Mantis – Useful Resources ”; Previous Next The following resources contain additional information on Mantis. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this. Useful Links on Mantis Mantis − Mantis Official Website. Mantis Wiki − Wikipedia Reference for Mantis. To enlist your site on this page, please drop an email to [email protected] Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;
Mantis – Change Log ”; Previous Next Mantis relates issues with Versions and this relation can be seen in Change Log. Based on the fix version in the issue, Change Log separates the issues and provides details in which the release/version functionalities are covered. The Change Log information is used to include software release information. It helps users determine the specification in new releases. It answers usual questions such as: ”What’s new?”, ”What has been fixed?” and ”Are there security fixes?” Each project can have several versions. Users report issues against the released versions and the developers typically fix issues in the upcoming versions. For an issue to get recorded in the Change Log, following criteria should be fulfilled. The issue must have − ”Resolved” or ”closed” status. ”Fixed” resolution. Version should be specified in the ”Fixed in Version” field. The following screenshot shows the above criteria being fulfilled in the details page. The following screenshot displays how the same issue appears in the Change Log section. At the right top corner of the screen, it displays the version and project name as well. Click on View Issues will display the details of the issue. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;
Mantis – Quick Guide ”; Previous Next Mantis – Introduction Mantis Bug Tracker is an open source web-based application tool. It is used for Bug Tracking throughout Defect Lifecycle. Along with bug tracking, Mantis supports Release Features to manage various releases of a project or a software. Mantis is also known as MantisBT, which stands for Mantis Bug Tracker. The name and logo of Mantis refers to Mantidae family of insects. In software, it is referred to as a bug. Mantis provides Demo, Download (to set up your own Mantis) and Hosting version of the tool. It supports various features for Issue Tracking and life cycle along with Release Management. The development of Mantis started in 2000 by Kenzaburo Ito. Later in 2002, other team members (Jeroen Latour, Victor Boctor and Julian Fitzell) joined. The basic version 1.0.0 of Mantis was released in February 2006. In 2012, GitHub became the official repository for the Mantis project source code. License and Free Trial It is an open source software. License is not required to use its basic version. It provides Demo and Hosting Version for free trails. It supports Download feature to set up your own Mantis software. The user can sign up using email ID. Mantis has different price quotes based on added features that can be seen at https://www.mantishub.com/pricing Usage To track all bugs/issue throughout Defect lifecycle. To manage at Release level as well. Supports Analytic and Reporting features. Supports plug-in with other softwares and IDE to make it more strong and effective. Specifications Sr.No. Specification & Description 1 Application Copyright The copyright is taken by MANTIS System Limited Company (“MANTIS SYSTEM”) License is taken under GNU General Public License Version 2 2 Tool Scope It can be used as a Bug Tracking System 3 Stable Release 2.1.0 Onwards. Latest release is 2.5.1 4 Developed Language PHP as a coding language and SQL for database Tool supports 49 languages 5 Operating System Cross Platforms ( Platform Independent software) 6 System Requirements Web Server – Mantis is mainly tested with Microsoft IIS and Apache PHP – Mandatory extensions are mysqli, pgsql, oci8, sqlsrv, mbstring Database – MySQL, PostgreSQL 7 Client Requirements Firefox 45 and above IE 10 and above Chrome/Safari/Opera 8 User Interface Available API Desktop GUI Mobile UI Mantis – Features Mantis supports a wide range of features to attract QAs and other stakeholders for bug tracking. Following are the core features of Mantis. Core Features Sr.No. Core Feature & Description 1 Collaboration and Hassle Free It makes collaboration with team members and client easy, fast, and professional. As many users can use the same domain and same set of data. It is available only for Licensed product. 2 Email Notification All users or set of team members can get email notification whenever there are any changes, updates, or resolutions on an issue. Email will be triggered for any action taken by any one among a group of users. Voting and watching features to keep an eye on the progress for stakeholders. Use @mention to get the attention of a specific team member for Comments/Description. 3 Access Control Admin can grant access to the users based on individual role. It can be applicable differently for each project. Thus, one person can have different level of access for two different projects. 4 Customization Mantis supports customization at each level. Users can customize fields for issue creation/view. Users can customize fields for issue workflow and notification as well. 5 Dashboard Dashboard displays assigned to me, unassigned, reported by me and many other standard filters to look at all the issues belonging to individual users. Timeline feature allow to keep an eye on what is happening across the project. It displays live stream on the latest actions taken by any team member. 6 Release Management Mantis helps to manage different releases. It supports Project Versions to track releases. Users can create future releases and mark issues for respective release as well. Issues and release information can also be summarized in a Roadmap page for better understanding. 7 Time Tracking Mantis supports its own in-built time tracking feature. Users can easily enter the time spent on a particular issue. It can help make a report on the spent hours for each issue as an individual or as a team. 8 Integration/Plug-in Mantis supports more than 100 add-ins to connect with different softwares to make the work easy. Wide range of add-ins make it universal across the globe – TestLodge, TestRail, TestCollab, Testuff, HipChat, Slack, etc. It also supports Eclipse IDE and JetBrains. 9 Common Features Using Slack and HipChat integration, the team can communicate with each other. Mantis provides SSO (single sign on) access to log into MantisHub using GitHub or BitBucket credentials. 10 Customer Support Mantis Helpdesk is a very popular feature. It allows integrating your support with your internal issue tracking. Using Grasshopper integration, users get direct voicemail line. Mantis – Installation Mantis is a web application, provides a private website to individuals or set of requested users belonging to the same company/project. Mantis can be run at the server side. It is a PHP-based application and supports all OS platforms such as Windows, Linux of different versions, MAC, etc. It supports mobile browsers as well in mobile views. System Requirements Since Mantis is a web-application, it follows the concept of client/server. This means, Mantis can be installed centrally on the server and users can interact with it through web-browsers using a website from any computer. Web Server − Mantis is tested with Microsoft IIS and Apache. However, it can work with any latest web server software. Mantis only uses .php file. Configure the web server with .php extension only. PHP − The web server should support PHP. It can be installed as CGI or any other integration technology. Mandatory PHP Extensions − Extensions for RDBMS are mysqli, pgsql, oci8, sqlsrv mbstring is required for Unicode – UTF-8 support. Optional Extensions − Curl, GD, Fileinfo. Database −
Mantis – Roadmap ”; Previous Next The Roadmap page has the information about the upcoming versions and the issues that are targeted to be fixed in these versions. This is very useful information to be provided to the team, the users, and other stakeholders. It also helps prioritize an issue assignment. It keeps track of the progress of issues such as how many issues are resolved/closed, how many issues still need to be addressed, etc. The Roadmap page gets automatically populated, once the issues are assigned into a “Target Version”. The following screenshot shows where the target version field is present in the Issue Details page. Once a Target Version is added into Issue, it appears in the Roadmap page. Roadmap information displays up-to-date progress of all issues. Users can see the number of issues to be addressed, how many have been resolved/closed as well as the percentage in progress. The following screenshot shows the Roadmap page with the percentage in progress and the list of issues. If the issues are not assigned to a target version, it will not appear in the Roadmap. Resolved issues appear with a strikethrough. If the “Fixed in Version” field is set, it will appear in the Change Log page as well. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;
Mantis – Add Custom Fields ”; Previous Next The process of adding custom fields include first defining the custom field and then linking it to appropriate projects. Step 1 − Go to Manage → Manage Custom Field section. Step 2 − Enter the field name in the textbox. Step 3 − Click the New Custom Field button as shown in the following screenshot. Step 4 − After clicking the New Custom Field, the Edit Custom field page opens where the user has to define the custom field specification. Step 5 − Select a ‘Type’ for the field from the dropdown list (date, string, list, etc.). For custom field types, you can write Possible Values. Use the ‘|’ character to separate the different values. Custom field types that expect such lists include: enumeration, checkbox, list, multi-selection list, and radio buttons. The ”Default Value” definition allows the custom field to have a default value based on the field type. In most cases, it is a simple value such as a string, a number, or a value from the list of possible values. However, for the Date type, the possible values can include values such as: {today}, {tomorrow}, {+3 days}, {-7 days}, {next week}, {15 December 2013}, etc. Step 6 − Check the checkboxes specifying the pages on which the custom field should appear and is required. After defining the custom field, it should be linked to the appropriate projects. Step 7 − Scroll to the bottom of the ”Edit Custom Field” page to the ”Link custom field to projects” section. Select the projects from the displayed list and click ”Link Custom Field’ as shown in the following screenshot. The sequence number is used to determine the relative order of custom fields to each other. Smaller sequence numbers are shown first. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;
Discuss Mantis ”; Previous Next Mantis is a Bug Reporting tool, widely used as an issue tracking tool for all types of testing. This is a brief tutorial that introduces the readers to the basic features and usage of Mantis. The various chapters of this tutorial will guide the readers on how to utilize the tool in reporting and maintain an issue. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;
Mantis – Issues Relationships ”; Previous Next This feature is very useful when two issues have some type of dependency on each other, such as they are duplicates or are related to each other, upstream downstream dependency as parent/child issue. Create a Link to Another Issue Issues can be linked together at any point of time, while reporting an issue using the View Issue or Edit Issue page. Step 1 − Click the view issue page. Step 2 − Navigate to Relationships section. Step 3 − Choose the relation of the issue with the linking issue. For example: the opened issue is parent/duplicate of another issue. Step 4 − Now, type the issue id and click the Add button as shown in the following screenshot. After addition, you can see the linked issues in the Relationships section. It is hyperlinked hence, it is also possible to navigate to the linked issue. You can add a relationship for multiple issues at once using the ”|” character in between issue IDs. The following screenshot displays the linked issue. Delete a Link Step 1 − Go to View Issue Details page that contains the link to the issue. Step 2 − Scroll down and go to the Relationships section. Step 3 − Click the Delete icon as shown in the following screenshot. Step 4 − A confirmation pop-up will be displayed as shown in the following screenshot. Click the Delete button. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;
Mantis – Advanced Features ”; Previous Next While reporting an issue, along with some general information, there are advanced features supported by Mantis to make it more informational and useful. In this chapter, we will discuss about those advanced features. @Mention – Notification Mantis supports @mentions to gather user attentions and send notifications about an issue or note, even if they are not on the notified list. It is a simple way to draw someone”s attention. Simply reference a college in an issue note or description, and the note details with a link to the issue details will be emailed. To mention a user in Description/Note section, first write @ and along with it write the name of user as shown in the following screenshot. @mentions is hyperlinked to the user page and highlighted when notes/issues are formatted. In this case, users receive both regular email notification as well as @mention notification. However, @mention notifications have a simplified format as well as a different subject. The following screenshot displays the received email for @mention. Send Reminder Send Reminder is the alternate functionality of @mention. This feature is used to call the attention of a particular user. For example, the Product Owner sends a reminder to the team to update comments. Mantis generally recommends to use @mention. However, it is an optional feature. Go to the View Issue and click the Issue ID to open the View page. At the top of the issue, the “Send a Reminder” button is displayed as shown in the following screenshot. After clicking the Send a reminder button, a message box appears. On the left side, there is a list of users and on the right side messages can be typed. After selecting the user and writing the message, click the Send button at the bottom of the page. The following screenshot shows how to send a reminder. In the View Issue → Activities section, the Reminder information can be seen as shown in the following screenshot. Text Formatting As of now, Mantis supports the following HTML tags that can be used to format the tag in the description and notes field − p, li, ul, ol, br, pre, I, b, u, em, strong. However, Mantis doesn’t encourage formatting the text. The text emails will have raw tags rather than formatted text. Mantis has a plan to move towards Markdown for formatting, which will deprecate HTML tags. In addition to Markdown support, Mantis is planning to support html emails. These features together will address the limitations of the existing solution. However, as of now, there is no specific timeline for Markdown or for HTML emails support. Attach Files Mantis supports attaching multiple files to an issue. A user can attach the file while reporting the issue by clicking the Choose File button. The file can also be attached from the View Issue by clicking the Upload File button. Alternative method, is to attach the file in Edit Issue mode. The following screenshot displays how to attach a file in the View Issue module. Click the above marked button and browse the file to upload. Files will be displayed below the button on successful upload. Then, click Add Notes. The file will be get added in the Activities section as shown in the following screenshot. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;
Mantis – Summary ”; Previous Next The Summary page is the heart of Mantis. It displays the tabular records of issues. Mantis supports the Summary page as a reporting document in a tabular form. Summary page displays table records based on the following fields − By Status By Severity By Category Time Stats for Resolved Issues (days) Developer Status Reporter by Resolution Developer by Resolution By Date Most Active Longest Open By Resolution By Priority Reporter Status Reporter Effectiveness In each section, it displays how many issues are in Open, Resolved, and Closed status. It also displays how many total issues are reported on a particular category. The following screenshot displays the Summary page and its different categories. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;
Mantis – Miscellaneous Functionalities ”; Previous Next There are other useful functionalities in the View Issue Page such as Monitor, Delete, Close or Stick an issue, which we will discuss in this chapter. Monitor Mantis has a feature called Monitor to receive notifications and observe the progress of an issue. A user who has marked the issue as Monitor will be notified whenever any changes are made on the issue by any other users. Following are the steps to monitor an issue − Step 1 − Go to View Issue → View Issue Details (by clicking any issue ID) Page to see the details. Step 2 − Click the Monitor button present at the bottom of the screen as shown in the following screenshot. Once the user starts to monitor, the button changes to End Monitoring. The same can be confirmed from Issue History as well. Step 3 − After a certain time period, when the monitoring is complete, click the End Monitoring button as shown in the above screenshot. The button will again change to Monitor. Stick Mantis supports Stick functionality, i.e. an issue can be displayed as the first entry in the View Issue page → Viewing Issue section. Step 1 − Go to View Issue → Viewing Issues section and choose any Issue that you want to display as the first entry in this table. Here, we choose Issue ID 02 as shown in the following screenshot. Step 2 − Click the Stick button at the bottom of the View Issue Details page. The button name changes to Unstick. Step 3 − Go back to View Issue → Viewing Issues section and observe the location of Issue ID in the table. It will be displayed as the first entry as shown in the following screenshot. Step 4 − To unstick it, go to View Issue Details page and click the Unstick button as shown in the following screenshot. If more than one issues are marked as Stick, it follows LIFO (Last In First Out) concept. The latest one that was marked as Stick will be displayed as the first entry and will be followed by the second latest, and so on. Close an Issue Mantis supports the functionality to close an issue from any current status of the issue. Following are the steps to close an issue. Step 1 − Go to View Issue → Viewing Issues section and choose any issue that is to be closed. Here, we choose Issue ID 02 as shown in the following screenshot. Step 2 − Click the Close button on the View Issue Details page as shown in the following screenshot. Step 3 − Select Resolution from the dropdown and Add Notes. Click the Close Issue button. The status of issue changes to Reopen button instead of Close for this issue as seen in the following screenshot. By clicking the Reopen button, you can open the issue any time again. Delete an Issue Mantis supports deletion functionality in case the user wants to delete any of the issues. The reason might be duplication, wrong entry, or no more useful. Following are the steps to delete an issue. Step 1 − Go to View Issue → Viewing Issue section and choose any issue that is to be deleted. Step 2 − Click the Delete button on the View Issue Details page as shown in the following screenshot. Step 3 − A confirmation page is displayed asking to perform the delete action on the selected issue. Click the Delete Issue button if sure as shown in the following screenshot. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;