Ticket shields(badges)
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A lot have been told about the horrible state of public bug tracking.
Manual and opaque system leads to issues reported many times or silently closed.
It creates needless workload for moderators and the users suffering from particular issues.
All together, awful experience from support amplifies the negative experience from issues.Here I want to propose something that should be quite small change but can ease the ticket tracking a lot without exposing any possible secrets.
There is currently the topic to ask the status of a ticket:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/27450/what-is-the-status-of-vb-already-reported-bug-issue/
The only thing of interest is the status (New, Confirmed, Can't reproduce, In the works, Duplicate of ..., Fixed, etc).This amount of information can be provided automatically to anyone interested.
As any modern platform, JIRA has REST API
https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/jira/platform/integrate-jira-issues-with-your-application/
Just providing a public API with a single JSON endpoint might be enough to work with it.A common way to present a simple status on in the web is so called "shield" - a small image like this:
( example from https://shields.io/category/issue-tracking )There might be a way to generate these (?) with JIRA itself:
https://addonrock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KB/pages/199229462/Shields+-+more+awesomeness+in+JIRA
https://addonrock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KB/pages/199032908/Shield+Custom+Field
(Although I'm not sure these links are directly applicable here. And it might be not strictly necessary to generate it with JIRA.)Shields.io can be used with any JSON endpoint to produce the visual representation:
https://shields.io/endpointThe next step might be:
- a plugin for the Vivaldi forum that will add appropriate images to VT- ticket numbers mentioned in posts;
- or, in case modifying the forum is difficult for whatever reason, there might be a page with a single input for a ticket number that returns the status in any shape - either queries the API itself or shows the shield image;
- or the markdown code to be posted in the forum can be included into JIRA email.
Either way it appears to me as a pretty small feature that can dramatically improve the support experience for all the parties involved.
(I'm not putting this into Forum subcategory because the core request is about issue tracking and forum integration is only one of the options.)
Extra thoughts:
A lot more can be done about the issue reporting workflow. I can't see why every user has to understand all the interactions between different tools (forum, JIRA, email) and actors (moderators, testers, developers) to be able to report an issue. This is really bad experience. I want a single point of interaction.
And it doesn't even needs to be JIRA.
Wanna keep it private? - Why even send me there?
I report to the forum - you can do the rest, since you have to confirm it anyway.
I believe forum engines can get simple updates to serve as public trackers. Such as status flags for topics, maintained by mods. -
Indeed, the way it is handled now isn't 100% effective.
Lots of VB numbers are dropped in the "What is the status of VB (=already reported bug/issue)?" thread without any detail so we're forced to search in the forum (when available...) to understand what it is about. It sometimes leads to a feeling of "every user owns its own VB" when it concerns the entire community.
Anyway, +1 for any enhancement of the VB follow-up/communication. -
@Ornorm Well, a lot of users already have their unique bug lists and are very differents each other.
So, yeah, not very far from the truth. +1 for everything which can reduce the workload for users/mods :3
