Are there plans for to implement a user ticketing system at the collaboratory level?


#1

The EU reviewers suggested that there be a ticketing system where users can enter feature requests and bug reports. These feature requests can then be shown in a Kanban style.

In SP10 we were discussing to use bitbucketcards for this purpose. A similar system exists for GitHub.

Are there plans to implement an HBP wide system in the collaboratory?


#2

We’ve looked at RT, JIRA and Phabricator. Naturally we also use github, but I’m not sure github has the appropriate functionality for a general ticketing system.

I would prefer something which was run by the HBP and hosted on the servers of one of the partners. We’ll almost certainly need some negotiation about which task is responsible for this service given the high level of service which will be required.


#3

Further, RT is currently planned for HPAC SP ticket tracking:

They’re not currently planning to offer this to other SPs as far as I know.


#4

I will live in a better world if every SP dedicates human or computing resources to shape a task force responsible for deploying it rather than spending the money on designing temporary solutions.

Surely a topic we can talk about in the next platform coordination meeting?

The maintenance is the hardest question, but I guess if we have a pool of administrator from different SP, we will surely be able to maintain the system up and running.

For me, the best, open source system today, according to our needs, is Phabricator, but we should evaluate it more in depth.

Olivier


#5

Phabricator is awful - I’ve looked at it and it lacks any agile support.


#6

Phabricator, as far as I have seen, is too complicated. I was thinking of something like Jira/Bitbucket like.


#7

I let you judge the quality, but I think all Agile support is present: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management#Scrum

The “Maniphest” part would satisfy the exact EC reviewers needs.
https://phacility.com/phabricator/maniphest/

I don’t care too much about the solution, but for me, it should at least:

  • not involve a per user fees to scale in the project
  • be able to aggregate data from all HBP platforms, according to EC reviewers desire

If we task a team with requirements, they might be able to find the best product.


#8

Yes, I have seen it, but I was not smart enough to use it so I guess other users will fail.
When playing with phabricator, I was reminded of TikiWiki - too many features and too little user guidance.


#9

A Jira plugin in our bbpteam tool would probably be the best option because developers and users already have accounts in Jira and tickets can then also be linked to our Jira issues.


#10

Happy to see some more people here :slight_smile:

So we have two votes for Jira!

I see two potentials issue with Jira:

  • There is a cost per user, so onboarding will only be a matter for restriction
  • EPFL Infra team do not know any easy (free) way to allow non member to open tickets.

Do you have ideas to mitigate any of those concerns?


#11

A cool solution would be to install this DVCS connector in Jira to link with Bitbucket’s issue tracker. See:


#12

(it also works with Github, but as bitbucket is atlassian software, I expect it to be more nicely integrated)