary
work and wasted time. At the same time, realizing user-friendly request for information, we can minimize these errors.
It
is extremely inconvenient for the end user to transfer issue
to another state or assign to another user editing
the whole shape. In addition, to make
user be able to request information from
the other user in any status,
both should have access to full issue editing mechanism in any status of
issue that is not always acceptable.
Redmine
plugin «Luxury Buttons» provides a lot of opportunities
for editing issues and allow you to use Redmine for a wider range of tasks.
The
plugin «Luxury Buttons» allows you to configure the
lifecycle of issues and work with the issue through handy buttons that
perform strictly limited set of actions and displayed depending on specified display conditions.
This approach allows to reduce user error, as each
user is allowed to do only what he has to do in
this situation.
With
the help of plugin «Luxury buttons» you can implement a user-friendly mechanism of requesting information
from any employee in any issue status.
How to do it?
How we implemented request for information in issues
Redmine
plugin «Luxury Buttons» adds the ability to create custom fields with type "Issue Status", which
allows us to save issue status in the custom field at any time.
Also
has been implemented an opportunity to hide some custom fields on the issue form under the spoiler. Sufficient
to establish the flag «Hide on
issue page». This allows not displaying
all technical issue fields to the user.
Issue page becomes more comprehensible.
Field will not be displayed
on the issue form, until you click the spoiler button
«Display hidden fields».
For
user-friendly realization of information request in Redmine we need to
make a new status "Information request" and make a
couple of custom fields: field
"Information requester" with type "User"
and field "Status before information request" with type "Issue Status".
Configuring
the button
to request information on an issue from a
particular person, we can add to the button some
additional functionality of saving current employee and current
issue status in custom fields. This
approach will allow us to have access
to the data of who made request for information and in what status it was made.
At
the moment of information request, Redmine user, whom the issue is currently assigned to, will be automatically copied in
the "Information requester" field and the current issue status will be automatically copied in the field
"Status before information
request".
Now Redmine has an opportunity to create the
"Reply" button, which allows answering the information request with
returning the issue to the status, which was before information request and to
person who sent the request.
Pressing
the button, the user will only need to fill in the comment. All other actions the button
will make itself.
Thus, with the help of plugin «Luxury Buttons», we can build
a user-friendly mechanism of information request in Redmine without having to
change the issue fields manually. That will get rid of many problems with
accidentally incorrectly modifying of any issue field by user, that makes Redmine
interface clear and easy to use.
