Understand built-in issue filters

In this video, you will:

  • Review built-in issue filters to see how they’re built
  • Learn about some useful issue reporting elements
  • Learn how to create your own issue filter
Transcript
In this video, you will review built-in issue filters to see how they’re built, learn about some useful issue reporting elements, and learn how to create your own issue filter. Why is it important to understand how a filter is set up and what the filter is showing you? Here are some reasons. To understand what the filter does and why the results are showing in the list and to help identify why something isn’t showing up in the results list. You can’t always tell how a filter is set up by the name alone. For example, you may think the “my open issues” filter shows all the issues that still need to be resolved on all the projects you own. Or does it show all the issues you have submitted that still need to be resolved? Or does it show all the issues that have been assigned to you that you haven’t resolved? You can open it up to find out.
The “my open issues” filter has three filter rules. The first filter rule reads “show me issues where I am the issue owner”. This means you will not see issues assigned to you unless you are designated as the issue owner. The next rule says “show only issues that do not have a resolving object”. A resolving object can be a project, task, or another issue which, when completed, will also resolve this issue. This rule finds only issues that have not been assigned to a resolving object. The last rule says “only show issues where the status is not a complete status”. A complete status for an issue can be any of the following: Cannot duplicate, closed, resolved verified complete, won’t resolve, or any custom status that equates with closed.
The answer to the question, “what does my open issues show me?” is this. It shows you all issues that are not closed or linked to a resolving object where you are the primary person assigned. It’s important to note that the filter will not show you an issue assigned to multiple users unless you are the primary or the assigned to user. Notice anything else? There is no filter rule checking the status of the project an issue is assigned to. An open issue can’t exist on a project with a status of complete, but it can exist on a project with a status of dead or on hold. Before using this filter, take a minute to consider whether it meets your needs as it is. If it doesn’t, you can edit the filter and save it as your own. The next filter we’ll look at is “my submitted issues”. When you’re looking at the issue list in a project, this filter shows you all the issues you submitted or someone else submitted on your behalf regardless of the status of the issues. This filter shows you all your issues, not just those that are open. This allows you to get a good look at all the issues that you created and issues that were created by someone on your behalf so you can see which of those were resolved and when they were resolved and which ones are still being worked on and which ones have not yet been started.
When you open this filter, you see a single filter rule.
It says “show me all the issues in this project where the logged in user is the primary contact”. What does primary contact mean? It’s often the person who submitted the issue, but it doesn’t have to be. When you submit a new issue, you can designate anyone as the primary contact, as is the case in this issue. This is the person who wants to be kept informed about the status of the issue and who could normally answer questions about it. Many request queues let you designate the primary contact.
When you submit an issue or request, the primary contact defaults to the person who submits the request unless you designate someone else. By knowing how a filter is built, you can decide if it’s meeting your needs. If you want to change a built-in filter, simply make a few edits and save it as your own custom filter. -

Activity: Create an issue report

You want to see all the issues that still need to be resolved on all the active projects you own, including issues with a resolving object. Create an issue report and name it “Unresolved issues on projects I own.”

Answer

Here is what the filter should look like:

An image of the screen to create an issue filter

In the “My Open Issues” built-in filter, one of the filter rules excluded any issues where there was a resolving object. The reasoning behind this is that you don’t have to worry about those issues. Somebody already created a project, task, or issue that will resolve them, so what’s to worry? But they aren’t resolved yet, and in our example we’re including them to make them easy to identify and check how they’re doing.

To do this, you need to add a column in the view tab for “Issue >> Resolving Object.” This shows the name of the resolving object, if there is one, whether it is a project, task, or issue. Clicking the name takes you to the resolving object.

You might want to group the list based on the name of the project.

Here is what the report should look like:

An image of an issue report

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