What are some best practices of integrating bug reporting with a software project?

[Colton Carnevale]

Currently, the only project I have in Jira is our software project where we conduct sprints to track releases and manage the development of our software. 

I have a support staff as well that provides customer support to our users and handles tickets and questions that the users have. What I want to do is figure out a way for the support staff to create and manage tickets (primarily bugs), but I don't want them to add issues to the software project itself because I don't want the project to become filled with random bugs. One reason for this is because they might be reporting a supposed bug with data, but after further review, it's not a bug so the ticket is turned down and I do not create one for the dev team to work on.

Would creating a second project specifically for the support team be the best way to handle this? If it is, how would I transfer the tickets over to the dev project for them to work on?

[Mark Segall · Accepted solution]

Hi @Colton Carnevale 

If you have an isolated team performing bug triage, then yes it makes total sense to separate that out on a unique project.  This is something I have done with previous projects as well.  If a bug elevates to the level where it should be transitioned to the dev team, you could go a couple of routes:

1. Clone the bug to the other project - This will create a link so that both teams have visibility into progress.  Further, you can get fancy with automation as well if you go this route to save your support staff on extra clicks.
2. Manually move it to the other project - In some situations you may only require a blind hand-off.

My personal preference is option 1 because I like to preserve the isolated activity between projects, but either option will get the job done.

[Colton Carnevale]

@Mark Segall I'm having issues figuring out how to clone to another project. It just seems to clone within the same project. 

I do see a move, and I read something that it's a 2 step process to clone and then move the issue. Could you confirm that? Also, I've set up basic automation on my main software project, but do you know of any guides to connect both project via automation?

[Mark Segall]

Hi @Colton Carnevale 

Apologies - Yes with native clone you would need to perform an additional move action on top of it. There are 3rd party apps on the app store that will provide more advanced cloning capability.

Without spending the extra money and avoiding several extra clicks to clone and move, automation would be the best route.  Here are some tips:

Project Scope - You want your rule to be set to multiple project and add both of your projects to the scope (see an example below)

Rule - For simplicity, here's what I recommend:

• TRIGGER:  Manually Triggered
• ACTION: Create Issue - Select all of the fields you would like to have copied over.  For each you'll set them to copy from current issue

Here's an example (note the red box is critical:

[Colton Carnevale]

Sorry somewhat of a noob when it comes to Jira, but does this automation need to be in my bug tracking project or in my software project, or is there some global automation I can use?

[Mark Segall]

Hi @Colton Carnevale 

Yes this would be set in global automation.  You can navigate from the settings menu System >> Global Automation

[Colton Carnevale]

@Mark Segall so I've now set up the rule just like your screenshots, and I get the following error when running the rule.

I did manage to get the rule to run by changing the issue type from "Same Issue Type" to "Bug", but I don't want it always as a bug - I would like it to be the same issue type in case there are feature requests in the future. I also made sure that both projects had the same exact issue type, and that still caused the same error.

The last thing I tried which resulted in the same error was changing the Issue Type to "Same issue type as trigger". 

[Mark Segall]

@Colton Carnevale - Do you know if these projects are set up as company-managed or team-managed projects? 

Company-Managed

Hopefully this is the case as it may just be an additional configuration step missing like making sure the desired issue types are captured in the respective issue type scheme.

Team-Managed

These types of projects are a little more tricky for cross-project automation. Even though they may be called the same thing, each team-managed project has a unique Issue Type IDs, which is what the automation is using behind the scenes. 

If these are team managed projects, the simplest approach is to set everything with a default issue type and then have your dev team change it accordingly.  I know that this is not ideal. Otherwise, you could:

1. Create new company-managed projects and migrate your issues over (not terrible technically, but some change management involved)
2. Build up some ninja skills with automation.  You could technically accomplish what you want to do by capturing the issue type IDs on your target project, some If/Then condition logic coupled with smart values to get the job done.  However, this is something that would require more experience.

[Colton Carnevale]

@Mark Segall Sorry I missed this! Looks like my project is a Team Managed project. Seems silly Jira would be set up like this, but it is what it is... 

I'll think about the options. Thanks.