Category: bugzilla

Bugzilla – Preferences ”; Previous Next Preferences in Bugzilla are used to customize the default settings of Bugzilla as per requirement and guidelines. It can also be called as User Preferences. There are two ways to navigate on Preferences − The first way is to click on the Preferences hyperlink in the header of the homepage. The second way is to click on the User Preferences button, which is displayed on the Welcome Page Icons. By clicking on one of the links outlined (in red color) in the following screenshot, they will display different types of Preference that can be customized by the users. Preferences Type Bugzilla supports the following six types of User Preferences. General Preferences Email Preferences Saved Searches Account Information API Keys Permissions In the next chapter, we will discuss regarding the General Preferences of Bugzilla. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Bugzilla – Tabular Reports ”; Previous Next The Tabular Reports represent tables of bug counts in 1, 2 or 3 dimensions as HTML or CSV. To generate Tabular reports in Bugzilla, we have to follow the steps given below. Step 1 − Click on the Reports hyperlink in the Header section of the homepage and then click on the Tabular Reports in the Current State section as shown in the following screenshot. Step 2 − Similar to Graphical Reports, select Vertical, Horizontal axis along with Multiple tables (if required) and provide details in the other fields. Step 3 − After selecting all the fields, click on Generate Report. Based on the deadlines, it generates multiple tables − Step 4 − By clicking on CSV hyperlink below the table, it converts the report into a CSV file. Click OK after the appropriate selection, it will open an Excel sheet with the details of all the data tables. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Bugzilla – Browse Function ”; Previous Next The Browse Function is one of the most important features of Bugzilla to find/trace/locate an existing logged bug. Following are steps to use this feature − Step 1 − Click on the Browse hyperlink on the header of the home page. Step 2 − A window – “Select a product category to browse” as shown below, the user can browse the bug according to the category. Select the product “Sam”s Widget” or any other. Step 3 − It opens another window, in this – click on the component Widget Gears. Bugzilla Components are sub-sections of a product. For example, here, the product is SAM”S WIDGET, whose component is WIDGET GEARS. A product can have multiple components listed. Step 4 − When you click on the component, it will open another window. All the Bugs created under a particular category will be listed over here. From that Bug-list, click on the Bug# ID to see more details about that bug. Step 5 − Once you click on the Bug ID, another window will open, where information about the bug can be seen in detail. In the same window, the user can also change the assignee, QA contact or the CC list. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Bugzilla – Bug Lists ”; Previous Next A bug list is a group of searched bugs based on the user input. A Bug list is nothing other than filtered bugs based on different conditions in a Standard Search or an Advanced Search. The format of the list is configurable. For example, it can be sorted by clicking the column headings. Other useful features can be accessed using the links at the bottom of the list, which are − Long Format XML (icon) CSV (icon) Feed (icon) iCalendar (icon) Change Columns Change Several Bugs At Once Send Mail to Bug Assignees Edit Search Remember Search as All of these features have been explained in detail below. Long Format By clicking on the Long Format button, it provides a large page with a non-editable summary of the fields of each bug. XML (icon) By clicking on XML (icon), it converts the bug list displayed in table format as an XML format. CSV (icon) It converts the bug list as comma-separated values, which can be imported into a spreadsheet or an excel sheet. Feed (icon) It displays the bug list as an Atom Feed. The user can Copy this link into their favourite feed reader. To limit the number of bugs in the feed, add a limit=n parameter to the URL. If the user is using Firefox, get an option as save the list as a live bookmark by clicking the live bookmark icon in the status bar as shown in the screenshot below. To limit the number of bugs in the feed, add a limit=n parameter to the URL. Only the first bug is displayed as a Feed. iCalendar (icon) It displays the bug list as an iCalendar file. Each bug is represented as a to–do item in the imported calendar. It is supported in Outlook only. The user can access this feature only if Outlook is configured in the system. Change Columns It changes the bug attributes that appear in the list. The user can customize the view of a Bug List using this option. By clicking on the Change Columns button, the following page displays the user selection. The User can select one or multiple columns from the Available Columns section. These should display in the bug list. Then click on → (right arrow) to show this selection in the Selected Columns section. Similarly, the user can deselect any of the columns from the selected columns and click on the ← (left arrow). The user can change the appearing order of the columns as well by clicking on move up and down arrow at the right hand side of the Selected Columns section. By clicking on the Change Columns button, the bug list will be customized. Else, if the user clicks on the Reset to Bugzilla Default, it will change back to the Default settings. Change Several Bugs at Once If an account is sufficiently empowered and more than one bug appears in the bug list, Change Several Bugs At Once is displayed and easily makes the same change to all the bugs in the list – for example, changing their Priority. Send Mail to Bug Assignees If more than one bug appears in the bug list and there are at least two different bug assignees, this link is displayed. By clicking on this link, Outlook opens, if it is configured or it asks to configure the Outlook to send a mail to the assignees of all bugs on the list. Edit Search If the user did not get the exact results he were looking for, the user can return to the Search page through this link and make small revisions to the search parameters to get accurate results. Remember Search As The user can give the Search, a name and remember it; a link will appear in the page footer giving quick access to run it again later. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Bugzilla – Duplicate ”; Previous Next In Bugzilla, Duplicates are a list of bugs, which are raised most frequently. Duplicates are the most frequently seen open bugs. Duplicates count the numbers as the Dupe Count of direct and indirect duplicates of a defect report. This information is helpful to minimize the number of duplicate defects. Duplicates help to save time for QA engineers to log a new defect always. Duplicates also help stakeholders to find out the root cause, if the same defects are reopened repeatedly rather than just a new defect. Using the Duplicates List of Bugs Review the most frequent bug list with the respective issue noticed. If the problem is listed as a bug in the list, then click on the bug id to view details and confirm whether it is the same issue or not. Comment on the additional observation, link it with your Test Case if required and re-open if it is closed. If the exact problem is not listed, try to find a similar defect that is already listed. If the user finds the defect that are dependent on new observations, he can comment and link the defect. If the user cannot find the defect, log a new one. Generate Duplicate Reports To generate Duplicate reports in Bugzilla, we have to follow the steps given below. Step 1 − Click on the Report hyperlink in the header of the homepage. Step 2 − As soon as you click on Report, the Reporting and Charting Kitchen page opens. Click on Duplicates hyperlink under the Current State section. Step 3 − By clicking on Duplicates, open the Most Frequently Reported Bugs table. It has various columns as Bug Id, Dupe Count, Component, Severity, Priority, Target Milestone, and Summary. Changing the Parameters This is an interesting feature to filter or customize the Most Frequently Reported Bug tables. Following are some of the important pointers, which are explained in detail. Restrict to product − It filters out the table based on specific Product and components. The user can choose from single or multiple products by pressing CTRL + Click. When sorting or restricting, work with − It has two options, either the entire list or the currently visible list. Max Rows − The user can give a number to see the number of defects in one page. Change column is change in last − The number of days a user wants to review the changes that have taken place. Open Bugs only − This will filter out all the bugs those are closed. The result will have a list of only open defects. When the user Clicks on the Change button, all these filters will change and the bug list will be filtered out. When clicking on the Bug List button at “Or just give this to me as a Bug List”, the resulting table will display in the format of a Bug List page as shown in the screenshot below − Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Bugzilla – Email Preferences ”; Previous Next The Email Preferences feature in Bugzilla allows to enable or disable email notifications on specific events. In general, the users have almost complete control over how many emails Bugzilla sends them. If the users want to receive the maximum number of emails possible, click on the Enable All Mail button. If the user does not want to receive any email from Bugzilla at all, click on the Disable All Mail button. To navigate, go to Preferences/User Preferences option on the home screen and click on the Email Preferences tab. Global and Specific Options There are two Global Options; where the user can check the checkboxes based on their requirement to get emails. These options are − Email me when someone asks me to set a flag and Email me when someone sets a flag I asked for. These define how a user wants to receive the bug emails concerning the flags. Their use is quite straightforward: enable the checkboxes, if the user wants Bugzilla to send a mail under either of the above conditions. Similarly, a user can check the checkboxes for Field/recipient specific options based on “I want to receive mail when” User Watching Feature Bugzilla has a feature called as User Watching. When the user enters one or more comma delineated other user accounts (usually email addresses) into the text entry box, the user will receive a copy of all the bug emails those other users are sent. This powerful functionality is very important and useful in case if the developers change projects or users go on a holiday. Ignore Bugs Feature User can mention a list of bugs from those never wants to get any email notification of any kind. For this, user needs to add Bug ID(s) as a comma-separated list. User can remove a bug from the current ignored list at any time and it will re-enable email notifications for the bug. After selections are made, click on the Submit Changes button at the bottom left hand side of the page. A successful message will display as “The changes to your email preferences have been saved” as shown in the screenshot below. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Bugzilla – Editing a Bug ”; Previous Next Bugzilla has a provision of editing an existing bug. A user can edit a bug during the lifecycle of any bug. Most of the fields have an edit hyperlink. It depends on administrator of Bugzilla to provide edit options with different fields. In the following screenshot, there are many fields that have an edit hyperlink such as – Status, Alias, Assignee, QA Contact, ‘Depends on’, Large Text box, Flags, CC list, etc. Click on the edit hyperlink of a particular field, that field will display as editable and the user can edit the field accordingly. After the editing is done, click on Save Changes button, which is on the top right hand corner of the page as shown in the screenshot below. After the changes are successfully done, the advisory will display of the bug details as shown in the following screenshot. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Bugzilla – Custom Search ”; Previous Next Custom Search is an extended feature of the Advanced Search. It works on the principle of – “Did not find what you are looking for above? I.e. in advanced search”. This area allows words like AND, OR, and other more complex searches. Navigation of custom search is as follows: Search → Advanced Search → Go Down and click on Custom Search as depicted in the following screenshot. Customizing the Custom Search Custom Search compares a selected field with a defined operator for a specified value. It is possible that too much of this could be reproduced using the standard fields in an Advanced Search option. However, the user can combine options like “Match ANY” or “Match ALL”, using parentheses for combining and priority to construct searches of complex queries. There are three fields in each row (known as a “term”) of a custom search − Field − The name of the field being searched. Operator − The comparison operator. Value − The value to which the field is being compared. The list of the available fields contains all the fields defined for a bug. It includes any custom fields, as well as some other fields like the Assignee Real Name, Days since Bug Changed, Time since Assignee Touched and other things, which might be useful to search further. There is a wide range of operators available. There are various string-matching operations (including regular expressions), numerical comparisons (which also work for dates) and to search for change information of a bug. When a field changed, what it changed from or to, and who did it. There are special operators is empty and is not empty, because Bugzilla cannot tell the difference between a value field left blank on purpose and one left blank by accident. The user can have n number of rows to define operators, values and fields. There is a dropdown box above them, which defines how these rows are related with the search. Match ALL of the following separately, Match ANY of the following separately or Match ALL of the following against the same field are three options listed in the dropdown. The difference between the first and the third can be described with a comment search. If a search is − Comment contains the string – “Bug” Comment contains the string – “issue” Under the “match all of the following separately”, the search would return bugs, where a “Bug” appeared in one comment can be an “issue” in the same or any other comment. Under the “match all of the following against the same field”, both strings would need to occur in exactly the same comment, i.e. it will select a bug having both Bug and issue words in the same comment. By clicking on Show Advanced features, more capabilities or features appear to use complex and specific search. The user can negate any row by checking a checkbox. It can also group lines of the search with parentheses to determine how different search terms are related. The user gets the choice of combining them using ALL (i.e. AND) or ANY (i.e. OR). Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Bugzilla – Advance Search ”; Previous Next The Advanced Search page displays a list of all the bugs, which are filtered exactly with different criteria that have been loaded by the users. This Advanced Search feature selects different possible values for all of the fields in a bug. For some fields, multiple values can be selected. In these cases, Bugzilla returns bugs where the content of the field matches with any one of the selected values. If none is selected, then the field can take any of values. Multiple values selection for one field is based on the “OR” functionality. If either one or any other value is matched among the user selection, the bug will be displayed. Using Advance Search For using the advanced search feature in Bugzilla, we have to follow the steps given below. Step 1 − Click on the Search hyperlink on the header of the homepage. You will get two tabs, Simple Search and Advanced Search, click on the Advanced Search tab. Step 2 − Select the required option from the Summary field. Then, you can enter the keyword to identify or filter out the bugs. Step 3 − The next step is to select the category of Bug from the Classification box; here, we have selected Widget. Then, choose the Product under which the Bug is created; here, we have selected Sam”s Widget. In the Component box, we have selected Widget Gears. In the Status box, click on Confirmed and in the Resolution box choose Fixed, all of these are shown in the following screenshot. Note − All these fields are optional and dependent on the user’s choice. Step 4 − Click on the Search Button after entering all the fields based on the requirement of the filter. Step 5 − Advance Search will detect the bug and the result will be as follows − Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Bugzilla – Logging a New Bug ”; Previous Next The procedure of filling a new bug is quite simple and has been explained below. Step 1 − Click on the ‘New’ link, present on the header or the footer or Click on the File a Bug button on the home page as shown in the following screenshot. Step 2 − Now, select the product group in which the bug is noticed. Step 3 − After selecting the Product, a form will appear where the user should enter the following details related to the bug − Enter Product Enter Component Give Component description Select version Select severity Select Hardware Select OS Enter Summary Enter Description Attach Attachment Note − The above fields vary as per the customization of Bugzilla. The Mandatory fields are marked with a red asterisk (*). Step 5 − Once the user starts typing in the Summary, Bugzilla filters the already logged in defects and displays the list to avoid duplicate bugs. Step 6 − Click on the Submit Bug button to log the bug. Step 7 − As soon as the user clicks on the Submit bug button, a Bug Id is generated with the details that of bug as that were entered. Step 8 − The Deadline and the Status will be shown as depicted in the following screenshot. A user can also add additional information to the assigned bug like URL, keywords, whiteboard, tags, etc. This extra-information is helpful to give more details about the Bug that is created. Large text box URL Whiteboard Keywords Tags Depends on Blocks In the next chapter, we will learn how a bug can be cloned. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;