When it comes to issue tracking, clear and well-timed communication is key to quickly tracking and fixing bugs. This means the right people have to be informed with the right information at the right time. To do this, you have to automate and customize the notification process to your project‘s needs. Here are two new Zoho BugTracker features to help you do that.
Automatic responses for events with Webhooks
Webhooks are HTTP callbacks that automatically send notifications to third party applications when certain events occur. Think of webhooks like a fire alarm system. When smoke rises and hits the detector, it triggers an alarm and activates the water sprinkler instantly. Third party apps are like smoke detectors. They send a signal when an event—fire in this case—occurs. The sprinkler is the listener that receives the signal and performs an action.
So how does this relate to issue tracking? For instance, if a bug has been marked “closed” but turns out to be unresolved, the fact that it had to be reopened is a key piece of information. You could set up a business rule for this event, configure a webhook, and specify what action—send an SMS notification to users or push a message in Slack—needs to be taken. Once you do that, whenever a closed bug is reopened, your predefined action will be triggered automatically. You can read more about webhooks here.
Personalized notification emails with Email templates
Templates help you personalize the automated notification mails sent by BugTracker. By default, such mails contain basic information like project name, the bug name, and the assignee.
You can now make these mails much more informative. For example, you could define your own subject line so developers know what to expect even before they open the mail. You can also add placeholders in the email template and associate them with any default or custom field. When the notification mail is triggered, these placeholders get replaced with appropriate values. Read more about creating email templates and inserting placeholders here.
Quick update: View completed milestone bugs and tasks
Many teams like to look at a summary of all the tasks and bugs completed in a particular milestone. This can come in handy both during internal reviews, and to share with clients and users. We have a new option called “Release Notes” that contains a list of all changes and bug fixes done in that particular milestone. You can copy-paste this list to your documents, embed it in your webpages, or export it as a pdf file and attach to your emails.
With these new enhancements, how do you plan to spruce up your notifications? What are the other apps you would like to connect BugTracker with? Let us know in the comments below.
Thank you for this. When will you allow us to sort bugs by column header, like sort by severity or status? These would really help. Thanks.
Hi Ronan, You can view bugs arranged by severity, status, module, classification and reproducibility in the Kanban view. Other date related sorting can be performed in the List view of bugs.
I have been really impressed with the new features you're always adding and the direction the software is headed. Thanks for the update!
Thank you Brad, that's great to know. More to come!
When will you release this feature for standard projects and not just bug tracker ?
Hi Lucy, That's a valid request. I am not able to give you the ETA but introducing Webhooks and Email templates for Projects is definitely in our product road map. Our team will take it up in the future.