Issue tracking

FootPrints is an excellent tool for Issue management, Workspace management, communication, and collaboration. Workspace team members in different locations can collaborate, communicate, and organize tasks, share documents, and more using the intuitive FootPrints interface from any browser. A new FootPrints Workspace can quickly be created for each new Workspace started. Here are some suggested fields and settings for an Issue Management Workspace.

  • Fields—Custom fields can be created to track the different Issues assigned to workspace members. These fields will help with quick data entry, and help sort and report on different areas and issue types.
    • Built-in Fields:
      • Title—Is used as a brief summary or description of Issue or task. 
      • Description – Is used for a complete description of the Issue, and all activity and updates on that Issue. Each addition to the description contains a time, date and user stamp.
      • Assignees—The Assignee field will automatically list the workspace members. This field is used to define the resources for each Issue. Please refer to the section below on “Assignment” for more information

      • Statuses—Open, Accepted, Assigned, Completed, Closed.

        Note

        Open and Closed statuses are built-in, so only the other 3 need to be created.

  • Priorities
    • Maximum: Set to 5
    • Default: Set to 3 (Medium)
    • Words defined: Urgent, High, Medium, Low, Lowest
  • Workspace Fields—Up to 100 custom Workspace Fields can be created (no limit in SQL/Access versions) to record information about the Issue. Here are some suggested fields for the workspace team. 

    • Issue type (drop-down)—List of types or categories of the types of Issues for the workspace.

      Note

      If the Field Dependencies option is used, this is the recommended decision field.


    • Duration (integer or decimal field)—Enter in number of days.
    • Start Date (date field)
    • DueDate (date field)
    • Percentage completed (integer or decimal field)
    • Resources—A drop-down field can be defined with Resource Names, or the Assignee field can be used for the resources to be assigned.
  • Time Tracking—FootPrints can track the time spent by workspace members working on Issues. This data can be used to create time tracking reports, which can be used for billing, or to track any time-related information, such as how long one or more workspace members spend on certain kinds of Issues.
    • Recommended configuration for Development Tracking—Enabled, Mandatory, Manual.
    • With this configuration, workspace members are prompted to enter their time spent on a particular Issue. An hourly billing rate should be specified for each workspace member (see Users). In this way, time tracking data can be used for billing customers, creating budgets, or to justify increased resources.
  • Address Book—The Address Book is a sub-database that can contain all of the contact information for your user base. The Address Book is optional for Issue Management workspaces. For example, if Issues are generated by employee or external customers, then the Address Book is appropriate. If Issues are generated internally by workspace members, or if contact data is not essential to the Issue Management activity, the Address Book can be disabled. For suggestions on Address book fields, please refer to the Sales, Development, Customer Support or Service Desk templates.
  • Assignment—Assignment can be handled manually, or the Auto Assign Feature can be used to assign one or more workspace members to Issue based on, for example, the “Issue type” field. A separate drop-down field can be defined with “Resource Names”, or the Assignee field can be used exclusively for the resources to be assigned.

  • Escalation—Escalation should be enabled and various rules defined to handle high-priority issues and set up due date reminders. Some rules to consider:

    • Escalation rules can be defined for high/urgent priority issues to send email notification to the Workspace Lead.
    • Rules can be made to handle Issues that have been open for a certain amount of time to send a reminder to the assignees that the Issue must be completed, and/or to reassign them to someone else. 
    • A rule should be set to send an email to the assigned workspace member(s) based on the “Due Date” field. The criteria should include:
    • Name:  Per-Issue Reminders
    • Escalation On/Off: Select “On”
    • Actions:  “Send mail to the Assignees” checked, select one or more email types
    • Time Unedited: 5 minutes
    • Criteria:

      • Status=Highlight “Open”, and any custom statuses to get reminders on active Issues. For
      • Due Date, choose “equal to” and check the box for “Current Date” (do not fill in any dates).
  • Email—Outgoing email notification rules can be set to send mail to assignees for all changes, or, if you would prefer, only for certain statuses. Incoming email can be configured to handle both incoming email submissions and email updates to existing Issues, allowing workspace members to submit, update and close Issues via email.
  • CCs—Other workspace members, or people outside of the workspace, can be copied on an Issue without actually being assigned. The user will receive email notification, and can optionally respond to the email with comments or suggestions, which will automatically be threaded to the Description of the Issue with a time, date and user stamp. 
  • Queues—Create 1 Saved Search for each “Request Type”. For example, the Criteria for a queue for a called “SuperApp Issues” would include “Status”=Request, Open, and all other active statuses, “Request type”=” SuperApp Issues”, Sorting “Due Date Submitted Ascending” (oldest at the top), Name “SuperApp Issues Queue”, Type “Shared”.   Other queues can be made for each Workspace members’ assignments, sort all active Issues by due date, etc.
  • Reports—The built-in Metric reports can be used by the Workspace Manager to get important metrics like aging reports, number of Open Issues by assignee, etc. Custom report templates can be made to show details and stats for things like: All active Issues by assignee, All active Issues by Request Type, All active Issues by Due Date, etc. The Auto-run Reports feature can be used to automatically email one or more reports to the Managers every Monday morning, etc.
  • Cross-workspace Reports—The Administrator can create cross-workspace reports to return data from multiple workspaces, such as Service Desk, Development, and Issue Management. Any common fields found in the workspaces selected can be included in the report.  So, if the Address Book is shared between the aforementioned workspaces, a report can be generated on a particular contact that includes all activity for that user across all departments.
  • Knowledge Base—The FootPrints Knowledge Base feature can be useful for the Workspace team. Procedures, policies, and documents can be made into (and attached to) Solutions. FAQ categories can be defined to group solutions by request type, etc. All workspace members can have access to Solutions, attachments and FAQ categories.
  • Users—The Workspace team will normally use Agent licenses as described in the functionality above. Agent users can set their personal preferences to view a list of their own assignments on the FootPrints Home page, as well as set their home page columns to display important information about those Issues on the home page, like “Request type”, “Title” “Due date”, etc.
  • Agents can use their network ID and password to log into FootPrints if NT, UNIX or LDAP password authentication is enabled.
  • Copy/Move Issue feature—This feature can be used to communicate with teams in other workspaces. For instance, a workspace member could assign an Issue in a team member for another workspace.  When the Issue is copied or moved to the other workspace, a reference to each other is placed in both the originating Issue and the new Issue.   

  • File attachments—Workspace members can attach files to particular Issues. Solutions in the Knowledge Base can contain file attachments, allowing easy distribution and collaboration of procedures, documents, and other files to the whole workspace team.

    Note

    File Attachments in FootPrints are kept in the C:\FootPrints\html\tmp\Attachments directory on the FootPrints server. Anti-virus software can be pointed to that directory to ensure that attachments do not contain viruses.

  • FootPrints Instant Talk—The Instant Talk feature can be used by team members to chat with each other when they are in different sites.
  • Splash screen—The splash screen option can be used to communicate important information and alerts to workspace members. The splash screen can include text, HTML, links to other sites or pages, graphics, etc. It can be updated at any time by the Workspace Administrator.

 

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