aC forum: Turning discussions into tickets

Post #9 by Ilija Studen

Ilija Studen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:35:46 CDT

Hello Willem,

Not a problem, I just wanted to keep the topic on the course. It's easy to get carried away in such discussions :))

Post #8 by willemn

willemn — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:13:29 CDT

Understood. Sorry to go deep on you.
You do have the right idea. I want to link tickets with discussions and pages.

Post #7 by Ilija Studen

Ilija Studen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:01:26 CDT

Hello Willem,

This discussions is getting a bit too broad :) My comment was regarding the specific request that you posted in the first post. It's actually really simple:

1. You have "brainstorming" area (or whatever you want to call it). In this particular case, that's a discussion, but it can be external forum topic, help desk ticket etc.
2. At the end of the day, you need to extract list of specific tickets and tasks from that area and post it to activeCollab.

There's currently no tool that lets you extract this information - you need to go through the topic and post the tickets by yourself. Planning module by Apps Magnet will help with the faster input, but it's still up to you to break the discussion into list of relevant tasks and post them.

Post #6 by willemn

willemn — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:26:31 CDT

I understand, and am not trying to convince you in essence to take action, but thought you should consider the fact that the application may need to be re-thought nevertheless for your own benefit in the future. (and I am not sure if the word "automated" is correct either when it may be possible to solve this through the UI in a user selectable form)

The core product was apparently well thought out and well integrated, but when new major functions were added they were not thoroughly understood from an inheritance and workflow perspective (not uncommon in our world, I have a few of those sitting around we are trying to get out of) It is clearly evident that this is the case, due to the fact that tasks can be entered in 3 areas that are completely unrelated.

But tasks are NOT unrelated.. they ar all tasks. That is their relationship. Having them split over 3 areas is a design flaw. When I started with AC, you tried to avoid that very problem, by centralizing files and showing all files in one location as they relate to different areas in the system.

That was actually the proper way to do it, but you abandoned it (at least in the UI) and now it has become a problem to find specific files someone uploaded in a discussion or a ticket. (It took me half a day to find an upload from someone yesterday) That does not take away the fact that someone would want to use the system as an FTP style solution, but instead of finding an elegant way to serve both, the functions were completely centralized/decentralized.

Again, there is no way to keep telling users in a discussion NOT to use the file upload function when they have files you want to "centralize" for future use, there should be a way to generate/view a relationship that allows for easy tracking.

I know its easier to just decentralize everything and treat it "as is" and ignore these facts, and yes anyone can "make it work" but it would be helpful to recognize that this is a fundamental design issue.

It should either be addressed through a better UI implementation (dashboards may need to be rethought) or ultimately the application would need a major re factor to support a more integrated/flexible model...

Just to be sure, I'm NOT suggesting another Google Wave, but you may want to consider these thoughts without dismissing them as too demanding for your target audience.

Thanks though in advance, for all the hard work !

Post #5 by Ilija Studen

Ilija Studen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:58:17 CDT

Hello Willem,

We understand your position and the fact that you use activeCollab on a whole different scale than majority of activeCollab users. That's the key problem here - I think that there's not even 10 people in the entire community of thousands of users who would use such feature regularly.

Because of that, I really doubt that we'll be added any automated tools for this in the near future. Majority of people can simply do it manually in the rare occasions when they need to convert discussion in a series of tickets - copy a sentence or two, paste discussion link or a quote and you're done.

Organizations that really need an automated tool for this can create a specialized module tailored to fit their needs.

Post #4 by willemn

willemn — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:38:09 CDT

So at a minimum I need to be able to spin off multiple tickets from a discussion or page with a loose relationship.

These two activity flows would be logical and practical and would make it significantly less labor intensive to use AC

I think it will also (partially) solve another problem users have, in that they are all struggling with the search functions, because they do not expose any true context currently.

Project>Milestone>Discussion>Tickets
Project>Milestone>Page>Tickets

A ticket spun off from an object under a milestone would also automatically inherit the milestone as a side benefit. :)

Post #3 by willemn

willemn — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:27:01 CDT

That is a good point, except I'm not theorizing here, I have this problem in real life.
You also already would contradict that by creating a system like that in pages, where you want people to compare edits to see who had done what and why. At a minimum you want to know what caused you to create a ticket and be able to double check. In a simple and controlled environment where you are developing 1 product (software), like yourself, you may not see this issue. You can look in the milestone and see what possibly could be related. (but lets be fair, it still is a guessing game as to what discussion or page or ticket is really connected with each other)

My environment is much more complex with multiple program managers, customer service people, account managers and stakeholders who are all involved in the same decisions at some point in time on some topic, across discussions, tickets and pages with various abilities to express themselves clearly.
..
Just for one Software roll-out I have over 800 tickets in the system right now placed by testers and technical users, then there are over 500 discussions that may-or may not need to be turned into tickets.

You multiply that by at least 30 active software implementation initiatives and when someone is looking for and answer on if/when/why something is or was done...

Post #2 by Ilija Studen

Ilija Studen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:54:36 CDT

Hello Willem,

Maybe it's me, but I don't see any consistent way of turning information scattered across many comments, and different paragraphs of these comments, into something meaningful automatically.

PS: Why would you even want to keep reference to every single bit of information in the resulting ticket (link to specific discussions and comments)? Extract what is important, lock the discussion and forget that it ever existed. As long as work gets done, nobody will get mad :)

Post #1 by willemn

willemn — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:55:34 CDT

One of the most frustrating things is to have users submit tickets without regard for a protocol:

Long explanations without specifics
Multiple tasks that are unrelated
etc.

The solution is to allow those users to submit discussions and then create tickets, once the discussion has "threaded-out" or has been accepted. If you work on a small team this is not needed, but we have ober 200 users and multiple clients with users.

I'm sure the AC Forum works the same way... we submit ideas and ramble along, and the AC staff (experts/trained users) create tickets/tasks somewhere else...

You have effectively separated the activities to better manage your execution. It would be insane if you allowed all of us to see your milestones/tasks/tickets. In fact you don't even want to hint.... :)

So we have a huge problem here... AC actually does not encourage that behaviour (although it can come close), but the much harder part is to translate those discussions into tickets.

There is no way to link them or to transition between them, other than copying and pasting URL's right?
Ideally you would be able to branch into tickets and branch back into discussion and pages, similar to a software check in branching system...

Is there anyone who has found a good (or even great) way to solve this?
It is too much work to manage linking and restating discussions to tickets, so I end up giving in and edit and split tickets instead after they have been submitted.

And THAT my friends is extremely UNcolaborative... I'm not desperate though ;)