Customisable columns for bug listings

Read our blog post about this feature!

The information we present in lists of bugs, whether in bug search results or standard bug listing pages, is fixed and was chosen a long time ago. It has not kept pace with the data stored by the bug tracker nor with the different ways in which people want to use Launchpad to track bugs.

Similarly, Launchpad provides minimal choice in how bug listings are ordered.

As a general principle, Launchpad should give people access to their data in the ways that suit them. In that spirit, we should make it easy to customise the information presented on bug listings pages and the order in which that information is shown.

Contact: Matthew Revell
On Launchpad: bug-columns tag

Rationale

This is a much requested feature and has been requested by our stakeholders. We are working on it now because it is a relatively small project but will give a great deal of benefit both to stakeholders and general users of Launchpad's bug tracker.

Customisable columns for bug listings will help people be more productive when using the bug tracker.

Stakeholders

Steve Magoun, who previously represented Canonical's OEM Solutions group, requested this feature. The QA CoP will find this particularly useful.

Chris Gregan, who heads up the Canonical QA CoP.

Dave Murphy who now represents the OEM Solutions portion of Professional and Engineering Services.

User stories

As a development manager
I want a clear view of who in my team is assigned to which bugs
so that I can evaluate how my team's workload is spread across its member and which of the bugs for which my team is reponsible are unassigned.

As a development manager
I want to order bug reports by age
so that I can factor the age of a bug into the decision of whether to work on it next.

As a development manager
I want to see a bug's milestone and order by milestone so that I can plan when each bug needs to be assigned to a developer.

As a QA engineer
I want to see and order by tags in bug listings so that I can have a quick overview of the QA status of the bugs I'm working on.

Constraints and Requirements

Must

Likely to have

These are aspects of the feature that we believe are important and that we believe we will have time to add, if the work covered by the requirements above goes well.

Nice to have

Must not

Out of scope

Subfeatures

None yet.

Success

How will we know when we are done?

We will know we're done when it's possible to add and remove the columns displayed on a bug listing and to re-order the listing by any of those columns, then either save that choice as your default view or use it as a one-off for that session or until the user chooses to revert to either their saved preference or the Launchpad default.

How will we measure how well we have done?

We will measure the success of this feature through user acceptance testing with the stakeholders that requested it and also through wider usability testing. After some time, we will interview stakeholders to check that the feature has made it easier for them to get work done.

Thoughts?

LEP/CustomBugListings (last edited 2011-11-25 14:28:14 by abentley)