Mantis – Quick Guide

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

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 – Login

Mantis – Login ”; Previous Next Step 1 − To login to Mantis, go to your sample demo website. It will open a login page. Step 2 − Fill your registered email address/username and click Login. Step 3 − On successful validation of Username, it will ask for a Password. Enter the password and Click the Login button. The following screenshot shows how to login to Mantis using credentials. On Error Due to unsuccessful login, an error page is displayed and the user will go back to the username page. Following screenshot shows the error message the user receives, if the password is incorrect. Click Lost your password? Provide username and email address to get the password reset link. Click Submit as shown in the following screenshot. The user will get an email with the URL to reset the password. On Successful Login On successful login, the system dashboard will display if the account is associated with any project by admin or the user can create a sample project, which will be discussed in subsequent chapters. The following screenshot displays the Dashboard/My View page of Mantis on successful login. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Mantis – Project Management

Mantis – Project Management ”; Previous Next To perform Project Management activities, the user should have Admin permission. Create a Project Following are the steps to create a project. Step 1 − Login as Administrator. Step 2 − Go to “Manage” section present at the left menu bar. Step 3 − Click “Manage Projects” tab. Step 4 − To create a new project, click the Create New Project button. To edit an existing project, click the Project Name. Here, “My Project” is the existing default project. The following screenshot shows how to create a new project. Step 5 − After clicking Create Project / Project Name, the Create Project form opens. Step 6 − Enter the following fields before creation − Name − Enter the project name. Description − A brief description or summary of the project. Status − The maturity or development status of the project. This is informational field and doesn’t affect Mantis. View Status − It determines who can access the project, whether the project can be viewed by all logged-in users in case of public projects. Private projects are only visible to users assigned to the project or to administrators. Step 7 − Now, click the Add Project button. The following screenshot shows the fields to enter/edit to add/update a new project. On successful creation of a project, the user can see a new entry in the project section as shown in the following screenshot. Select a Project To select a project, the navigation feature is available at the top right corner of the page. To see this option, the user should be entitled to view at least 2 projects. The projects that the user is entitled to view, are listed under the “All Projects” option. If the user selects All Projects option from the list, it will display all the listed projects that the user is entitled to view. To view an individual project, the user should select the particular project from the list. The following screenshot displays how to select Projects. Archive a Project If the user wants to hide a project from the list of projects as available, from the top dropdown list, archiving a project is the solution for it. Once the project is archived, the user is not able to view issues from the respective projects. Project can also be un-archived based on the requirements. Step 1 − Go to Manage → Manage Projects. Step 2 − Click the Project name that needs to be archived/un-archived. Step 3 − Tick/Untick the enable field for un-archival/archival. Step 4 − Click Update Project. The following screenshot displays how to archive/un-archive a project. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Mantis – Search Issues

Mantis – Search Issues ”; Previous Next Mantis supports basic search functionality. Users can search issues across Projects using Issue#. Along with the Search textbox, Mantis provides the link of Recently Visited Issue# so that users can directly jump to a particular issue. Search At the top right corner of the screen, there is a Search textbox present throughout all the pages with the text as Issue#. The following screenshot displays the position of the Search textbox. Enter the Issue ID and press Enter. It uses the wild search concept and finds the unique issue. Later, it opens the View Issue Details page as shown in the following screenshot. Recently Visited Beside the Search textbox, there is a Recently Visited field with a list of Issue IDs that are visited recently as a link. The following screenshot displays the location of the Recently Visited field. Click any Issue link to open the View Issue Details page. The Recently Visited field is static throughout all the pages and it is possible to jump to any Issue any time. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Mantis – View Issues

Mantis – View Issues ”; Previous Next In the View Issues section, the user can view all the reported bugs for a project. The user can filter out to narrow down the search and export all issues and print reports. All of the major functionalities of Issues can be accessed through View Issues. We will discuss all of these functionalities in different chapters. In this chapter, we will discuss about Filters, Export and Print Reports. Filters To use filters in View Issues, following steps should be performed − Step 1 − Click View Issues from the left Menu. In the first half, the filter section displays where the user can set various filters. Step 2 − To set a filter, click Field name. For example: Reporter in this case. It will display the available dropdown list to select. Step 3 − After the selection of other filters as well, click Apply Filter to search the result as shown in the following screenshot. Step 4 − After clicking the Apply Filter button, Issues are displayed at the bottom of the screen in the Viewing Issues section as shown in the following screenshot. Step 5 − By clicking the Save Current Filter, the user can save the filter and use whenever required. Step 6 − After clicking the Save Current Filter button, the following form opens to enter Filter Name. Enter the name and check Make Public, Apply for all projects. Click Save Current Filter. Step 7 − A dropdown will display beside the Save Filter button where the user can see currently saved filter name and select the filter from there. This dropdown list displays all available filter list as shown in the following screenshot. Print Reports In View Issues → Viewing Issue section, the user can print the records and basic details of issues. After filtering out the issues, the user can print these in different formats. To Print the Reports, following steps should be performed − Step 1 − Go to View Issues from the Menu, set the filters, and click Apply Filters. Step 2 − Now, go to Viewing Issues section and make sure the issues are displayed. Step 3 − Select the issues to print and click Print Reports as shown in the following screenshot. Issues are displayed as browser page and have Word and HTML (Internet Explorer) sign at the top left corner of the screen as shown in the following screenshot. Step 4 − By clicking the Word symbol, it downloads the word file having the details of the bug. The sample word file will look like: The name of the file would be <project name>.doc and it contains complete details of each issue. Step 5 − Click the HTML sign, a new browser opens that contains complete details of each issue as shown in the following screenshot. CSV/Excel Export To export as CSV/Excel file, following steps should be performed − Step 1 − Go to View Issues from Menu, set the filters and click Apply Filters. Step 2 − Go to Viewing Issues section at the bottom of the page and make sure the issues are displayed. Step 3 − Select the issues to export and click CSV/Excel Export as shown in the following screenshot. The respective files gets downloaded having the details of the bug. The sample CSV file will look like as shown in the following screenshot. The sample Excel file will look like as shown in the following screenshot. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Mantis – Features

Mantis – Features ”; Previous Next 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. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Mantis – Issue History

Mantis – Issue History ”; Previous Next A History is a record of all activities performed on issues such as − Creation of an issue Changes to an issue field Attachment of a file Deletion of comment/work log Addition/deletion of links In a history record, the user can view the following information − Name of the user who made the changes Time while the changes was made If an issue field is changed, new and old values of the field Following steps are to be performed to view the Issue History. Step 1 − Go to View Issue → View Issue Details (by clicking any issue ID) Page to see the history. Step 2 − Scroll down to the Issue History section OR click the Issue History button as shown in the following screenshot. History records will be displayed as can be seen in the following screenshot. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Mantis – Issue Lifecycle

Mantis – Issue Lifecycle ”; Previous Next Lifecycle denotes different stages or status of issues. Lifecycle starts from reporting an issue and ends when the issue is resolved or closed. An issue mainly can have 3 stages − Open, Resolve, and Close. However, Mantis supports more status as is explained further. Statuses New − This is the first status for a new issue when the users report it. The next status may be “feedback”, “acknowledged”, “confirmed”, “assigned” or “resolved”. Feedback − This status is used for reviewing purpose. Before assigning to a team member, a review process happens to decide the validity of issue and concern team. The next status may be “new”, “assigned”, or “resolved”. Acknowledged − This status is used by the development team to send a confirmation about receiving an issue or to agree with the reporter’s concern. However, it is possible that they have not yet reproduced the issue. The next status is “assigned” or “confirmed”. Confirmed − This status is typically used by the development team to reflect that they have confirmed and reproduced the issue. The next status is “assigned”. Assigned − This status is used to reflect that the issue has been assigned to one of the team members and the team member is responsible to fix it and actively working on it. The next status is “resolved”. Resolved − This status is used to reflect that the issue has been fixed or resolved. An issue can be resolved among any of the following resolutions. For example, an issue can be called as resolved for “fixed”, “duplicate”, “won’t fix”, “no change required”, or other reasons. The next status is “closed”, or in case if the issue is being re-opened, then it would be “feedback”. Closed − This status reflects that the issue is closed and successfully validated. No further actions are required on it. Once the issue gets closed, it hides the issue from the View Issues page. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Mantis – Change Status

Mantis – Change Status ”; Previous Next Status is the property of an issue that helps to track the progress of an issue as well as provide the actual current status of an issue. Mantis supports the following status – New, Feedback, Acknowledged, Confirmed, Closed, and Resolved. Users can change the status of an issue based on the work done. Following steps should be taken to change the status. Step 1 − Go to the View issue section and click the Issue ID of the status that has to change. Step 2 − Click the dropdown beside “Change Status to” and select one of the statuses. Step 3 − After selection, click the button “Change Status to” present at the View Issue Details section as shown in the following screenshot. Based on the status selection, the <Status> Issue page opens where the user can add a note, assign to and make it private if desired. Step 4 − After that click the <Status> Issue button. For example: For feedback, the Request Feedback on Issue page opens. The following screenshot shows the Feedback status page. Step 5 − Click the Request Feedback button and the status of issue is changed to feedback as shown in the following screenshot. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;